JNS
“I’m sorry that we have to feel isolated in our own city,” the former governor and mayoral candidate said.
Hours after Rich Azzopardi, spokesman for former New York governor Andrew Cuomo’s independent mayoral campaign, touted a new poll showing a “dramatic 10-point swing since late August” and a “dead heat” between his boss and frontrunner and Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani, Cuomo downplayed the importance of polling in remarks at Congregation Ohab Zedek on Manhattan’s Upper West Side.
Cuomo told a crowd of about 200 at the more than 150-year-old Modern Orthodox congregation that his father, former New York governor Mario Cuomo, didn’t put too much stock in public opinion.
“My father was against the death penalty. He said, ‘On the death penalty, it is 50-50,’” Cuomo said. “I said, ‘50-50 on the death penalty? 78% support the death penalty. What do you think, dad?’ ‘They’re all wrong.’”
“How do you be in politics and say, ‘78%. They’re all wrong?’” Cuomo said. “Because you have to be a leader.”
The mayoral hopeful told the audience he has thought about leadership while watching Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“You have to be in a place where you make a decision that you believe is the right decision, and you stand with your principles regardless of the political consequences and regardless of the noise of the moment,” he said. “Public opinion can sway from day to day. The emotion can sway from day to day. A real leader knows principles and sticks to their principles.”
Addressing event moderator Elisha Wiesel, son of the late Holocaust survivor and Nobel Prize laureate Elie Wiesel, Cuomo said he learned that lesson about principles from his father. “I’m sure you carry the same lesson,” he said.
Before the recent poll, data about the New York City mayoral race suggested a large lead for Mamdani, a New York state representative with a history of anti-Israel comments, ahead of Cuomo and Guardian Angels founder Curtis Sliwa, the Republican nominee. New York City Mayor Eric Adams, who was seen widely as the most sympathetic to Israel and Jews, dropped out after running as an independent.
“I was thinking when preparing for tonight, what would our fathers think that we have to be here tonight, in this moment?” Cuomo told Wiesel, citing rising Jew-hatred.
“This moment that they spent their entire lives working to make sure never happened again,” he said, noting the “sadness that I know my father would feel that we are in this situation.”
Wiesel also quoted Cuomo’s father, and said that the latter’s remark about the Holocaust—that “armies of people” aided “barbarians” by opting not to oppose them and refusing to notice, care or speak up—could also apply to Oct. 7 and its aftermath.
Cuomo has made rising Jew-hatred a central point of his criticism of Mamdani, who has repeatedly accused Israel of “genocide” and has said that he would have Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrested, should the premier come to New York.
Rabbi Steven Burg, CEO of Aish, which sponsored the event, told attendees that he said to Cuomo prior to the gathering that he was in the Knesset during U.S. President Donald Trump’s recent speech.
“In many ways, I feel like being here in this room today is more important than being in the Knesset last week, and I’ll explain why,” he said. He noted that Jews are a family and that Jewish hearts have bled since Oct. 7.
“As I was coming back and forth from Israel, the Jews of Israel kept saying to me, ‘What’s going on with the Jews in the Diaspora? Do they know how much pain they’re in? Are they supporting us?’” Burg said. “I kept telling them ‘yes,’ and then thousands of duffel bags made their way on El Al flights to Israel, and millions of dollars of philanthropy flowed into Israel to show the Jews of Israel that yes, we do support you.”
Two years later, things have changed. “I’m being asked by the Jews of Israel, ‘What is going on with the Jews of New York? We’re worried about our brothers and sisters in New York,’” he said. “We’re worried about someone potentially becoming mayor who is openly antisemitic.”
“We know as Jews what ‘globalize the intifada’ means,” he said. “It means our death.”
Rabbi Allen Schwartz, spiritual leader of the synagogue, told attendees that “it is simply unconscionable that the city with the largest Jewish population outside of the state of Israel could contemplate having as its leader someone who cannot walk away from ‘globalizing the intifada.’”
Cuomo said that it’s a “frightening moment” in New York City.
“It is a moment where the question will be asked for years to come, ‘Where were you and what did you do in that moment?’” he said.
“The Jewish community is New York,” Cuomo said. “There is no New York without the Jewish community.”
The former governor noted that the first Jews came to New York in 1630, “while my people were still making wine in the old country.”
“Jews were here 200 years prior to the major European immigration to the city. Jewish people helped build and found this city. How is it that we have more antisemitic incidents in New York City than any other city in the U.S.?” he said. “I don’t know how we got here, but I know what we have to do. We need to end the complacency of New Yorkers, which is worse than any antisemitic views of any one person."
He added that those responsible for Jew-hatred in the city include “a group of young people, who have no sense of history, who have watched what has happened in the Middle East, in Gaza, and have no context for it.”
“I think that has been exploited on their behalf,” he said.
“I am sorry for all of us that we have to be here tonight. Sorry that we have to live through this moment in history. I’m sorry that we have to feel fear in our own home city. I’m sorry that we have to feel isolated in our own city,” Cuomo said.
“I’m sorry that we feel abandoned in our own city, that no one came to help in New York. Where are the many elected officials? Where were the people enforcing the law?” he said. “Where were the people standing up for the Jewish community? Where was the outrage?”
Cuomo noted that Wiesel’s father often referred to the danger of indifference.
“The indifference is the enemy today,” the former governor said. “We will win this election, because they are more good-loving people in this city than angry hateful people in this city, but we have to make it happen.”
Wiesel asked how Cuomo’s campaign is welcoming Republicans. “It’s easier than you would think, because this is so much more important than the normal partisanship,” Cuomo said. “This is beyond Democrat or Republican. That’s child’s play compared to what we’re talking about here.”
The election is a choice between “political moderation versus socialism plus antisemitism,” he added.
Cuomo said that he has a “history of working on both sides of the aisle.” As the New York governor for 11 years, he worked with a Republican state Senate to pass each bill, he said.
“Bridging that political divide I’ve done before, but this transcends everything, because this is Democratic Republican political moderation versus socialism plus antisemitism,” he said of Mamdani.
“That’s what he is selling. He is a socialist—Democratic Socialists of America, DSA—whole charter. This is a very organized, well-funded organization, the Democratic Socialists,” Cuomo said. “This isn’t a bunch of 20-year olds on a Friday night. This is a movement that has been growing for years and years and getting more and more sophisticated and better funded.”
Asked if he would try to convince Sliwa to drop out by offering him a role in a future city administration, Cuomo said that “it’s unfortunate that he is using this moment, I believe, for his own public relations and his own personal agenda.”
“He is not a viable candidate to win,” Cuomo said of Sliwa. “He knows that, but he is a viable candidate to make Mamdani a winner. I am hopeful that before the end of the day, he realizes that there’s something bigger at stake than his notoriety or his publicity.”
“I think you’re going to see a very conservative effort brought to bear where people with one voice say to Curtis, ‘This is bigger than you are,’ which is what Mayor Adams did, to his credit,” Cuomo said, to applause.
Dr. Joseph Bistricer, an optometrist in New York, told JNS that he attended to hear Cuomo speak because he is worried.
“My big concern and big worry is that someone like Mamdani may become mayor of this great city. It’s strange,” he said. “Very upsetting for the city, and especially for Jews. He’s a jihadist in a suit, and I’m very worried, and hopeful and pray that this doesn’t happen.”
“He’ll be bad for Jews and terrible for the city,” he said, of Mamdani.
Cuomo also told attendees that New York City isn’t creating enough jobs and that businesses are leaving the city. “We have to start attracting rather than losing businesses,” he said.
Speaking about illegal immigration, he gave a rare nod to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott. Cuomo noted that as head of the National Governors Association, he told the White House that Abbott is “a Republican, but he has a point.”
“It happens once in a while,” he said.
