A Tale of Two New York Cities
Cuomo v. Zohran, in the home stretch
I received two wonderful reviews of my new novel, Glass Century, recently. Two of the best critics on Substack, Chris Jesu Lee and Henry Begler, deconstructed the novel in great detail. Lee writes that Glass Century is “a wonderful, readable-yet-complex novel” that’s “adept [at] telling of these types of quiet, sometimes even morally ambiguous, triumphs and tragedies.” Begler, in his own survey, writes that Glass Century is “closer to someone like Tolstoy: we follow its characters as they are buffeted about by history, powerless to escape the forces at work much greater than themselves, but given strength by their connection to one another and to the city.”
Glass Century is available in all formats—print, e-book, audiobook—and I encourage you to buy it if you haven’t already. And please rate and review on Goodreads, if you enjoyed what you read.
This is a New York City mayoral race unlike any I have ever witnessed. In some sense, it’s far less turbulent. There have been no lead changes in the independent polls since March. There are no chaos candidates or strange scandals. My introduction to electoral politics, as a reporter, was the 2013 mayoral race, which is best remembered for Anthony Weiner’s surge to the top of the heap and the second sexting scandal that effectively ended his political career. In 2021, one frontrunner collapsed (Andrew Yang), a no-name came within 10,000 votes of becoming mayor (Kathryn Garcia), and the winner may have lived in New Jersey all along (Eric Adams). Predicting the outcome of this Democratic primary, on one hand, is not very hard. Andrew Cuomo leads the prediction markets, leads the polls, and leads, by far, the race for endorsements. He is vastly outspending the field, thanks to a super PAC that has raised $24 million and counting. He has the greatest name recognition and the deepest CV. This is, entirely, his race to lose.
Yet it’s become clear, just days from the June 24th primary, he could lose it. Zohran Mamdani has closed massive polling gaps and is shown, in most independent polls, to be within 10-12 points of Cuomo when the ranked choice vote is tabulated. Brad Lander, the city comptroller, is a distant third, and City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, State Senator Zellnor Myrie, and Scott Stringer, the former comptroller, are destined to appear on plenty of ballots, just not as top picks. The top slots are getting handed out to Cuomo and Mamdani. One side isn’t terribly excited for their man, but is closing ranks because they so revile the 33-year-old Muslim socialist. The other side, while deeply thrilled for their man, is committed to keeping Cuomo off their ballots.
Never has a New York mayoral primary, in modern times at least, polarized in such a manner; this race is utterly cleaved along generational and ideological lines. If you are under forty-five or so, you are voting for Mamdani, unless you care a great deal about Israel. If you are over forty-five, you’re for Cuomo, unless you’re a progressive predisposed to disliking him or too turned off by his myriad scandals. If you’ve got more time in New York—you own a home, an apartment—you are likely for Cuomo. The idea of a Millennial assemblyman is distasteful to you. Ditto if you belong to an institution or establishment of some kind. The labor unions largely prefer Cuomo, and the political clubs, reformist in nature, are not backing Mamdani. More have gone for Cuomo, with Brad Lander picking up the nods of some clubs in Brooklyn. The Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island Democratic parties—the “machines”—support Cuomo.
For Mamdani to actually win, he will have to overcome the power elite of New York City. No mayoral candidate in the last fifty years has won without at least some support from the very richest New Yorkers, the billionaire real estate developers and financiers. Even Bill de Blasio, the progressive Democratic mayor who alienated many wealthy New Yorkers, was well-wired with real estate developers, and counted on their backing to offset the hostility he found on Wall Street. The FIRE city wants to crush Mamdani. Other than Michael Bloomberg spending money on himself, never has so much cash been unleashed in a New York mayoral race. The Cuomo super PAC, Fix the City, may blow past $30 million by Tuesday. Bloomberg himself has cut more than $8 million in checks to the Cuomo PAC and nothing is stopping him from giving more. If you live in New York right now, you are deluged with television advertisements and mail. Almost all of it is against Mamdani. He is the anti-Israel radical, they say, who will destroy New York. For the anti-Mamdani voters and donors—far more accurate to describe them that way than pro-Cuomo—the primary has been framed in wholly existential terms.
This race, though, is about more than the socialist assemblyman and the disgraced former governor. It is about a collision of two New Yorks. One is potent but shrinking. One is booming but perhaps not large enough.