Too Little, Too Late: Why Cuomo Was Doomed Against Mamdani

On election night, the head of a political action committee that raised millions of dollars to try to elect Andrew Cuomo mayor of New York City hardly batted an eye at the television when the news came that he had lost to Zohran Mamdani.

“The surprise was going to be if we won, because frankly, looking at the data, we were never winning—ever,” she told me.

And there were no surprises on Tuesday night. The Associated Press called the election just 34 minutes after the polls closed. When the votes were counted, Cuomo, the former governor of New York, had lost, with 41.6 percent of the vote, to Mamdani, 34, a New York state assembly member who was practically unknown at the start of the race, who received 50.4 percent.