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In appearance with Elisha Wiesel, Cuomo escalates ‘antisemitism’ attack on Mamdani

Plus, a Jewish high school classmate describes Mamdani

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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 14 days — two weeks — to the election.

🤺 Cuomo on the attack

  • Andrew Cuomo sharpened his personal attacks on Zohran Mamdani at an event on the Upper West Side on Monday. He called the frontrunner “a candidate who runs based on his antisemitic stance,” according to Politico.

  • Cuomo has accused Mamdani of “fueling antisemitism” throughout the race, but previously stopped short of saying Mamdani himself was antisemitic. He usually says that accusation requires “the ability to look into someone’s soul.” Asked during last week’s mayoral debate, he said, “I don’t make those judgments about people.”

  • That changed at the Monday event hosted by Elisha Wiesel, the son of Nobel Peace Prize winner and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel. Elisha Wiesel followed the event with an essay in the Wall Street Journal today.

  • Cuomo referenced Elie Wiesel’s quote that the opposite of love is indifference, saying that “indifference is the enemy today.” He suggested the city was dangerously indifferent to Mamdani, saying, “I am more distressed at the complacency than his arrogance and his antisemitism.”

  • In response, Mamdani’s campaign spokesperson Dora Pekec said, “Zohran will be a mayor who stands with Jewish New Yorkers, not one who tries to weaponize their pain for craven political gain.”

📓 Jewish classmate remembers Mamdani

  • Daniel Kisslinger, a Jewish friend of Mamdani’s from Bronx Science, recalled Mamdani’s energy around extracurriculars — including his operation to create their high school’s first cricket team — in an interview with The New York Times.

  • “He was the person who had the interest and the curiosity to try to understand outside of his bubble,” Kisslinger said. He previously interviewed Mamdani in a 2016 podcast about Bronx Science.

  • Kisslinger, now a Chicago-based podcast host and producer, described his relationship with Jewishness on the podcast “One Million Experiments” in 2022.

  • “The working definitions [of being a Jew] are shaped by and supportive of white supremacy in ways that one, are violent to others, but also we’re destroying the Jewish community from the inside out,” Kisslinger said in the podcast.

  • Kisslinger also interviewed Rabbi Brant Rosen, founder of the anti-Zionist synagogue Tzedek Chicago, in 2024. Kisslinger is a member of the congregation.

📊 Numbers to know

  • A new poll from AARP and Gotham Polling & Analytics found Mamdani leading the race with 43.2% support, followed by Cuomo with 28.9% and Curtis Sliwa with 19.4%.

  • But in a two-way race between Mamdani and Cuomo, Mamdani’s lead shrank to 44.6% against Cuomo’s 40.7%, according to the survey. That 3.9% lead falls within the poll’s margin of error.

  • The poll was conducted between Oct. 14-15 among 1,040 likely voters. Voters who identified as Jewish made up 11% of the poll sample.

📣 Sliwa’s boss urges him to drop out

  • The latest voice calling for Sliwa to quit the race hit close to home. It came from John Catsimatidis, a Republican billionaire, supermarket magnate and Sliwa’s longtime friend and boss at the WABC radio station.

  • Catsimatidis said that Sliwa should drop out to stop Mamdani from becoming mayor.

  • “I love Curtis, we’ve worked together a lot,” he said on WABC, where Sliwa hosts a show. He added, “Curtis has to realize that he should love New York more than anything else, and it certainly looks like Curtis should pull out right now.”

  • Sliwa has rebuffed mounting pressure from Cuomo and New York’s wealthy elite. His rebuke of billionaires like Bill Ackman, who also called on him to quit, temporarily made Sliwa strange bedfellows with Mamdani.

  • Mamdani praised a video of Sliwa’s response to Ackman in a post on X. “It’s genuinely positive for our democracy that there’s another candidate in this race who believes NYC voters should pick their next mayor, not billionaires who mostly live somewhere else,” said Mamdani.

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