Andrew Cuomo poised to drop out of mayoral race altogether following primary loss to Zohran Mamdani: report

Former Governor Andrew Cuomo is rumored to have essentially dropped out of the New York City mayoral race altogether after a devestating defeat to State Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani in the Democratic Primary. Mamdani will now face off against incumbent Mayor Eric Adams, who is running as an independent, and GOP nominee Curtis Sliwa.

Cuomo insisted publicly on Wednesday that he's still thinking about a further run and is interested in seeing how the rest of the ranked-choice voting tabulation plays out. "I’m looking at the numbers from last night. I want to get an idea of what the general election looks like and what landscape looks like, and what the issues are, and then make the decision," he told the New York Post.

"It’s one step at a time, and we haven’t even gotten all the numbers from last night," he said.

The socialist Mamdani took the primary after just the first round of ranked choice voting pulling in over 43.5% of the vote compared to Cuomo's 36.4%. The New York Post reports that "Several insiders close to the Cuomo camp" said that he would "almost certainly not run in the general election as an independent candidate, seeing no obvious path to victory."

A union leader cited as a source said "The understanding is he’s not running, every indication is that he doesn’t want to do it and the money wouldn’t be there even if he did want to do it."

Mamdani was slammed across media after his Tuesday night win over his socialist platform that includes free buses, city-run grocery stores, free child care, community policing, determination to make New York an LGBTQ sanctuary city, his commitment to obstructing federal immigration enforcement, promise to tax the 1%—those 345,000 New Yorkers who make over $1 million annually, freeze the rent, and build affordable housing while making it harder for landlords to do business in the city, among other things. He is also antisemitic and has supported, or refused to decline to support, the concept and phrase "global intifada."

Those who backed Cuomo will likely turn to Adams, who is scandal-plagued as is Cuomo, or turn their support to another, as yet unknown candidate. Adams isn't doing great in the polls and he's been tarnished by a Turkish bribery scandal and for working with Trump after his DOJ dropped the charges against Adams that were brought by the Biden administration.

President Donald Trump referred to Mamdani as a "communist lunatic" and joked that with candidates like these the Democrats should run a ticket with Rep. Jasmine Crockett for president and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for VP.