How the NYC mayoral candidates are marking Rosh Hashanah

This piece first ran as part of The Countdown, our daily newsletter rounding up all the developments in the New York City mayor’s race. Sign up here to get it in your inbox. There are 43 days to the election.

📰 All the news you need to know before Rosh Hashanah

• How are the candidates marking Rosh Hashanah? Mayor Eric Adams is baking “Gracie Mansion’s special vegan challah” with Naomi Nachman, an Australian-born personal chef and radio host.

• Andrew Cuomo stopped by the Mikdash Eliyahu Synagogue in Brooklyn over the weekend. “The High Holidays are a time of reflection, renewal, and hope for the year ahead,” he posted.

• Curtis Sliwa is “hitting the streets” over the holidays with his Jewish friend Dov Hikind, a retired Assemblyman. Hikind posted a message for Sliwa’s Jewish sons: “Let them know that the majority of people I know and speak to, literally feel, their Dad is the one man who can actually make a certain Big [Apple] have a sweet new year.”

• And Zohran Mamdani wished Jewish New Yorkers a “Shana Tovah” at a press conference in Manhattan on Friday.

👀 Adams counts on the Jews

• Speculation abounds that Mayor Eric Adams, the lowest-polling candidate, will soon end his reelection bid. But in an interview published by the New York Post on Saturday, Adams said that he believes pollsters are missing many Jews who will swing in his favor.

• “I hear from some of my yeshivas that are now telling their parents when you drop your child off to register for school, you have to fill out this voter registration form,” he said. “And so these are new voters; these are first-time voters, and I think there’s a population of voters that no one is polling.”

• We covered an Orthodox Jewish school in Brooklyn that required parents to prove they were registered to vote before the start of the school year.

• “I believe I’m going to get the overwhelming number of Jewish votes,” added Adams. “They supported me as senator, [Brooklyn] borough president, and mayor. I don’t think that’s going to change.”

• Though a recent Times/Siena poll indicated that four in 10 Adams supporters are Jewish, a Marist poll found him rallying only 17% of all Jewish voters, with 35% going to Mamdani and another 35% to Cuomo.

🕌 Cuomo heckled in mosque visit

• Andrew Cuomo was heckled throughout his visit to a mosque in Queens on Friday.

• At the Masjid Mission Center, protesters shouted at him about supporting Israel during its war in Gaza and what they called a lack of outreach to Muslim New Yorkers. They also shouted about the sexual harassment allegations that led to his resignation and his handling of nursing homes during the COVID-19 pandemic.

• One person shouted, “You represent Netanyahu,” according to the New York Daily News. Cuomo volunteered to join the Israeli prime minister’s legal defense last year.

• Many protesters identified themselves as Mamdani supporters, and Cuomo told reporters they were sent by his opponent’s campaign. Mamdani denied any involvement and urged his supporters to be respectful. He said that Muslims were frustrated about being “ignored,” according to Politico.

• Cuomo’s first visit to a mosque during his campaign came last week, when he went to the Futa Islamic Center in the Bronx. During a Democratic primary debate earlier this year, he could not definitively answer whether he had visited a mosque while he was governor.

🏆 Endorsement tracker

• Brooklyn Rep. Yvette Clarke endorsed Mamdani on Saturday, adding to the party leaders shifting to his corner. She has joined meetings with Mamdani alongside House Minority Leader Jeffries, who also represents Brooklyn and has yet to endorse Mamdani.

🤷‍♀️ What’s in an endorsement, anyway?

• The left flank of the Democratic party has hounded leaders like Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries for resisting endorsements of Zohran Mamdani, who built a national profile on his leftist views — including staunch criticism of Israel.

• Where have we seen this before? We looked at the last time Israel cast a long shadow on a pivotal election. In 2024, Mamdani was among many progressives who backed New York’s “Leave It Blank” movement to withhold votes from President Joe Biden in the Democratic primary over Biden’s support for Israel.

• Mamdani also expressed admiration for the national Uncommitted movement as a model for “how we can use the ballot box in NY to build pressure for an end to the genocide.”

• Though Mamdani said in June that he “proudly voted for Kamala Harris,” he did not publicly endorse her during the election. For some, that means Democrats have no obligation to support him now.

• “Insofar as many Democratic officials feel obligated to endorse the ‘official’ Democratic candidate as a matter of tradition and party discipline, it seemed worth reminding people that Mamdani feels no such pressure,” journalist Mark Horowitz told us.

• So how does Israel figure in the calculus of party leaders who are closely watching the mayoral race? Schumer has many hesitations, according to The New York Times — including fears about keeping Jewish voters, alienating big donors and hurting the chances of moderate Senate candidates in other states. But the country’s highest-ranking Jewish elected official recently said he had a positive meeting with Mamdani.