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 56 days to the election.
💪 Real estate tycoons gather to back Cuomo over Mamdani
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The sirens are blaring for some of New York’s wealthiest. On Tuesday morning at 8:30 a.m., a group of real estate tycoons gathered to meet Andrew Cuomo in Midtown’s Seagram Building and help him defeat Mamdani.
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An email about the emergency meeting came Monday night from Jeff and Lisa Blau, a powerful couple in real estate and investment who have donated generously in the city, including to Jewish groups.
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“Sorry for the late notice, but there is no more time for delay, discussion, or dithering — we must act decisively to ensure that the next mayor of New York is Andrew Cuomo,” said the email seen by The New York Times.
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Lisa Blau is the executive director of Be Counted NYC, which has been calling on New York Republicans and non-affiliated voters to switch their party registrations to allow them to have an impact through primary elections.
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The invitation was signed by other influential Jewish developers and philanthropists including Aby Rosen, who co-owns the Seagram Building, and Laurie M. Tisch, a billionaire who is also the NYPD commissioner’s aunt.
🚔 Can Mamdani win over the police?
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Mamdani has been quietly seeking to win over the police through several meetings in recent weeks, despite skepticism from much of the force, according to The New York Times. And he has said he is open to keeping NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch, who hails from a prominent Jewish family, if he is elected.
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But that doesn’t mean Tisch is ready to fall in line with Mamdani’s views. In a meeting with the Citizens Budget Commission yesterday, Tisch blamed bail reforms — which Mamdani has supported — for New York City’s crime spike in 2020.
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“In my opinion, crime went up as a result of the drastic changes being made in our criminal justice laws in New York State, not as a result of the pandemic,” said Tisch, according to Politico.
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Later in the day, Mamdani pushed back at a separate public safety forum hosted by Columbia Journalism School and Vital City. “My opinion is one that looks at that spike in crime across the country over the course of the pandemic and sees similar spikes regardless of what any of those one states pursued with regard to criminal legal reform,” he said.
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Still, Mamdani is striking a diplomatic tone and distancing himself from his previous calls to “defund the police” in 2020.
📊 Numbers to know
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Mamdani’s lead is undeniable in a new poll by The New York Times and Siena College, with 46% of likely voters saying they will vote for him. He was trailed by Andrew Cuomo with 24% of the vote, Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa with 15% and Mayor Eric Adams with 9%.
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The poll of 1,284 likely New York City voters was conducted from Sept. 2-6. It has an error margin of 3.6%.
🎙️ Gillibrand holds the line
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Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand is holding firm to her criticism of Democrats who condone the pro-Palestinian slogan “globalize the intifada.” At a meeting with Jewish leaders in Borough Park, a heavily Orthodox Jewish neighborhood of Brooklyn, Gillibrand said the phrase was equivalent to saying “end Israel” and “destroy Jews.”
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Her stance offered an implicit rebuke of Mamdani, who has declined to condemn the phrase despite repeatedly saying he would “discourage” it.
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Though Gillibrand did not name Mamdani, she said, “I’m going to make sure that my Democratic colleagues — who sometimes, in my opinion, don’t use the right words or aren’t sensitive to the impact of those words — I will use my expertise to give them this perspective.”
🐝 Social media buzz
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Mamdani has parodied the wealthy panicking about his potential mayoralty with a viral video featuring a dispatch by The New York Times, “How are the very rich feeling about New York’s next mayor?”.
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A dramatic reading of the text was performed by “The Gilded Age” star Morgan Spector, whose father is Jewish.
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Spector’s grandmother was an actress in the Yiddish Theatre of New York. In a 2014 interview with Playbill, he said, “I would love to go back and see her do Shakespeare in Yiddish.”
- The video raised eyebrows among some eagle-eyed Jewish viewers who said they saw a painting of an Orthodox Jew in the art portrayed as representing the very rich.
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