The Last Big Mystery of the New York City Mayoral Election
There’s no great mystery as to how Zohran Mamdani won the New York City mayoral election last week. He devised a novel and effective strategy to secure the Democratic nomination in June, on the strength of his particular attunement with young-ish “progressive” voters, who by 2025 had collectively matured into a formidable enough coalition that it could power a solid Dem plurality. Yes, it was clever for him and his data analytics people to ascertain that what they half-jokingly refer to as the “Commie Corridor” — i.e. enclaves in Brooklyn and Queens with lots of activist-inclined left-wing voters — was now sufficiently robust that it could be mobilized for a citywide primary victory.
It’s also no great mystery why Zohran spent the last several months assiduously ingratiating himself with the city’s business and political elites, shedding the pretense of any bonafide “insurgent” candidacy. After all, he was now the rightful Democratic nominee, and he would make use of all the Party machinery now available to him. Such as obtaining the awkward endorsement of Kathy Hochul, the hapless Dem governor, who assumed that office through no real political feat of her own, other than presenting herself as an agreeable-enough Buffalo-based Lieutenant Governor pick for Andrew Cuomo in 2014 and 2018 — thereby giving him the desired geographic and gender balance. Hochul then patiently waited around as Cuomo was hounded out of office in 2021, resulting in her elevation as accidental governor, after which she managed to hang on for a narrow (by NY standards) election victory in 2022, otherwise a mini Republican wave year in the state. That she would swiftly reconcile to Mamdani, a much more energized and energizing political force than herself — considering he actually did achieve a real political feat to get himself elected — was no major surprise. It also didn’t hurt that Cuomo and Hochul harbor palpable disdain for one another, despite running on the same statewide ticket multiple times. For Cuomo, she was always just a transactional chess piece in his grand political stratagem. So when the political winds started blowing in a different direction, Hochul was happy to defect — and deliver a “check mate” blow.
Hence, the energetic and clever Zohran locked arms with feckless Kathy. No surprise there. He tells her he’ll keep on the incumbent Police Commissioner, Jessica Tisch, the scion of a billionaire NYC dynasty, headed by the late New York Giants owner (and friend of Donald Trump) Bob Tisch. This placated the various elites who were paranoid that Mamdani was really some sort of burn-it-all-down radical. Instead, they were stunned to discover that he’s… a politician. Sure, he probably won’t be marching in the Israeli Day Parade next year, so if that was really your make-or-break issue, you were probably never going to be mollified by anything he realistically did. But in terms of nuts-and-bolts governance, he was eagerly signaling his willingness to make the requisite tradeoffs.
As such, there’s no profound mystery still to unravel about Mamdani’s victory. But in conversations over the past week, one sordid mystery continues to persist. It involves multiple NYC hotshots accusing one another of committing brazen crimes, which they insist were outcome-determinant in handing the election to Mamdani.
As I wrote over the weekend, Cuomo’s people maintain there was some underhanded “deal” between Zohran and Curtis Sliwa, the Republican nominee and consummate NYC “character.” They argue that although Cuomo and Sliwa together did not garner 50% of the vote, the entire dynamic of the race would’ve been different if it had been a “one-on-one” matchup earlier on, with the contrast sharpened as a do-or-die binary between “Communism” and Cuomo’s steady (if stagnant) status quo. For some reason, there was a strong conviction that Sliwa would accede to overtures for his departure, not least from Donald Trump, but also from assorted local Republican bigwigs. Instead, by their telling, Sliwa could not be reasoned with. He had this burning animosity for Cuomo that he was never going to be shaken from. Thus he functionally became Zohran’s attack dog, railing viciously against Cuomo, while downplaying existential fears about the Communist/Socialist/Jihadi hellscape that many Republicans feared Zohran would be ushering in.
Believers that Sliwa’s motivations included not just screwing over Cuomo, but also potentially obtaining some goodies from Zohran, include John Catsimatidis, the WABC radio proprietor who made a fortune in the oil industry, and also operates the Gristedes supermarket chain as a side-gig. He ran for mayor himself in 2013, in the Republican primary. Catsimatidis is a hilarious character. Part of what makes my little detour into NYC election coverage so irresistible is that the main characters truly are straight out of “Central Casting.” Catsimatidis and company have convinced themselves, just like in Cuomo-land, that there was some deal, payoff, understanding, or something surreptitiously brokered between Zohran and Sliwa — the odd-couple Democratic Socialist and streetwise Republican. Although conjectures vary as to how illicit the claimed agreement was.
This weekend I spoke to Councilman Bob Holden, a conservative Democrat-turned-Republican who ended up backing Sliwa, and who’d been floated as Sliwa’s longshot pick for Schools Chancellor. So, what about this alleged deal, I asked him?
“That’s a lie,” Holden said. “That’s ridiculous. If you know Curtis, he would not do that. He was offered several million dollars, he told me.”
“By whom,” I asked? That is the enduring mystery of the NYC election, it seems. By whom Curtis Sliwa was purportedly offered this multi-million dollar payoff, or bribe, or whatever, that he then proceeded to convert into a political talking point, to underscore his own tenacity and incorruptibility. Why won’t Sliwa supporters like Holden spill the beans, and reveal the alleged perpetrators of this bribery scheme? The election’s over!
“He told me. I can’t, uh…” Holden said. “You can actually figure it out. If you look at who had the motives to get him out of the race… Curtis is a man of his word, and that’s why I’ll always follow in battle with him. Because he’s always doing the right thing. He’s not in it for the money, not in it for the fame and glory.”
Alright… but if Curtis and his crew are going to be accusing some nefarious fat-cat cabal of committing a bribery crime, can’t we get a little more specific? Surely some enterprising prosecutors would be interested in this information. It’s always hazy how “bribery” gets defined in criminal statutes, but at the very least, it would be nice to learn a few more details of this potentially unlawful plot.
“Curtis told me in no uncertain terms, he was offered millions,” Holden said.
“But by who???” I asked. “Shouldn’t he report that to authorities? If it was a bribe, that could be a crime, right?”
“You mentioned the person before, but I’m not going to…”
John Catsimatidis, I asked?
“Alright,” Holden said, by way of affirming that I had identified the individual he was alleging to have been the perpetrator of the scheme.