The New York City mayoral race has narrowed to three candidates following incumbent Eric Adams’s decision to drop out, but polling suggests that that will do little to increase the odds for former governor Andrew Cuomo and Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa to defeat the Democratic frontrunner, state representative Zohran Mamdani, in the general election in November.
NYC Voters
Experts told JNS that the political defeat of one of the most philosemitic and pro-Israel mayors in the city’s history at the hands of a self-described socialist, who is vehemently anti-Israel, raises questions about how New York Jews approach politics.
“This is a case of gross communal leadership negligence,” Liel Leibovitz, editor-at-large of Tablet magazine, told JNS.
“The real lesson of a Mamdani victory, as far as the Jewish community is concerned, is this,” he said. “Here we are, in the city with the largest Jewish community on Earth anywhere outside of Israel, a community that boasts a plethora of organizations whose entire raison d’être is serving and protecting the Jewish community—organizations that have tens, if not hundreds of millions of dollars in budget—and they sat around and did absolutely nothing while this communist agitator, while this inexperienced socialist brat basically clawed his way through the entire party structure.”
If those who call themselves Jewish communal leaders had any decency, according to Leibovitz, “would at the very least do a very real cheshbon ha’nefesh, a very real accounting of the soul—we’re a day before Yom Kippur—if not resign altogether.”
Community Unprepared?
“The Jewish community ought to have seen this coming. It ought to have organized appropriately,” he told JNS. “It ought to have put its weight behind candidates that supported it, that served it well.”
Instead of doing that, Jewish organizations—Leibovitz mentioned the Jewish Community Relations Council—were all “too busy virtue signaling and showing how wonderfully progressive they are and organizing conversations with AOC and receptions with radical Democrats,” he said “It’s not just lunacy. Even worse, it’s incompetence.” (Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., is known as AOC.)
Polling and the results of the Democratic primary suggest that Mamdani gained a substantial share of the Jewish vote, even as most New York Jews oppose his candidacy over his views on Israel and his failure to condemn the phrase “globalize the intifada.” Many, including many Jewish organizations, view the latter as a call for violence against Jews.
Henry Olsen, senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, told JNS that a Mamdani victory should prompt Jewish introspection about how the community approaches the ballot box.
“I think the Jewish community needs to recognize that there’s a significant number of New York Jews, who simply do not share the views of the Jewish community’s leadership,” Olsen said. “They don’t see Mamdani as being disqualifying.”
“Had all of New York’s Jews voted the way Borough Park’s New York Jews did—the Orthodox Jews down in Brooklyn—then Mamdani either would have lost or it would have been an extremely close race,” Olsen said. “The fact is, they didn’t, and that’s something that the Jewish community needs to take into account.”
Mamdani Win Predicted
No polls have been released since Adams dropped out, but polling in September that asked voters whom they preferred in a three-way race suggested that Mamdani still held a double-digit lead, with Cuomo winning about 30% of the vote and Sliwa failing to crack 20%.
“Absent Curtis Sliwa dropping out of the race, it’s almost impossible to see how Mamdani can lose it, barring a scandal or an unknown position in the past that hasn’t yet been revealed,” Olsen told JNS.
Safety for Jews?
Sliwa has said that he won’t drop out of the race, and polls favor the 33-year-old assemblyman over the scandal-plagued former governor in a Cuomo-Mamdani matchup.
Mamdani’s platform of rent freezes, free buses, a $30 hourly minimum wage, state-run grocery stores, publicly-funded medical care for transgender people and arresting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, should the premier come to the Big Apple, would likely make him the most left-wing mayor in New York City’s history.
That platform is popular among his young, progressive base, but enacting it may prompt a backlash among moderates and conservatives.
“There is no doubt that in the eventuality of a Mamdani victory, the city will continue to suffer horribly,” Leibovitz told JNS. “The personal safety and security of all New Yorkers, but especially Jews, will continue to deteriorate.”
Olsen said that if Mamdani wins, many New York City residents might leave for greener pastures.
“The more people feel unsafe and unwelcome and unrepresentative, the more likely they are to vote with their feet,” Olsen told JNS. “You can’t discount that from being a reaction to Mamdani, particularly if he governs from the left and if his actions have the effect on wealth-accumulation and property ownership that most people expect him to have.”
Fake Outreach?
Amid the High Holidays, Mamdani and his backers have suggested that he would attempt more outreach to the Jewish community.
During Rosh Hashanah, he attended services with a progressive Jewish community in Brooklyn. Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) told the New York Times that Mamdani would attend a Yom Kippur service at an Upper West Side synagogue, even as Nadler’s own congregation denied that it would host the mayoral nominee.
Leibovitz told JNS that other synagogues should follow suit in denying a place for Mamdani on Yom Kippur.
“While it is ill-advised to speak ill of anyone, but especially other Jews, the day before Yom Kippur, I will say this: Any congregation that will accept Zohran Mamdani over Yom Kippur is not a Jewish congregation,” he said. “It is that simple and that serious.”
Any synagogue that would “defile our holiest day with an appearance by a person who has rapped about the ‘Holy Land Five’—all convicted terrorist Jew-killers—who refused to denounce sentences like ‘globalize intifada’ and ‘from the river to the sea,’” he said.
“Any congregation who would allow such a man—unless, of course, he’s come to repent and promise to mend his ways—into our midst, especially on Yom Kippur, is not worthy of the title of synagogue or Jewish congregation,” he added.
