Bonus Episode: A Pivotal Mayoral Race for NYC’s Jews - with Howard Wolfson

You are listening to an art media podcast.

This race is going to come down to two people, Zaran Mandami and Andrew Cuomo.

We may wish that there were a better set of choices.

There aren't.

And Andrew Cuomo, in my view, as flawed as he may be, is an absolutely better choice than somebody who wants to defund the police, wants to raise taxes, wants to spend lots of money that we don't have, and is an extreme, in my view, opponent of the state of Israel.

So, those are the choices, and nobody should be under any illusions about that when they go to vote.

If you are a registered Democrat and what you have heard today concerns you, or you really care about the future of New York, do not sit this out.

It's 1:15 on Friday, June 20th here in New York City.

It is 8:15 p.m.

on Friday, June 20th in Israel, as Israelis have wound down for the day after what has been a very intense week and have already started their Shabbat.

Hopefully, it will be a quiet Shabbat and not one spent in safe rooms and bomb shelters.

For members of the Jewish community who live here in New York City, there are two major news stories that are front of mind.

There is, of course, Israel's war with Iran, which we are covering extensively here at Call Me Back.

And then there is the New York City Democratic Primary for Mayor, which will take place this Tuesday, June 24th.

And I should say that this mayoral election is actually capturing the attention not only of city residents here, but also the Jewish community nationally and throughout the diaspora.

And it's even, and even with the war, been getting extensive coverage in the Israeli media.

Why?

Well, this year's New York City mayoral election is of particular consequence because of the candidate that is currently polling second place in the race, and that is 33-year-old Zoran Mamdani.

The candidate leading in the polls is former New York governor Andrew Cuomo.

In many ways, Mamdani and Cuomo represent the opposite ends of the Democratic Party spectrum.

Cuomo has historically represented the more establishment centrist Democratic Party, whereas Mamdani is definitely an outsider, a self-described socialist, who's been endorsed by the squad, the progressive squad, for his far-left agenda, which includes a promise to freeze rents and eliminate bus fares, just to name a few of his policy prescriptions.

Mamdani's position in the polls is worrying to many Jewish New Yorkers because of his positions on anti-Semitism.

In Israel, in college, Mamdani co-founded Students for Justice in Palestine.

Now, while he claims to be concerned about rising anti-Semitism, he defends the phrase, globalize the intifada.

When asked about his position on Israel two weeks ago, Mamdani said that as mayor, he would bring New York City back into compliance with international law.

That's an interesting way to address the issue of Israel.

And the suggestion was that the city's administration's support for Israel has been illegal.

And again, while this is essentially a two-candidate race between Cuomo and Mamdani, Mamdani has been gaining momentum, has been moving in the polls.

Turnout so far in this mayoral election based on early voting is high.

So there is a sense that he is capturing a lot of energy among progressives, primarily young progressives, that are fueling what could be a potential upset by Mamdani.

With us to discuss this highly consequential election is Howard Wolfson, who's sort of a go-to for me when it comes to democratic politics in the city and nationally.

He leads the education program at Bloomberg Philanthropies, the foundation of former Mayor Mike Bloomberg.

Previously, Howard served as the deputy mayor for government affairs and communications for New York City under Mike Bloomberg.

He's a longtime advisor and confidant of Mayor Bloomberg's.

He's also worked for Senator Schumer and former Senator Clinton and Congresswoman Nita Lowy going way back.

So he's got a lot of deep roots in New York City politics.

Howard also currently runs Bloomberg's Super PAC and continues to advise Bloomberg on all matters of politics and communications.

Howard Wolfson on an imminent election with outsized consequences.

This is Call Me Back.

And I'm pleased to welcome back to this podcast Howard Wolfson.

Howard, thanks for being here.

Good to join you.

So, Howard, there's this thing happening on Tuesday.

Yes, there is.

I understand there's this thing called

perhaps the most pivotal stage of the most pivotal race in American politics.

Yes, the greatest city in the world is going to be choosing its next leader for the next four years.

Right, right.

That not enough people, as far as I'm concerned, are paying attention to, and they should be paying attention to it.

So, Howard, there's this race.

There's this election on Tuesday.

Before we get into the personalities, can you just briefly explain what is this contest on Tuesday, and how does it factor into the city's politics?

So, Tuesday is the Democratic primary for mayor in New York.

New York City is an overwhelmingly Democratic city.

So, it is likely that whoever wins the primary will be the next mayor.

Although we, of course, will also have an election in November where we will have a Republican and potentially other candidates on the ballot.

But Tuesday really matters an an awful lot.

Typically, whoever wins the Democratic primary becomes mayor.

Yeah.

Depending on whether or not you think it's a feature or a bug, there's this distinctive way New York City chooses its mayor now, which is something we call ranked choice voting.

I'm going to do my best to explain it in a very simple way.

Maybe we'll include in the show notes one or two pieces for people to read who want to spend more time going through the brain stimulation of trying to understand it.

But basically, when you vote on election night, you are choosing your first choice for mayor, the candidate that you rank first, but then you also rank your second choice, your third choice.

Up to five.

Up to five.

So there's a way that even if I'm a candidate who didn't get ranked first by some voters, I still in later rounds of counting could gain vote share by the board of elections.

So there's opportunities for candidates who don't appear to have done as well or well enough on election night.

Within a a few days, once those second and third and fourth choices are counted, they can accumulate more vote share.

So a couple of things.

In defense of New York, we are not the only place that does rank choice voting.

There are other cities and even other states that do it.

Maine does it, Alaska does it, San Francisco does it.

There are other places that do it.

It basically allows people to go in and rank one through five.

Their first choice, their second choice, third choice, fourth, fifth choice.

They don't have to.

You can choose to rank one or you can choose to rank two, three, four, or five, up to five.

Let's say, for instance, I'll give you my ballot.

So the person that I rank number one, Whitney Tilson, I ranked him number one because I thought he was best on the subject of education, which is the subject that I spend a lot of time on for former Mayor Bloomberg and the Bloomberg Philanthropies.

I ranked him number one.

He is unlikely to win or even to get many votes.

Once he is eliminated in the counting, like once he is once it's clear that he can't win.

Correct.

Then they will look at my ballot and we'll say, okay, we're going to strike Whitney Tilson and we'll go to his number two.

And my number two was Andrew Cuomo.

So if Andrew Como is in the final round of the counting.

The final round based on the people's first choice.

Correct.

So assuming he is, then they take your number two and do what with it?

And attach it to other people's number one.

Got it.

And eventually you winnow out the field.

Whoever is the lowest vote getter winnows out.

The people who put that person one, their votes then go to who they put number two or who they put number three.

And in the end, you will have two people left basically competing against one another.

And so the way to think about this, we can get into the personalities is

the way I thought about it is I've looked at the polling.

I have a sense of who are going to be the final two candidates competing against one another.

And it matters an awful lot about between those two, which one you decide to rank.

Okay.

So, and we will get to the personalities.

So that's the complexity of the New York City election.

and yet it is a very high-stakes election.

To your point, the winner of this primary has a very good shot of becoming the mayor in the November election.

And then I want to ask you why the mayor of New York City matters so much.

I mean, Larry Summers tweeted out today, every American, he says, is a citizen of New York City.

Summers wrote, it's so much a cultural and financial hub of our country that what happens in New York City is consequential for all of us.

So before we get to, because I do want to spend some time about what it it means for the Jewish community in New York City and why Jewish communal life and its intersection with New York City politics is its own sort of distinctive feature of politics here in America, but just the idea of New York City, like what Summers is saying, that the mayor of New York City really matters.

So explain why it matters more than what we'd think of of a mayor, not to be judgmental or look down upon mayors of other cities, but there is something about the mayor of New York City.

So New York City is the biggest city in America.

It's the media capital.

It's the financial capital.

It's the cultural capital.

The mayor of New York has an enormous canvas, has an enormous stage.

Whatever happens in New York reverberates outwards very dramatically.

So it really does matter who the mayor of New York is.

Secondly, I think also for the Democratic Party, it matters an awful lot who the mayor of New York is.

If, for instance, Assemblymember Zoran Mandami becomes the mayor, He is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America.

He is very far left.

He would make an argument that he has a stake in the future of the party, that his prevailing views on subjects like the economy, on criminal justice, on crime, and on Israel should count and prevail over more moderate or mainstream perspectives.

So he or whoever becomes the mayor will be given an enormous platform and an enormous canvas to have enormous impact, not just on the party, but also on the country.

So that's the sort of the symbolism and the weight of leading city hall in New York City.

And then there's also the operational part of the job, which is being mayor of New York City is like being the president or prime minister of a country.

The budget of the city, and you know this firsthand, as I mentioned in the introduction, because you were a deputy mayor in Mayor Bloomberg's administration.

So you actually lived this, but the budget of New York City, the city budget's over $100 billion.

The police force is what, something like 60,000?

It's not quite that high, but it's high.

Tens of thousands.

Yeah, it's more like 30, some odd thousands.

Oh, 30,000.

Okay.

So the police force is tens of thousands of law enforcement personnel i mean you go through like just basically every city department and it is these massive workforces we have 300 000 employees the city government of new york has 300 000 employees okay so there you go so it's also a big operational job yes right so now let's talk about our candidates Okay, because it's got national implications, as you're saying, especially for the Democrats, and it is a really big job.

You're running a country.

So can you just go through each of the candidates?

And you mentioned Whitney Tilson.

So now let's go to your second choice, Andrew Cuomo, and just tell us a little about him, and then we'll kind of tick through a couple of the others.

So Andrew Cuomo was, he is the son of the former governor, Mario Cuomo.

He was the HUD Secretary under Bill Clinton.

He was attorney general of the state of New York, and he was elected to three terms as governor.

He left the governor's mansion in Albany under a cloud.

He resigned following allegations of sexual misconduct.

And the New York City mayor's race is something of a comeback opportunity for him.

He started out the race as a frontrunner, but he has very high negatives.

So there was an opening, I think, for at least one other candidate and I think possibly other candidates to present themselves as credible alternatives to him.

He has a record of accomplishment.

If you've flown in and out of LaGuardia, if you've taken a train out of Moynihan Station, if you've you've been on the Second Avenue subway, you can see that when he puts his mind to something, he can get things done.

As he says, there was a lot of talk about fixing those things.

Nobody ever did anything.

He accomplished it.

He also, I think, is a real master understanding of politics and the way legislation is crafted and passed.

I mean, it's almost sort of LBJ-like in its uses of the levers of use of the levers of power and a sophisticated understanding of kind of how to corral votes and move things along in the

But there is no question that there are a lot of New Yorkers that would otherwise be interested in voting for somebody with that kind of record who have questions about him because of the way he left office and the allegations that were charged against him.

And on the ideological spectrum of the Democratic Party, where would you put him?

Mainstream.

Okay, so mainstream like Clinton-era Democrat.

Well, the party has moved since Clinton.

I think he began his tenure as governor a little bit more to the center.

I think, like a lot of Democrats, he moved somewhat to the left by his third term.

But I think he is he's a mainstream figure.

He would govern the city in a fairly mainstream way.

He's pledged to put more cops on the beat and to enforce some of the quality of life crimes that I think have been allowed to kind of fester.

And I think there's every reason to believe that he would govern more or less from the center.

Okay, Zoran Mandani, who you mentioned earlier, state assemblyman.

Tell us about him.

So he's a young man.

He's in his 30s, only served a few terms in the state assembly.

He is, first and foremost, an incredibly gifted politician.

Whether he wins this race or loses this race, he has a bright future.

Whether you agree or disagree with him on the substance, he is definitely going places in American politics.

He's intelligent.

He's charismatic.

He is articulate, and he comes across very convincingly to an awful lot of people.

That said, if you look at the substance, he is an unabashed member of the Democratic Socialists of America.

So, hold on.

That's not just a moniker.

The Democratic Socialists of America is an.

That's not a euphemism.

That's an actual organization.

Yeah.

So, can you actually explain that?

Because a lot of people don't know that such an organization exists.

What is the Democratic Socialists of America?

So, there is an organization in America called the Democratic Socialists of America.

They have, I think, strength in certain cities now and across the country, and they are socialists.

I mean, they basically believe in redistribution of wealth at significant scale.

They have been, as he has been, in favor of the defund the police movement.

In New York City, he wants to raise taxes.

He has been, as I say, for the defund the police movement.

He wants to spend billions of dollars on social programs and public housing, money that I think you could argue that New York City really doesn't have.

But also, he's talking about like free bus fare.

No one should have to pay to be on a bus.

So he wants to make buses free and he wants to have state-run supermarkets or city-run supermarkets, government-run supermarkets.

Yeah, he's a real socialist.

Maybe the best thing we could say about him is he really believes this, not political opportunist.

He's totally sincere.

Right.

He's a real ideologue.

He is a true believer.

And, you know, so look, sometimes I've been in Democratic politics a long time.

The word socialist or Marxist is thrown around an awful lot.

Republicans will accuse, you know, even the most mainstream Democrats of being a socialist or a Marxist.

He is a legitimate socialist.

He would call himself that.

Right.

And as you said, very young.

How old is he?

33, five, something like that.

So a 33-year-old, new to politics and self-described, owns the socialism label.

And what was his background before he was in politics?

Well, he's 33, so he doesn't have much of a background before politics.

He was a rapper, I think, briefly.

But he's basically been, you know, essentially either running campaigns campaigns or an elected office since he graduated college.

Right.

Okay.

And he's definitely caught fire.

100%.

Well, that is the strength.

I think, first of all, it's a strength of his, it's due to a couple of factors.

As I said, he's very charismatic.

He's a gifted politician.

He's very articulate.

He's great on social media.

He understands how social media works.

That's one bucket.

Second bucket.

He is articulating in his socialism a set of policies that certainly at least have a significant minority of democratic voters interested in them right so i don't believe that the majority of democratic voters in new york are socialists or interested in socialism uh or approving of it but there are certainly many voters who are right so when you combine the voters who like the idea of spending billions of dollars on public housing and social programs who like the idea of free buses who like the idea of government-run supermarkets, who like the idea of taxing the rich, and you combine that voting block with the people who are attracted to to his charisma and his energy and his ways in which he uses social media, all of a sudden you have a decent number of people who are interested in him.

One final thing I would say is that I think that the field is weak.

So if Andrew Cuomo's negatives were lower, if he hadn't left the governor's mansion with all of these allegations hanging over his head, if one of the other candidates in the race had caught fire, that would have changed the trajectory of the race.

But the fact is that Andrew Cuomo does have high negatives.

None of the the other candidates have caught fire.

So he's running in a field that is not very strong.

So he's good.

He's got some policies that people are interested in, and the rest of the field is weak.

But the reason we are interested in it here at the Call Me Back podcast, especially not only because we care about the future of the city and we have a lot of listeners who care about the future of the city, but he has made either by design or as a result of his track record, the issue of Israel a cornerstone part of what he's known for in ways that I think make should make a lot of people uncomfortable.

Just in the last few days, he was giving an interview on the Ball Work podcast where he talked about, he compared the term globalized the intifada to the Warsaw Ghetto uprising.

In fact, let's play a clip from that interview.

That obviously is anti-Semitism on the right, but there's anti-Semitism coming from the left and coming from these protests.

And one example I think of is this phrase, globalize the intifada.

So I wonder what you think think about that, about the phrase globalize the intifada and what we've seen as some anti-Semitism coming from the left-wing protesters.

The first thing, as you were saying, is anti-Semitism is a real issue in our city.

And it's one that can be captured in statistics, the ones that you're citing.

It's also one that you will feel in conversations you have with Jewish New Yorkers across the city.

This is something that has to be the focus of the next mayoral administration is not just talking about it, but tackling it.

And these are the conversations that have informed our commitment around increasing funding for anti-hate crime programming by 800 in our department of community safety you know to the question of language that's being used i am someone who am less comfortable with the idea of banning the use of certain words and that i think it is more evocative of a trump style approach to how to lead a country sure but like does that just make you uncomfortable like the phrase globalize intifada from the river to the sea does that make you uncomfortable I know people for whom those things mean very different things.

To me, ultimately, what I hear in so many is a desperate desire for equality and equal rights in standing up for Palestinian human rights.

And I think what's difficult also is that the very word has been used by the Holocaust Museum when translating the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising into Arabic, because it's a word that means struggle.

Muslim man who grew up post-9-11, I'm all too familiar in the way in which Arabic words can be twisted, can be distorted, can be used to justify any kind of meaning.

And I think that's where it leaves me with a sense that what we need to do is focus on keeping Jewish New Yorkers safe.

And the question of permissibility of language is something that

I haven't ventured into.

Okay.

So that was Mandani with Tim Miller on the Bullwork podcast.

He was, when he was in college, he was one of the leaders of the Students for Justice and Palestine chapter.

He talks openly about his support for BDS.

He says that if he for boycott, boycott, divestment, and sanctions of Israel, he says that if Prime Minister Netanyahu were to travel here while he was mayor, he would have the prime minister arrested in accordance with the ICC action against the International Criminal Court action against Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Galat.

I can go on and on and on, but I don't think it's an overstatement to say that if you have been unnerved by some of the heated and at times anti-Semitic, blatant anti-Semitic rhetoric directed at Jews in this country, in this city, since October 7th.

I mean, he's been swimming in those waters.

Not just swimming in them.

I mean, he's been leading folks into the pool.

I mean, he is a sincere, passionate, committed anti-Zionist.

This was a guy who started a Students for Justice and Palestine chapter when he was in college, and he has never given up his commitment to those issues.

He calls, as you said, Israel an apartheid state.

He believes in the Divest movement.

I mean, you know, he's on a podcast and he says that globalizing the Intifada isn't anti-Semitic.

This is somebody who is,

let's give him the benefit of sincerity, because I think it is a real flow through in his career so far.

He is a very sincere opponent of the state of Israel, period.

And it's striking to me if that kind of candidate were to appear in other parts of the country, but New York City is home to the largest Jewish community in a single place outside of the state of Israel.

So the idea that he could be getting this much traction, and as you said, by Tuesday, he could be on path to being the mayor of New York City is jarring.

And you've been in the middle of a lot of going back to your days working for Congresswoman Nita Lowy and then working for then Senator Clinton when she ran before she was senator, but helping her get elected senator.

And obviously you've worked with Mayor Bloomberg.

I mean, you know the role that, you know, how sensitive, let me say, candidates for mayor mayor are in this city to the Jewish community and the concerns of the Jewish community.

And he is like such an outlier in terms of like, I mean, what he's demonstrating, and if he continues to get traction, he, I think, will have demonstrated that, you know, sort of giving lie to the idea that you can't run for mayor of New York City and not be completely dialed in to the concerns of the Jewish community here.

Well, he is historically an outlier, but he's clearly not an outlier contemporaneously.

Now,

he has not made on the campaign stump the subject of Israel.

He has not made it a focus.

He hasn't walked away from it.

Clearly, as you saw, as you showed when he's asked about it, he doubles down.

But it's not as if he's advertising on it.

So I think that there are some people who would find that position to be at odds with their own, but who might agree with him on other topics, who are able to kind of look past it.

because it's not like something he talks about all the time.

But you're 100% right.

I mean, this is somebody who historically is an outlier on these issues, but contemporaneously is not.

And it is certainly worth those of us who are Zionists, who believe in the state of Israel, who think it's important for American politicians to support a strong Israel, to ask ourselves how this has happened and why it has happened, because I worry that this is perhaps the beginning of a trend and not the end of one,

regardless of the outcome.

And I take your point that he's not leading into it during this race, obviously, but he's not shying away from it.

He was on a podcast the other day with this guy, Hassan Piker, who's a streamer.

He just sat for an interview with him, who's a streamer who's justified October 7th.

And I think Mandami has used language that sort of has rationalized what happened on October 7th.

And I guess my question, Howard, is, well, first of all, we talked about the DSA and the policies that DSA stands for on issues of Israel as well.

This is, they are as extreme.

Very extreme.

Yeah, yeah.

It's interesting, by the way.

I mean, you know, the DSA of Bernie Sanders youth was not anti-Israel, right?

The organization has moved and has changed its position about Israel over time.

And that's just a fact.

And the young Democrats, Democrats in their 20s and 30s, you can see it in the polling, are not hugely supportive of Israel.

And it is a challenge for those of us in the party who do feel strongly about this to persuade and to bring folks back into the fold.

And operationally, coming back to the operations, there was a rabbi over at our home for Shabbat Shabbat dinner recently who made the point, like, you know, the NYPD is in front of our synagogue, this rabbi said, on Friday nights and Saturday mornings, especially since post-October 7th.

I mean, there are lots of synagogues that Jewish day schools where the NYPD kind of hovers around, rightly so.

And this rabbi was asking, will that be the case if Mandani's mayor?

Like, what kind of, now, you know, you can start speculating with all these, you can get very micro and very parochial, but for Jewish leaders who are paying attention,

having a mayor who's hostile, or let me just say this, who is like, I don't think he had a problem with the protests that were happening at Columbia University.

No.

Right?

No.

Right.

So you just start to think about what does that mean if you have a mayor who does, just doesn't seem to care about the concerns.

Again, especially we saw the uptick in anti-Semitism before October 7th, but obviously we saw a massive uptick post-October 7th.

And it's destabilizing for many Jews in terms of just their daily lives, where they have to start thinking about things and be conscious of things as they go about their daily life, particularly if they are, you know, publicly, very publicly affiliate, you know, identify with their Judaism is very obvious that they feel vulnerable.

And then to feel like you have a mayor in New York City who doesn't have your back, I mean, that's pretty terrifying.

And he gives total and complete permission to Democratic candidates across the country to walk away from their support for Israel.

Right.

I mean, you can imagine all kinds of Democratic candidates running for all kinds of offices, basically saying, if this guy can win in New York City, if an avowed anti-Zionist can become mayor of a city with the largest Jewish population in the United States,

we can certainly oppose Israel in our race because guarantee in every other place, there are even fewer Jewish voters.

So I am worried, particularly as a Democrat, what this would mean for the Democratic Party, because I think it could change the trajectory of this issue in a way that is very disadvantageous to those of us who support a strong U.S.-Israel relationship.

And there are a number of candidates in this race.

We don't have to go through all of them, but I just want to tick off a couple of others because they're increasingly in the news.

Brad Lander?

So Brad is trying to sort of run to the left of Andrew Cuomo and slightly to the right of Mandami without really all that much success.

I think there was a point at which he might have been the alternative to both of them.

Hasn't really turned out that way.

And I think, although he has gotten some favorable publicity in the New York Times, the New York Times editorialized this past week and said, we don't love Cuomo at all.

We really dislike Mondami, and we think you ought to think about Brad Lander.

He is not, I think, likely to be the next mayor.

I don't think he's even likely to be one of the final two vote getters.

But he's helping Mandani.

Well, so because of the ranked choice system, sometimes candidates cross-endorse.

So a candidate will say, hey, to my supporters, if you're going to put Howard Wolfson first, put Dan Senor second.

And you'll say, hey, to my supporters, if you're going to put Dan Senor first, you should put Howard Wolfson second.

And he and Mondami did that.

So I think that has helped Mondami.

I'm not sure it has helped Brad Lander very much, but it has certainly helped Mondami.

And Adrienne Adams?

Mainstream city council speaker.

I think she has some accomplishments, certainly around rezoning, trying to make the city more affordable, build more housing.

But she got into the race really late.

And I just don't think that she has caught on.

Okay.

Larry Summers, coming back to that tweet, he argued that the DSA program, which Mandani is a vessel for, a champion for, would be, in Summers' words, profound and dangerous for New York City, for the Democratic Party, and for the USA.

As it relates to what it would mean for New York City, I mean, could you imagine we'd start to see some kind of exodus of people of talent from New York?

Dan, you're already seeing that.

You know that.

Yeah.

I mean, how many people do we know who have left New York for Florida or Texas or other places further south?

I mean, especially Florida.

We know plenty of people who have left New York.

And yeah, I think there's every reason to believe that more people would leave if they weren't happy with the governance in the city and the city began to spend more money poorly and to police less and to engage in rhetoric around Israel that was deeply unhelpful.

Yeah, I mean, sure, people would leave.

And has the national progressive movement, as it flexes its muscles within the Democratic Party, been all in on Mandani?

Like, do they see what you're seeing?

I guess what you're saying?

Because you're saying this as a New Yorker, you're worried, but you're also worried as someone who cares about the future of the Democratic Party nationally.

So AOC has endorsed him.

Jamal Bowman has endorsed him.

Bernie Sanders endorsed him.

Bernie Sanders, right?

So is there...

Yeah, those are the icons of the left, right?

AOC and Bernie Sanders in particular.

And they both endorsed him.

So yeah, I think that they see a possibility for his success.

I think there's every reason to believe that he could win.

I don't think he necessarily will win, but he absolutely could win.

So nobody who's listening to this, who is concerned about what we're saying, should take any of this for granted.

And I guess I would make the following plea, because as I said, I know lots of people who are concerned, have questions about Andrew Como, because he did leave the governor's mansion with lots of questions.

What I say to them is this race is going to come down to two people, Zaran Mandami and Andrew Como.

We may wish that there were a better set of choices.

There aren't.

So you need to choose between these two people.

And Andrew Cuomo, in my view, as flawed as he may be, is an absolutely better choice than somebody who wants to defund the police, wants to raise taxes.

wants to spend lots of money that we don't have and is an extreme, in my view, opponent of the state of of Israel.

So those are the choices.

And nobody should be under any illusions about that when they go to vote.

That's the pitch that I would make.

And if they think that I don't have to choose either of them and I can just choose.

They're wrong.

Right.

No, no, they're wrong.

First of all, if you don't choose one of them, your vote probably won't matter in the end, right?

Because it's going to come down between the two of them in the final round.

And if you haven't chosen one.

So just explain that real quick.

If neither of them break 50% on the first round.

Then basically all of the votes of the candidates candidates who are eliminated go to the people who are remaining on the ballot.

Based on these choices, the ranks.

Based on these choices.

In the end, there are two people.

The rank methodology.

There are two people left.

And polling seems to be really clear that it will be these two people, Cuomo and Mandami.

And as, in my view, as imperfect as Andrew Cuomo is, he is far, far, far preferable than Mandami is.

Okay.

And just staying on the Cuomo point, while the national progressive left have organized, seem to be organizing behind Mandani, Cuomo has sort of doubled down on taking on, it's not just that he says I'm like the way you're describing, he's moderate, he's competent, he's got a pretty good track record.

He's rhetorically made a point that he's taking on the exact things that Mandani and the DSA represent.

So he's leaning into being hostile to that trend that you seem to be worried about.

Well, I think he's positioned himself as a mainstream centrist Democrat.

I mean, that's one of the reasons why my boss, Mike Bloomberg, has endorsed him and contributed to the super PAC that is helping him.

You know, Andrew Cuomo is a mainstream Democratic politician.

He may not be as exciting as Iran Mandami, but he is certainly more mainstream.

And yeah, he is, that's the kind of campaign that he's running, 100%.

And just staying on Bloomberg's decision there.

So can you say more?

Because I think it was a big moment.

I think it was last week or two weeks ago where he announced that he was endorsing Cuomo and he was getting heavily involved.

Obviously, putting the Bloomberg name on any candidate is a big deal.

It's a big decision.

You know, what you were probably involved in the conversations that led to that decision.

So can you tell us a little more about that?

Well, or maybe it was a very easy decision.

Well, it was difficult in the sense that Mike hasn't been involved in New York City politics in any major way.

He certainly hasn't gotten involved in a New York City primary.

And he was very self-conscious about that decision when he left office.

He didn't want to put his thumb on the scale in New York once he left City Hall.

But I think he increasingly saw that this race was coming down between these two men and that the choice between the two of them was really pretty crystal clear for him.

He, you know, has his own history with Andrew Cuomo, thought Cuomo has done some good things, had some questions about other things that he's done.

But again, the choice crystal clear and easy, frankly, between Mandami and Cuomo.

I think his view was, you know, I love the city.

I'm never leaving here and I can't sit it out.

I don't want to sit it out.

The stakes are too high.

And, you know, if the stakes are too high for a guy who can leave tomorrow and be just fine, I think that gives you a sense that the stakes are pretty high for the rest of us.

Right.

Okay.

And just wrapping up, Howard, it's June.

As you said, it's hot.

It's going to be really hot on Tuesday.

I think many Democratic primary voters could come up with hundreds of reasons why they don't need to vote.

How should we think about turnout?

I think it'll probably be higher than it was four years ago.

That was coming out of COVID.

That was a different era.

Yeah.

It could be, you know, 10 or 15% of the eligible electorate.

I mean, you know, sometimes people go, oh, my vote doesn't matter.

Vote really matters.

Like there are not that many people who actually come out and vote in these primaries.

So, and there are a lot, you know, people like you and I know that there are registered Democrats who will vote in a presidential election, but not in a municipal election.

They'll vote in a general election, but not in a primary.

I got to tell you, if you are a registered Democrat, And what you have heard today concerns you or you really care about the future of New York, do not sit this out.

There is an opportunity to vote early.

You can vote early Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, and then come out, or you can obviously come out on election day on Tuesday between Cuomo and Mandami, a clear choice, rank Cuomo.

All right.

Howard, we will leave it there.

I think that message is crystal clear.

Thank you for doing this, and we will probably regroup with you at some point here after the election to pick up the pieces and hopefully not be horrified by the outcome.

Indeed.

Indeed.

All right.

Thanks for doing this.

Yeah.

Thank you.

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