With Andrew Cuomo and Curtis Sliwa heckling him on stage, Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani stuck to his refusal to take sides: “I have not yet taken a position,” he said.
Mamdani was referring to three controversial housing-related ballot measures, which Cuomo supports and Sliwa opposes.
During the second and final mayoral debate ahead of the general election on Wednesday, NY1’s Errol Louis asked Mamdani directly about the measures, which would consolidate the city’s land use process and weaken the City Council’s power over certain affordable housing projects.
Mamdani repeated a response he had previously given, that he appreciates that voters will be able to consider these issues. The answer comes just a few days before early voting starts, when New Yorkers will begin flipping over their ballots and voting on these questions.
He also noted the importance of ensuring that ramping up construction creates “good jobs,” likely a nod to concerns from the city’s unions — including 32BJ SEIU and the Hotel and Gaming Trades Council, which endorsed Mamdani after the primary — that the measures remove their leverage in rezoning negotiations.
When pressed to state his position — Sliwa and Cuomo repeated, “Yes or no?” and then Louis also asked for clarity — Mamdani said he has not yet taken one.
“Oh, what a shocker,” Cuomo said.
The most contentious of the housing ballot proposals seeks to, in some cases, remove City Council review of housing projects and create an appeals board to reverse the Council’s rejection of rezonings that result in affordable housing.
The reference to the ballot measures came up after moderators asked the candidates how they plan to meet the city’s needs for more housing.
The candidates largely answered with responses they’ve previously provided. Mamdani said he would streamline the building process for the private sector, ramp up construction near mass transit and scale up the city’s programs for subsidizing deeply affordable housing.
Cuomo said he would “redo” the Department of Housing Preservation and Development and “change the entire organizational structure.” He said “hundreds if not thousands” of units of housing need to be built simultaneously by the public and private sectors, a less intense version of his previous calls to initiate 500,000 affordable units across 300 sites at once — an idea that defies the realities of construction and financing capacity.
Mamdani and Cuomo traded barbs on their respective housing records. At one point, pushing back on Mamdani’s comments that he must have “run an incompetent government” given the pace of housing construction when he was governor, Cuomo said the governor doesn’t build housing but provides financing to the city. However, the state plays a significant role in housing policy, and also steers construction of housing on state-owned sites.
Sliwa emphasized the opportunities to convert vacant office buildings into housing and confirmed that he believes local City Council members should have veto power over projects in their districts. He said the ballot questions were a gift from Mayor Eric Adams to the real estate industry.
“He went wild taking care of his developer friends,” Sliwa said. He also said that Cuomo was in the “back pockets of the developers who wine, dined and pocket-lined” him.
Mamdani’s pledge to freeze rents for stabilized tenants came up early in the debate. Cuomo called the promise “B.S.” because annual rent increases are decided by the city’s Rent Guidelines Board, not the mayor.
“Nothing is going to happen,” he said. “It’s just more political blather.”
“If you want a candidate for mayor who tells you everything that he cannot do, then Andrew Cuomo should be your choice,” Mamdani fired back.
Cuomo also noted that Mamdani cannot immediately appoint new members of the board, who serve between two- and four-year terms. In fact, Adams is reportedly considering replacing six members’ whose terms have ended before he leaves office.
In the final debate before the general election, not much new was revealed about the candidates’ positions on housing and real estate-related issues.
At one point, however, candidates were asked if they support a casino in the five boroughs. Sliwa said, only if supported by the local communities, and Mamdani said that while he has reservations about casinos, he recognizes that state law allows for up to three licenses to be awarded.
Cuomo said he has not reviewed the proposals, and said he “had no part” in bringing three casinos to the city. That’s incorrect: He was governor when voters approved a constitutional amendment in 2013 to expand gambling in the state, and supported the change. Still, on Wednesday, he called the casinos “highly problematic.”
Such a comment puts him at odds with the construction unions that backed his campaign ahead of the June primary. While many major unions endorsed Mamdani after the primary, many construction unions have held off on announcing who they will support in the general election.
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