2025 New York City Mayoral Election
Here’s who’s running for New York City mayor in 2025
This race is nothing if not action-packed.
New York City Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani Kyle Mazza/Anadolu via Getty Images
It’s certainly an unusual New York City mayor’s race. If you recently started paying attention, here’s the extremely abridged version: Our incumbent Mayor Eric Adams should have had an easy path to reelection after winning the open seat as a Democrat in 2021. But then he got federally indicted in September 2024, and a whole bunch of other Democrats smelled blood in the water and jumped in the race to primary him. But then! The mayor got dis-indicted after President Donald Trump took office and the Department of Justice dropped the corruption charges. Then Adams dropped out of the Democratic primary altogether, opting instead to run for reelection as an independent candidate. Eleven Democrats duked it out in the primary, including former Gov. Andrew Cuomo – who ran an old-school inevitability campaign backed by most major power brokers in the city and who was projected to win in virtually every poll.
But reader, Cuomo lost. Handily. To a 33-year-old democratic socialist Assembly member named Zohran Mamdani.
So now New York City is looking at a general mayoral election unlike any other in its history. Mamdani, the newly crowned leftist superstar Democratic nominee, is absorbing the absolute deluge of attention and adjusting to the national spotlight. Cuomo is running as an independent candidate in the general election, and he’s doing everything he can to get the other non-Mamdani candidates out of his way. Independent candidate Jim Walden suspended his campaign in early September, and on Sept. 28, Cuomo got a boost when incumbent Mayor Adams dropped his bid for reelection as well, ending weeks of speculation. An eccentric, crime-fighting Republican perennial candidate, Curtis Sliwa, is still refusing to drop out.
Additional candidates have filed to run on other ballot lines in the general election but have not raised significant funds or polled among leading candidates. They include Irene Estrada (Conservative Party) and Joseph Hernandez (Quality of Life Party). Walden Adams will both still appear on the ballot, despite suspending their campaigns.
Here are all the prominent mayoral contenders. This post was last updated Sept. 29. Democratic primary candidates who lost are archived here.
Skip to: Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani, independent Andrew Cuomo, Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa
Zohran Mamdani
His ideological stance in brief: A pro-Palestine democratic socialist who isn’t shy about it.
Major endorsements: Gov. Kathy Hochul, Working Families Party, labor unions including the Hotel and Gaming Trades Council and 32BJ SEIU, Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Adriano Espaillat and Jerry Nadler, New York City Democratic Socialists of America, state Attorney General Letitia James
Fundraising: $15.3 million raised so far including matching funds. He’s got $9 million in the bank, as of late August.
Where’s home? “The People’s Republic of Astoria,” Queens
What is he running on? He achieved a historic victory in the Democratic primary, defeating a former governor everyone thought would easily win. He wants to freeze the rent, make buses free, make child care free, launch a Department of Community Safety and build public supermarkets.
What’s holding him back? The business and real estate worlds are panicking, and Cuomo has made some progress in consolidating the anti-Mamdani field. Some establishment Democrats have been slow to back Mamdani.
What’s his deal: The operative word for Zohran Mamdani’s performance in the Democratic primary? Stunning. Mamdani trailed front-runner and former Gov. Andrew Cuomo in almost every poll. Cuomo and his supporters outspent him by millions of dollars, and almost every major power broker in the city had gotten behind the former governor. But on election night, Mamdani, combining a clear affordability message, an army of tens of thousands of volunteers, a masterful social media strategy and his innate charisma, absolutely dominated, winning in the final ranked-choice tabulation by more than 12 points. Now, the 33-year-old democratic socialist Assembly member is the Democratic nominee and the front-runner in the general election, where after the incumbent mayor dropped his campaign, he faces Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa and, once again, Cuomo.
As Democrats processed the city’s rightward shift in the presidential election, most candidates initially attempted to distance themselves from the progressive label. That left the leftist lane of the mayor’s race wide open for the Assembly member. Mamdani, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America who successfully primaried a well-liked establishment Democrat in 2020, easily appealed to the typical highly educated yuppie socialists in North Brooklyn and western Queens, but the lawmaker, who sponsored controversial state legislation to withhold public funds from organizations that operate in illegal settlements in the West Bank, also brought Muslims and young people outraged over the war in Gaza into his unprecedented primary coalition. Many South Asian voters also love him for his successful advocacy for debt relief for taxi medallion holders – including with a 15-day hunger strike in 2021, and they too contributed to his impressive win.
Mamdani has articulated several simple policy ideas that set him apart from the pack – even if their feasibility isn’t clear. Building on a pilot program he pushed in the state Legislature, he wants to make public buses free. (The Metropolitan Transportation Authority is a state agency, but he says he’ll get creative with his mayoral authority.) He also wants to freeze rents for rent-stabilized units. He is also promising free child care, a $30 minimum wage and city-owned grocery stores, and he’s betting on tax increases for the rich to pay for his policies.
Further reading:
Here’s how Zohran Mamdani’s 50K-strong volunteer army pulled it off
And ultimately – Zohran Mamdani stuns New York
Zohran Mamdani is trying to build a new NYC Democratic primary coalition
Episode 5: An Interview with Zohran Mamdani
Mamdani unveils ‘$30 by ‘30’ minimum wage push as part of mayoral campaign
Zohran Mamdani wants to make NYC buses free as mayor. How would that work?
Could this pro-Palestinian socialist really be NYC’s next mayor?
Andrew Cuomo
His ideological stance in brief: Pro-Israel moderate who promises to keep the Democratic Party from falling off the left edge of the map.
Major endorsements: IBEW Local 3, Teamsters Local 237, Teamsters Joint Council 16
Fundraising: $8.9 million raised so far, including public matching funds. He has an estimated $1.2 million in the bank as of late August. Cuomo’s allies also launched a political action committee that raised another $25 million and spent $22 million during the primary.
Where’s home? He’s a Queens boy, but he’s currently registered to vote in Midtown East.
What is he running on? He says New York City is in crisis. He was governor for a decade, passing marriage equality, paid family leave, gun control laws and building things like the Second Avenue Subway and revamping the city’s airports.
What’s holding him back? He got trounced in the Democratic primary by a millennial upstart. Also, Cuomo negative starter pack: sexual harassment allegations, handling of COVID-19 in nursing homes and previous vindictiveness toward New York City leaders.
What’s his deal: Cuomo used to be the most powerful elected official in the state. In throwing his hat in the ring for New York City mayor, he was aiming for what some have suggested would, to him, amount to a consolation prize. (He said as much.) It was clear that he expected to glide into City Hall after locking up support the old-fashioned way – by strong-arming unions, county Democratic leaders and elected officials into backing him while his allies spent millions of dollars on ads and mailers attacking his main opponent. The former governor miscalculated, to say the least.
Cuomo petitioned and will appear on the ballot in November on the “Fight and Deliver” ballot line. On July 14, he announced he will actually try to mount an independent campaign rather than cut his losses and stay out of it after failing to secure the Democratic nomination. It’s been about four years since he resigned as governor in 2021. The two-and-a-half-term governor’s fall from grace came swiftly that year. After serving as Democratic beacon at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and the tail end of Trump’s first term, Cuomo was engulfed in a series of scandals, including multiple allegations of sexual harassment, scrutiny of his handling of COVID-19 in nursing homes and his $5 million book deal. Cuomo – and in large part his allies – have spent plenty of energy in the past four years fighting that narrative, including by frequently criticizing state Attorney General Letitia James and Gov. Kathy Hochul, who has amounted to much more than just his interim replacement in Albany.
Polls showed that the divisive – but unquestionably talented – politician had a lead among Black voters, which bore out on primary election day. Black voters have historically been essential to citywide victory. But after his defeat, he’s losing labor and business support to his rivals, and many New Yorkers seem to be moving on.
Further reading:
Andrew Cuomo dons a short-sleeved shirt, launches second NYC mayor campaign
Pro-Cuomo PAC responsible for nearly half of all outside spending across all NYC primary elections this year
FAQ: The Justice Department investigation into Andrew Cuomo
Mayor Cuomo and Gov. Hochul? It would be weird.
WFP on Andrew Cuomo in general elex: ‘Likelihood he earns the Party’s support is close to none.’
Can Andrew Cuomo bounce back?
Why do Black voters currently seem to prefer Andrew Cuomo over Eric Adams?
Curtis Sliwa
His ideological stance in brief: An eccentric conservative activist who joined the Republican Party a few years ago
Major endorsements: All five county Republican parties, New York City Council Republicans, Reps. Elise Stefanik and Mike Lawler
Fundraising: $4.2 million including public matching funds. He’s got about $3.4 million in the bank as of late August.
Where’s home? The Upper West Side
What is he running on? Combating crime, building up the police department, opposing migrant shelters and e-bikes, protecting animals
What’s holding him back? He’s a Republican running for mayor again in a city that remains deeply Democratic. He doesn’t have support from the Republican president.
What’s his deal: Curtis Sliwa might be well-known for his red beret and deep love of cats, but he’s also proven himself time and time again to be excellent at garnering attention. Over the past couple of years, his Guardian Angels misidentified a man as a migrant and tackled him during a live TV interview, he had Guardian Angels members resume volunteer safety patrols on the city subways, and offered up a solution to Adams for his rat problem: deploying a fleet of feral cats.
This is not Sliwa’s first time running for mayor. He was the Republican candidate in the last mayoral election – and he lost handily to Eric Adams. But this one is shaping up to be quite different, with Adams out of the race that now features Andrew Cuomo and lefty Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani.
New York is a deep blue city (at least in recent years) where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans 7 to 1. Sliwa has projected confidence about his odds this time around, pointing to the fact that President Donald Trump won 30% of the vote in New York City last November – the highest share of the vote for a Republican presidential nominee since George H.W. Bush in 1988. (Though that was more so driven by the votes Democrats lost than the votes Trump gained.) But many of the topics Sliwa focuses on – like crime, people leaving the city, and the city’s sheltering and care of migrants – have been hot-button issues throughout Adams’ administration, giving him plenty of campaign talking points.
As the city’s moderates and conservatives panic about Mamdani’s candidacy, Sliwa has faced pressure to drop out of the race to give Cuomo a chance to beat the socialist Democratic nominee. In response to that pressure, he has repeated some version of “over my dead body.” And he has some credibility when he says that – in 1992, he survived a shooting assassination attempt widely attributed to the notorious Gambino crime family.
Further reading:
‘The Trump candidate is Eric Adams’: Curtis Sliwa sizes up the mayoral race
Episode 6: An interview with Curtis Sliwa
Sliwa gets clean sweep from Republican Party chairs, who still say they won’t give Adams the ballot line
Wait a second, is Curtis Sliwa making sense?
Correction: This story has been updated to correctly reflect the ballot line Andrew Cuomo will appear on in the general election. He will appear on “Fight and Deliver.”
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