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We're going to get out to a conversation now with former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo on the state of New York City's mayoral race, and he is speaking to Bloomberg's David.
Gera him up twenty five points to you. Of course, it's a four candidate race. How do you see the path forward here given the polling and sort of where things stand. I should note that the polling hasn't changed a tremendous amount in recent weeks.
Yeah, it will change dramatically. What you see in the polls is, Mam Damie is always about forty percent. That leaves sixty percent. As you accurately pointed out, you have a multi candidate field, so four people or three people who are breaking up that sixty percent. I don't think you're going to wind up ultimately with that larger field. I think the field is going to collapse. I think it's going to come down to me versus mister Maumbani.
And as I said, Mam Donnie has forty percent. His very radical ideas which are exciting to one group of the population, especially young people, but are polarizing to many other people. Uh, And I think it's going to come down to a one on one and then it is a totally different race.
Curtisily with the Republican candidate says he's not dropping out. The incumbent mayor Eric Adam says he's not dropping out. We've passed the ballot deadline. If we were to have a race where it's you against Ormundani, poles still show him leading you by a substantial amount. What do you see in the electorate that the data aren't shown when it comes to that particular configuration.
Yeah, well, Poles are historically wrong, especially this year, especially in New York. On your first point, you can stay in the race. First of all, technically nobody can get off the ballot, right. The question is are you viable in the race, And you can a people who are in the race, but the voters just think they're not really competitive, they can't win. I'm not going to waste my vote, and I think that's what happens here. I
think it comes down to me and Mamdani. I think when people understand what Mamdani stands for, besides what he has said on TikTok, you know he's anti police, this band the police, legalized prostitution, legalize the drug trade, abolish jails. You know, this would be anarchy in New York. Socialism does not work in New York City. It's antithetical. We're the business capital, right, We're pro business. Business is the
engine that drives the train. So none of that has been communicated yet, and when it does, I can tell you the minds will change.
Is there an effort by you and your campaign to try to convince Eric Adams curritously would have dropped out of this race, or their conversations that are happening behind the scenes to make what I imagine you see as a compelling case for them to step aside, to make this more of a one on one race.
No, I'm sure they're making their own decisions. I've been in elections that where I have dropped out because I thought it was the right thing to do. They have a decision to make. There is no apparent path to victory for them. They in essence would act as a spoiler, and that's a decision they have to make. They have to make it personally, and that's their business. But again, I think it's going to come down to a two person race no matter what, because that's what the polls
are going to say, and that is the choice. I am a Democrat. My father was a Democrat. I worked for Bill Clinton. Zoran is a socialist for the Democratic Socialists. Right, didn't support Democrats. Barack Obama was a liar and evil and didn't support Kamala Harris against Trump. Right, So this is a very different This is apples and oranges between the two of us.
I want to ask you about some comments that Curtis Sliva made yesterday. I'm sure you heard them. He was campaigning and suggested that your affiliates of your campaign had reached out to him and offered him money to the tune of ten million dollars to drop out of this race. And I'm going to quote from what he said during that campaign event. He called these classic Andrew Cuomo tactics.
Why don't you strap up Cuomo to a lie detection machine and ask him and we'll all be blown to Kingdom come because.
He's behind it.
I don't have a polygraphic machine with me here, But how do you respond to what he's alleging in those comments?
Look, you can't. You have to take Sliva with a grain of salt. Right. He is a known con man. He's lied about being victims of crime before. But it's very simple, David. When he said that someone should have said who, who or fored you the money? Let him answer the question, because it would happen to be a crime, right, who or forered you money? He never said who wh sort of tells you right that it's all malarkey. There was no person who did it.
I want to ask you last we've talked about the state of the race, where you hope that it's headed, and if we can't, I'd like to look back to nineteen seventy seven. So a ways you were nineteen, You were a student at Fordham University. Your dad was making a run for mayor, and you were helping out on the campaign. He didn't win the Democratic primary and decided to run on an independent line for mayor. He ended
up losing that race by nine points. They say that history doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes, and I know that you don't want history to repeat itself here. You'd like to win this race in the way that he wasn't able to back then fifty years ago. I'm not the first to point out this historical parallel. But I imagine you've thought about it, and I wonder how that experience has informed your outlook on this race. There was introspection after the primaries. You didn't do as well as
you wanted to do. You decided to make this run. What can you learn about that race that your dad waged and how does that inform the way that you're running this.
Yeah, my father was an extraordinary individual on many levels, highly principled, frankly a typical for a politician, and he did quote unquote the right thing, whatever he thought the right thing was for me. I believe in the Democratic Party. I believe in what my father stood for, what John F. Kennedy stood for, and Robert F. Kennedy stood for, and Bill Clinton, and what Mandami represents. And this Democratic Socialists of America DSA socialists call them whatever you want. Is
repugnant to the Democratic Party, I know. And that's what's really going on here. This is a civil war within the Democratic Party right where the extreme left is pulling the Democratic Party and the moderates are afraid of the extreme left. It's the inverse of the Republican Party when they had the Tea Party and the Tea Party was pulling the Republican Moderates too far to the right because they were afraid of them in a primary. That's what's happening here. It's a battle for the soul of the
Democratic Party. And the Democratic Party is not anti business, it's not anti police. That's not who we are. We're not about redistributing income as a policy. Right, you tax to provide a service. You don't tax to take money from the rich to give it to the poor.
Right.
That's why Donald Trump cosim a communist. So this is not the Democratic Party that I believe I represent and traditionally has served this nation well. He is zero experience in the position, never managed anything five employees, never had a real job, and when you're willing to consider chief executive New York City, no management experience, ran five people. Now he's going to run three hundred thousand employees one
hundred and fifteen billion dollar budget. You wake up any morning, you could have a terrorist attack, you could have another COVID. It just the means government and the means of public service in a way that I just find abhorrent. And I'm going to do everything I can to stop govern quollo.
Thank you very much, appreciate it.
Thank you