Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo is still weighing whether to run as an independent for New York City mayor in the general election — after his stunning loss to socialist Zohran Mamdani in the Democratic primary.
The major upset put the Democratic Party establishment on high alert — but Cuomo may not be out of the race just yet, telling The Post on Wednesday that he was waiting to make a final decision about whether to try his luck as an independent in the general election.
His campaign said last month that he would run on the independent “Fight and Deliver” ballot line in November regardless of the June 24 primary’s outcome — which saw the thrice-elected Dem trail the 33-year-old Queens assemblyman by a near-insurmountable 7 points.
“I’m looking at the numbers from last night. I want to get an idea of what the general election looks like and what landscape looks like, and what the issues are, and then make the decision,” he said outside of his home in Midtown East.
“It’s one step at a time, and we haven’t even gotten all the numbers from last night,” Cuomo said.
The thrice-elected Democrat insisted that his 7 points loss in the first-choice ranking of the primary — by about 70,000 votes — was not reflective of the Big Apple electorate overall.
“It’s 1.4 percent of the registered voters in New York. That’s why these Democratic primaries are such a small sliver of overall voters. We have 5 million voters. We have 1 million who voted in the primary election overall,” he argued.
Cuomo said he believes the upcoming general election campaign will spark discussion over “a different set of issues” than those that rose to the forefront in the heated primary.
“[The issues] can’t just be something that sounds good in a campaign. It has to be something that the person knows how to implement and actually works,” he added in a veiled swipe at Mamdani, who has been criticized for proposing a lofty list of free programs.Cuomo’s campaign said last month that he would run on the independent ballot in the November race regardless of the June primary outcome to appeal to a wider voting bloc of “disillusioned Democrats, as well as to independents and Republicans.”
He has qualified to run on the independent “Fight and Deliver” ticket on the general election ballot.
Cuomo would join a crowded field that includes Mamdani and longtime Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa, who will appear on the ballot again after scrounging up just 28% of the vote in 2021.
Mayor Eric Adams, who opted to forgo the Democratic primary to run for re-election as an independent, would be Cuomo’s largest hurdle to Gracie Mansion as they share many of the same core values.
Attorney Jim Walden is also running as an independent candidate.
Adams has criticized Cuomo’s decision to challenge him as an independent.
In a “Fox & Friends” appearance Wednesday morning, the mayor said: “Cuomo should realize that ‘time has moved on'” from him — as he compared Mamdani’s campaign promises to those of a “snake oil salesman.”
“Cuomo can’t come out on weekends, go to a black church, eat some fried chicken, and all of a sudden say that ‘I have the black vote,’ ‘I have the working-class people vote’ — it’s is just not the reality,” Adams said.
“People know if you want the job. He didn’t want the job.”
Cuomo conceded the mayoral Democratic primary to Mamdani after first-choice results in the city’s ranking system showed the two-term state lawmaker notching a significant lead.
With over 96% of Democratic primary votes counted by Wednesday morning, Mamdani held a commanding 43.5% lead over Cuomo’s 36.4% — or just over 70,000 votes.
Trailing in third behind them was city Comptroller Brad Lander with 11.3%.
More than 993,500 New Yorkers cast their vote in the mayoral primary, according to the latest board tally.
All of the ranked-choice voting results are expected to be counted by July 1.
Democratic sources said Mamdani and his campaign outhustled Cuomo in the final weeks ahead of the primary, despite $25 million funneled into a pro-Cuomo Fix The City super PAC and dozens of labor unions supporting him.
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