Last night the final debate in New York City's mayoral contest took place at LaGuardia Community College in Queens. The consensus is that Andrew Cuomo and Curtis Sliwa both came out swinging and scored some hits on Zohran Mamdani.
Andrew Cuomo and Curtis Sliwa made the most of the final New York City mayoral debate Wednesday night, their last big chance to ding frontrunner Zohran Mamdani.
And ding him they did.
Another take on last night:
Today’s cover: https://t.co/SsAWiW2fIA pic.twitter.com/FhxwKRQB8G
— New York Post (@nypost) October 23, 2025
Mamdani, who is proposing free busses as part of his platform, arrived at the debate by bus where he was greeted by an adoring crowd of supporters.
.@ZohranKMamdani has arrived on an MTA bus to a swarm of fans and media pic.twitter.com/cYUMgM4xBl
— Hannah Fierick (@HannahFNYP) October 22, 2025
Cuomo was the last to arrive and looked pretty energetic.
Who’s ready for the debate tonight? Tune in at 7 PM EST on Spectrum NY1.#VoteforCuomo #SayNoToZo pic.twitter.com/w9Bdoxp13G
— Andrew Cuomo (@andrewcuomo) October 22, 2025
Mamdani opened the debate by predicting that Cuomo would spend the debate attacking him. He tried to frame that as the last act of a desperate man.
Mamdani: Cuomo will spend much of tonight attack me, he's a desperate man, lashing out because he knows the one thing he's always cared about, power, is slipping away from him pic.twitter.com/u3KYBnxnkL
— Acyn (@Acyn) October 22, 2025
He was right about Cuomo hitting him. Right out of the gate, Cuomo framed Mamdani as a talker who offered nothing but a "Bill deBlasio rehash."
Andrew Cuomo’s opening remarks during 2nd mayoral debate pic.twitter.com/C3ZeafdJXP
— New York Post (@nypost) October 23, 2025
This may have been Cuomo's best moment in the debate. In this one minute he hammered Mamdani as someone who had never had a real job and who had the worst record of missing votes in the state assembly.
Andrew Cuomo takes Zohran Mamdani’s campaign back behind the shed: “You’ve never had a job. You’ve never accomplished anything… You’ve literally never proposed a bill on anything you are talking about in your campaign. You had the worst attendance in the assembly, and you gave… pic.twitter.com/UBCvn5MNKt
— RedWave Press (@RedWave_Press) October 23, 2025
The NY Post looked into this and Cuomo is right about Mamdani barely ever having a job.
New York City Mayor candidate Mamdani – who has lived most of his life in subsidized housing – failed in his attempts to be a rapper, musician and managing previous political campaigns.
An analysis of the 33-year-old’s work history shows he has been employed for only approximately three years in the time between graduating college in 2014 and being elected to the New York State Assembly in 2020.
One of the few jobs he did have was working for his mother as a music supervisor on one of her films. Moving along, Mamdani framed Cuomo as Trump's puppet and Cuomo responded that he had worked with Trump at times but predicted Trump would knock Mamdani on his "tuchus" because Trump had no respect for him.
Cuomo declares Trump will knock Zohran Mamdani on his ‘tuchus’ if he becomes NYC mayor https://t.co/QoSZ9BY5oe? pic.twitter.com/6ixq7y8TMO
— New York Post (@nypost) October 23, 2025
Curtis Sliwas weighed in on this and agreed that anyone who tries to play tough guy with President Trump is going to lose.
Sliwa: You can’t beat Trump… he’s already cut federal funding for Medicaid pic.twitter.com/w8n7CQj8LC
— Acyn (@Acyn) October 22, 2025
Speaking of Trump, Mamdani borrowed a move from Trump and invited one of Cuomo's sexual assault accusers to the debate. He then got in a pretty good shot on Cuomo over this.
In the audience tonight is Charlotte Bennett, one of the 13 women that Andrew Cuomo is credibly alleged to have sexually harassed while they worked in his government.
— Zohran Kwame Mamdani (@ZohranKMamdani) October 23, 2025
She can't speak for herself because Cuomo's lawyers have hounded her.
So I confronted him. pic.twitter.com/dtlLY2xVKi
That wasn't the only pre-planned hit last night. Yesterday, a group of 650 rabbis released a letter accusing Mamdani of making the city less safe for Jews. Mamdani had a canned response to mitigate that, but Cuomo still hit him on it.
You don’t have to take my word for it but when 650+ rabbis are speaking up about their fears… there’s something to say about that.#VoteforCuomo #SayNoToZo pic.twitter.com/2KN4ac6mCV
— Andrew Cuomo (@andrewcuomo) October 23, 2025
He also accused Mamdani of stoking the flames of Jewish hatred.
You can protest Netanyahu’s government, but that doesn’t justify Jews being afraid in this city or leaders stoking hate against them pic.twitter.com/yoxl2GvC1P
— Andrew Cuomo (@andrewcuomo) October 23, 2025
Sliwa had a pretty good line basically agreeing with the other two candidates attacks on one another. And he's right. Zohran is a know-nothing TikTok star and Cuomo is a creep who was falsely labeled the hero of the pandemic by clueless Democrats. A pox on both their houses.
Sliwa: Zohran, your resume could fit on a cocktail napkin and Andrew, your failures could fill a public school library in New York City. pic.twitter.com/fbXBxJlZRh
— Acyn (@Acyn) October 22, 2025
After the debate, Cuomo headed to the Knicks game where he sat next to Mayor Eric Adams.
No better way to celebrate winning tonight’s debate than making it to the @nyknicks game in time for the 2nd half pic.twitter.com/6DG5SVG9CB
— Andrew Cuomo (@andrewcuomo) October 23, 2025
That was also intended to send a message. This morning, Mayor Adams announced that he is endorsing Cuomo.
Mayor Eric Adams will endorse former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo in the New York City mayor’s race on Thursday, casting aside months of bitterness to try to stop the momentum of Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee.
Mr. Adams, a Democrat, ended his re-election campaign last month after it became clear that he did not have a path to victory in the November election. He lashed out at Mr. Cuomo for pressuring him to leave the race, calling him “a snake and a liar.”
But Mr. Cuomo and Mr. Adams clearly appeared to have mended fences by Wednesday night, when they sat together courtside at the New York Knicks’ season opener, with Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat running as a third-party candidate, hustling over to Madison Square Garden from Queens after the final debate of the race ended.
Cuomo is still down double digits and Sliwa refuses to drop out so this election is looking like a done deal at this point. As I've said before, if NYC is dumb enough to elect another socialist mayor, they will get what they deserve. Some people only learn the lesson about socialism the hard way.
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