Mamdani defended his outsider roots as Cuomo touted experience and Sliwa decried crime in their tense first debate.
New York City mayoral candidates Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani, his primary opponent Andrew Cuomo, and Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa squared off on Oct. 16 in a bid for the seat that current Mayor Eric Adams is vacating in 2026.
Adams dropped out of the race on Sept. 28.
The debate, co-hosted by POLITICO, NBC 4 New York, and Telemundo 47, took place at 30 Rockefeller Center in Manhattan.
When accused of having no substantial management experience, Mamdani argued that he had served in the New York State Assembly for five years.
“I have the experience of being a New Yorker, someone who has actually paid rent in the city before I ran for mayor,” he said. “Someone who has had to wait for a bus that never came, someone who actually buys his groceries in this same city.”
Mamdani, a democratic socialist, has served as a member of the New York Assembly representing the borough of Queens since 2021.
Cuomo lost the Democratic primary to Mamdani, forcing the lifelong Democrat to run as an independent. When asked what he’d learned from that experience, Cuomo said he improved his social media messaging.
“I think the Assemblyman [Mamdani] did do a better job on TikTok and social media than I did during the campaign, and that has changed now,” Cuomo said. “I am the Democrat, although I’m not on the Democrat line.”
Cuomo served as governor of New York from Jan. 1, 2011, to Aug. 23, 2021, when he resigned from office after being accused of sexual harassment by multiple women. He has denied these accusations, saying during the mayoral Democratic primary debate in June that they were “political and false.” Cuomo was succeeded by Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul, who is the current governor.
Republican candidate Sliwa, founder of the crime patrol group Guardian Angels, previously ran for New York City mayor in 2021 but lost to Adams.
He emphasized throughout the debate that he is not a professional politician.
“I don’t declare myself to be all knowing,” Sliwa said. “I will hire the very brightest and best in their fields who have dedicated their lives to try to improve the City of New York.”
The moderators took turns trying to pin the candidates on issues such as lowering crime and making the Big Apple more affordable.
Cuomo pledged to hire 5,000 New York Police Department (NYPD) officers. When asked whether he would increase spending in the New York City budget to achieve that goal, he said: “Whatever additional spending would be revenue neutral.”
With a cost-of-living index of 148.2, New York City ranks as the second-most expensive city in the country, according to World Population Review data, and housing is the second most expensive in the United States, costing about 1.5 times the national average.
Each candidate was asked how much money they spend monthly on housing. Cuomo pays the highest at $7,800 per month, followed by Sliwa, who said he pays $3,900, and Mamdani, who pays $2,300 per month for a rent-stabilized apartment. There are currently no income tests for rent-stabilized apartments.
While Mamdani promised to freeze rents for more than 1 million rent-stabilized apartments, Cuomo vowed to increase affordable housing units.
“I was the [Housing and Urban Development] secretary,” Cuomo said. “I built affordable housing all across this nation. I built affordable housing in this city when I was in my 20s. I know how to get it done.”
Mamdani has also made free buses the centerpiece of his campaign as a way to lower the current crime rate.
“We will make buses free by replacing the revenue that the MTA currently gets from buses, and the reason we will do so is that making buses free doesn’t just provide economic relief, but also [provides] public safety because what we’ve seen is that it decreases assaults on bus drivers,” Mamdani said.
Based on a comparison of January through June 2025 with the same period in 2024, the NYPD reported a 5.7 percent decrease in total major crime.
However, Sliwa alleged that an elderly woman was robbed at gunpoint on 86th Street in broad daylight as recently as the morning of the debate.
“We don’t have enough cops,” Sliwa said.
The candidates are scheduled to meet for a second and final debate next week.
An Oct. 9 Quinnipiac University’s New York City poll shows Mamdani leading with 46 percent of likely voters backing him, followed by 33 percent supporting Cuomo and 15 percent in favor of Sliwa.
If elected, Mamdani would be the city’s first Muslim and Indian American mayor. The 33-year-old’s mother is award-winning filmmaker Mira Nair.
