Leading NYC Democratic mayoral primary contenders Andrew Cuomo, Zohran Mamdani facing a slew of attacks
Things are heating up in the New York City Democratic mayoral primary.
With three weeks to go until the election, leading contenders Andrew Cuomo and Zohran Mamdani have targets on their backs.
As CBS News New York's Marcia Kramer reports, candidates are ganging up on Cuomo, while a Republican councilwoman is after Mamdani.
Eric Adams and Brad Lander tee-off on Cuomo
Even though New Yorkers haven't seen much of Cuomo in the run-up to the primary election, the former New York governor's first-place position in every poll has made him target number one for everyone else who wants to be mayor, including current Mayor Eric Adams.
"I keep saying I had to fix his policies," said Adams, who is running for reelection as an independent.
Adams was referring to a laundry list of bills signed into law by Cuomo when he was governor, including bail reform, congestion pricing, and benefit changes for city workers.
"You know what the move should have been, Marcia? He should have just sat down and said, 'I screwed up. I screwed up,'" Adams said.
Team Cuomo returned the vitriol.
"Eric Adams is understandably going through the five stages of grief as the end of his failed tenure as mayor is near," Cuomo spokesman Rich Azzopardi said. "At least he's not in the middle of a federal corruption trial, which is exactly what would be happening right now if he didn't sell out the city to Trump."
Adams, however, isn't the only one gunning for Cuomo. New York City Comptroller Brad Lander's campaign poked fun at Cuomo for admitting that until he moved to the city to run for mayor, he hadn't lived in the city since 1990.
"This may also explain why he has had trouble doing interviews and communicating with reporters, as the last time he lived here people used pay phones and the internet didn't exist yet," a Lander spokesperson said.
Vickie Paladino vs. Zohran Mamdani
Mamdani, a Queens assemblyman who is running second in the polls, is in involved in an ugly back-and-forth with Republican Councilwoman Vickie Paladino, who took to social media to call him "a radical leftist who hates everything about the country." She also said he should be deported.
"To have a sitting elected official call for me to be deported is a glimpse into Trump's America and what it means to be an immigrant in this city and in this country," Mamdani said. "It is reminiscent of what Donald Trump did to Barack Obama and it shows that the same poison that he had brought to this country is alive and well through his mouthpieces on the City Council."
The race has gotten so ugly because it's a multi-candidate field, including nine major candidates, and there is a certain frustration that from the outset Cuomo has led in the polls, Kramer reported. The latest has Cuomo at 35%, Mamdani at 22%, Lander at 10%, Scott Stringer at 9%, and the rest far behind.
Kramer says over the last two days she was in Brooklyn and Manhattan interviewing voters about who they think will win the primary. The majority said Cuomo, but three weeks is a long time and usually candidates save their best attacks for last.
