Inside Zohran Mamdani's strategy to protect his front-runner status
During the primary, Zohran Mamdani seemed ubiquitous. One moment he was delivering a fiery pep talk to supporters in Park Slope, Brooklyn. The next, he was standing in front of Andrew Cuomo’s luxury Manhattan apartment building, criticizing his opponent and fielding reporters’ questions until they ran out of things to ask. And in the final stretch of the race, he walked the length of Manhattan to the cheers of onlookers.
But with four weeks to go until the election, Mamdani’s campaign is in a new phase as he seeks to protect his front-runner status: risk minimization.
The strategy was on display earlier this week as Mamdani held a press conference in Jackson Heights, Queens, where he unveiled an online affordability calculator. Voters can input their info and learn how much they’d supposedly save under Mamdani’s signature policies of a rent freeze for stabilized tenants, free buses and universal child care. After unveiling the calculator, he took one off-topic question and quickly left as a heckler and Mamdani supporter faced off.
As former Gov. Andrew Cuomo attacks Mamdani as a “champagne socialist” and Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa describes his policies as “pie in the sky ideas with no basis in reality,” the 33-year-old assemblymember is running out the clock.
https://gothamist.com/news/inside-zohran-mamdanis-strategy-to-protect-his-front-runner-status