I love Staten Island. It’s one of the most distinctively American places in America. And I’ve been all across America. Don’t get me wrong; there are plenty of other places I like as well. But something about Staten Island gets me laughing every time I visit.
Yesterday I trailed Frank Morano, a recently-elected NYC Councilman from Staten Island’s South Shore, as well as his cohort of fellow Republican office-seekers. Longtime followers may recall that I was a semi-regular on Frank’s late-night WABC radio show, before he opted to jump into the political fray. And if you’re going to jump into the NYC GOP political fray, there’s no better training than as a Talk Radio Guy on WABC. Just look at Curtis Sliwa, of whom Frank is a big supporter. Before a dramatic falling-out with WABC proprietor John Catsamatidis, the grocery chain mogul who has now backed Andrew Cuomo, Sliwa was a staple of the airwaves, and you can tell he’s mastered a certain kind of radio-cadence in his everyday speech. I used to listen to “Curtis and Kuby,” an afternoon show, while driving in the car. And I didn’t realize Frank was once a producer of that show. But of course he was, as I found out yesterday.
Our first stop was a newly-opened Shop Rite in the Great Kills area. I mistakenly identified this as a Shop Rite I had patronized several times before, on my own volition, not recognizing that it’d only opened a few weeks ago. So already, I was caught in a big fat lie; I’d been to some other Staten Island Shop Rite that looked almost identical.
Frank and his crew knew everybody and their mother, almost literally. I was cracking up at the lady in the above photo, Marian Kryshak, 80, posing with Frank. She made sure to clarify that she was Italian, and had divorced her husband with the name Kryshak. She recounted being infuriated by her friends, whom she reported had been “brainwashed” into voting for Cuomo. “They’re idiots!” she fumed. “I used to listen to WABC faithfully, but when they started the Cuomo shit, I gave up on them.”
Marian clearly had special animosity toward Cuomo, and thus was one of the voters who wasn’t going to be bludgeoned into backing him so as to stop Zohran Mamdani. Asked why she loathes Cuomo so much, Marian said: “I just flip out every time I see him, I don’t want to hear him. The way he speaks, his personality.” By contrast, when I asked about Mamdani, she was noticeably more tepid: “I really don’t have much to say about him, I think he’s a very inexperienced person.” So she’s voting for Sliwa. This would seem to mirror the outsized vitriol that Sliwa himself often displays against Cuomo, versus Mamdani, whom he perhaps seems to admire on some level — if only for Mamdani’s political savvy in winning the Democratic Primary last June, after polling in the low single-digits.
However, I anecdotally came across many more Staten Island residents than one might have expected who, in the interest of stopping Mamdani — and that’s all they fundamentally care about — are in fact voting Cuomo, despite their dislike and/or apathy toward him. They represent what I’m coining as the “Begrudging Cuomo Voter,” an archetype that kept surfacing over and over in my informal surveys.
A woman in her 40s heading into the Shop Rite, who didn’t want to be named, told me: “I don’t like Cuomo at all, especially what he did with the nursing homes — putting COVID in there. Drives me crazy. I like Curtis a lot, but I don’t think he can win in this Democratic city. So I’m going to vote for Cuomo, which is painful — paining me.”
A man in his 30s who was a Shop Rite worker, and likewise didn’t want to be named, echoed the sentiment. “I don’t really like Cuomo, but I’m more of a centralist [sic]. I’m more of a centralist myself. So it’s more the devil you do, versus the devil you don’t [sic]. The devil you know, you can make a deal. The devil you don’t, you don’t know whether you can make a deal. I hate socialism, with a passion. I think it’s borderline communism.”
Rumors have abounded that Cuomo could be on course to win an outright plurality in Staten Island, which would be thought as prime Sliwa territory. I don’t know if this translates to Cuomo having a real prospect of winning outright, but if the electorate is as big as the Early Voting numbers suggest, who knows what might happen? It’s been a long while since any NYC Mayoral Election (general election, that is) was this competitive. 2021, 2017, 2013 were all snooze-fests, with the real action only in the primary. But 2025 has been a zany four-way race, followed by a three-way race after Eric Adams’ withdrawal, which could portend some volatility in the electorate that might not be the most straightforward for pollsters/strategists to preordain.
Although I had identified what I consider to be a very visible archetype of the disgruntled Cuomo voter, I also don’t want to be totally wedded to that tentative discovery, because if talking to random voters tells you anything, it’s that people have a vast multiplicity of unexpected explanations for their voting behavior. The very first person I spoke to at Shop Rite was a bonafide swing voter — and she was deciding between Mamdani and Sliwa! Asked why she had ruled out Cuomo, she said, “in order for the people of today to be heard, we have to do away with the old…”
“The Old Guard?” I asked her. “Exactly,” she said, chuckling. Her name was Treasure Thomas, and she lived right near the Shop Rite.
An elderly man, determined to vote on Election Day itself rather than take advantage of the newfangled Early Voting opportunities, said he was undecided between “Cuomo and the other guy,” meaning Sliwa. There wasn’t even the faintest notion that “the other guy” could have been Mamdani.
For the most part though, I was struck by the “begrudging Cuomo” voter profile that kept popping up.
Outside the Church of the Holy Child polling place, an older couple in their car drove up to me in the parking lot and rolled the window down, asking if I was a journalist. Yep, I said. “Difficult to make a decision,” the man of the couple told me, not wanting either him or his wife to be named. “The only decision we made was anybody but Mamdani. I know the other candidate really well (Sliwa) and wish he would’ve thrown his constituency to the other gentleman (Cuomo).”
Another woman had just voted with her husband; he rebuffed my inquiry. But then she volunteered to chime in. “I don’t feel comfortable with Madmani, and his proposals,” said the woman, Mariel. She also questioned the legitimacy of Sliwa’s “military training,” although I noted that Sliwa never served in the military; she was referring to his stewardship of the Guardian Angels quasi-vigilante organization. As for Cuomo, she said, “I don’t think he was treated fairly” with respect to the (phony) sexual harassment allegations. “That’s how I feel about him. And I’m a Republican.”
At the St. Joseph St. Thomas St. John Neumann Church early voting site (that parish name is a mouthful) I talked to Maria Senise, who was in her 70s. “I’m very torn and I’m very confused,” she said, when I asked about her voting choice. “The person that I really want to vote for, I don’t know if I should, because I don’t know if he stands a chance. And if Zohran gets in, we are screwed.” Enough conversations on Staten Island yesterday had already made obvious that she wanted to vote for Sliwa, but was getting ready to vote for Cuomo, because stopping Mamdani was paramount. “That’s how I feel,” she said. “That’s my only option — not that I want to. I pray that Mamdani don’t get in, because he’s gonna tax me to the hilt, he’s gonna tax the white neighborhoods. He’s gonna be the worst thing that ever happened to the city.” She concluded: “Cuomo’s not much better, but the devil I know I’d rather have, than the devil I don’t.”
I did talk to at least one man who was slightly more favorable about the person he was voting for, and therefore couldn’t quite be described as “begrudging.” Gabriel Adetoro had a slight African accent, but said he was born in the US. “I voted for Cuomo, I’m a Democrat. You see, the way we are in New York now, we need experience. We need a solution to problem, not hypothesis, not guess. [sic]”
Furthermore, he declared: “You see, I’ll say this anywhere. What was Cuomo’s offense?” Sexual harassment, I asked? “All of them do it,” Gabriel said. “How many people? Even the president.” He said the allegations against Cuomo were always “blown out of proportion. For me, I think he was a victim of the system. And maybe that’s why he’s carried my sympathy all along.” As for Mamdani, he wasn’t particularly alarmed about him, commenting that he’s “a very nice guy,” just lacking in requisite experience.
The same sublime equanimity could not be ascribed to the stampede of Jewish voters rushing out to vote for Cuomo. One person who’d been canvassing reliably GOP strongholds of Orthodox Jews in Staten Island — places where Trump flags proudly fly — recounted that “multiple women told me they’re scared of Mamdani, that’s why they’re voting for Cuomo.” Trump himself has now issued a thoroughly un-affectionate endorsement of Cuomo.
I will say that the only person I came across who was genuinely enthusiastic about casting their mayoral vote was a woman in her 60s named Paula, who was heading into a polling site to back Mamdani. Why? Because he’s “somebody new, somebody young, not somebody being held up with money from Israel.” She claimed her whole family agreed with this pro-Mamdani stance. It was only one of two Mamdani voters I encountered all day.
There was also a Chinese guy who bitterly declared he was voting for Sliwa, because (he claimed) Sliwa’s the only one who protected Chinatown residents against hate crimes. “Who vote for Cuomo?! I don’t want another king!” And then there was the guy, John, who recognized me, and would only acknowledge he was voting for Mamdani after I pried it out of him. (Probably a good idea not to reveal his preference while we were standing in the early-voting line.)
All in all, another interesting and amusing day in Staten Island.
NOTE! Make sure to watch Meagan O’Rourke’s interview with Cuomo. It’s very good. (I was behind the camera. Tee hee.)
Gross. This is how the establishment hijacks the democratic process. This election should be between Sliwa and Mamdani, but the establishment is going to be able to swoop in and cram in their disgusting swamp creature by using all their resources to block the anti-establishment candidates. I'm anti-Socialist but would still vote for Mamdani over Cuomo if I lived in New York. All these people voting for Cuomo because they keep being told Sliwa can't win in New York, well, they are the reason that Sliwa can't win in New York.
Interesting article.
It's amazing how readily people have forgiven Cuomo for killing all those old folks during Covid.
The funniest thing to me about this race, is watching both elected Democrats AND Republicans totally lose their minds over Mamdani.
I feel bad for Sliwa, but Republicans are outnumbered in NYC.