At his first public appearance since Mayor Adams announced Sunday he was dropping out of the mayioral race, former governor Andrew Cuomo praised the incumbent’s “selflessness” at the launch of an organization “Hindus for Cuomo” in Queens.
“I applaud his selflessness,” said Cuomo, who’s running for mayor as an independent in the wake of resigning the governorship after accusations by multiple women of sexual harassment that Cuomo now denies.
“You know, we often wonder, is it about us, or is it about a greater calling,” Cuomo said. “And I think what Mayor Adams said today speaks volumes. He said, ‘I’m going to put my personal ambition aside for the good of the city’, because he’s afraid of the result if Mr. [Zoran] Mamdani were to win the election, and we should all be afraid of the result.”
Cuomo characterized the contest as an election “between different philosophies,” and an “existential threat” during the campaign stop Sunday night.
“I believe that Mayor Adams is wholly sincere in his belief that this is one of the most important elections of our lifetimes, and that we are facing an existential threat, in an extreme radicalism that threatens the existence of this city as we know it,” Cuomo told an audience of about 100 people at the Golden Years Senior Program in Glen Oaks. “This is not an election between two people. This is an election between different philosophies.”
Adams “has much to be proud of,” Cuomo said, adding “If [Adams] is not actively campaigning, that changes the entire dynamic of the race.”
Cuomo said Mamdani’s upset in the Democratic primary, and his subsequent crowing about it, was irrelevant.
“What Mamdani leaves out was that was a different election,” Cuomo said of the win. “That was a Democratic primary election, only Democrats voted in that, and only democratic prime voters. This is now a much larger election where more New Yorkers will vote…
“I think he’s going to have a rude awakening to the reality of who New Yorkers really are,” Cuomo declared.
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