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Why does Trump keep interfering in the NYC mayoral race?
The president has seemingly taken an outsized interest in his hometown elections, but are his efforts to block Zohran Mamdani about political expediency or something deeper?
President Donald Trump seems to be going out of his way to tip the scales of New York City’s upcoming mayoral elections away from surging front-runner and Democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani. But are the president’s reported overtures to mayoral candidates Andrew Cuomo, Curtis Sliwa and incumbent Eric Adams motivated by politics or do they signal something more?
What did the commentators say?
Members of the Trump administration have “discussed the possibility” of roles for Adams and Republican candidate Sliwa as a way to “clear the field” and maximize former New York Gov. Cuomo’s odds of defeating Mamdani, said The New York Time. While it’s unclear whether this “potentially audacious intervention” will succeed (Adams and Sliwa have vociferously denied any plans to end their campaigns), they come amid similar “overlapping” conversations among New York’s “biggest real estate executives” and Cuomo allies.
As the “ghost at the feast in America’s biggest city,” former New Yorker President Donald Trump’s “looming presence” and “increased interest” in the race “adds another layer of complexity to a race that has already seen it all,” said The Guardian. With Adams, Sliwa and Cuomo “cannibalizing each other’s support,” the city’s “right-wing elite” have become “increasingly desperate for a Trump intervention.”
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Trump’s push to influence the mayoral race is the “latest episode” in his effort to exercise “increased control and influence over the affairs of major U.S. cities,” said NBC News. In this instance, Trump has “aligned himself with the view of his longtime New York associates,” eschewing national Republican figures who are hoping for a Mamdani victory to be the “focal point in their midterm campaigns.”
It’s important to “remember the company he keeps,” said former Mayor Bill de Blasio to NBC. Trump isn’t “thinking as head of the Republican Party” but rather about his “donor base and his friends.”
While Trump has made a habit of using Democratic-run cities as a “foil” for his administration, his “unusual interest” in New York’s mayoral contest “stems from his long history as a New Yorker,” said The Washington Post. Though he and Cuomo have had a “contentious relationship,” particularly during the Covid-19 pandemic in Trump’s final year of his first term, the president sees the former governor as someone he can work with. But Trump’s attempt to influence the city’s elections “betrays a complicated situation” for the president, putting his “political and personal interests at odds with each other” due to his “fondness and concern for the city,” said The Hill.
What next?
While Cuomo’s campaign insists that Trump “doesn’t want him leading City Hall,” Mamdani and his allies have used reports of Trump’s electoral interference to “redouble their pressure campaign” and garner more public support from “more moderate Democrats,” said Politico. Although Trump has lashed out at Mamdani publicly as a “communist” whose election would doom the country’s largest metropolis, his efforts are “backfiring,” said CNN.
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Candidate bickering and efforts to tie Cuomo closer to Trump have the Mamdani campaign “savoring” what they see as “another bit of good luck,” said the outlet. Trump’s interventions on behalf of the former governor leave local Democratic officials ”even less likely to want to work with Cuomo as mayor.”
Despite the potential backlash against his involvement in the race, a New York Times and Siena University poll released Tuesday “helps explain” the logic behind Trump’s attempts to tip the electoral scales, said the Post. Although Mamdani has a double-digit lead in a four-way mayoral matchup, that lead “would shrink from 22 percentage points to four points” in a head-to-head matchup against Cuomo. Mamdani is the “only candidate viewed positively by a majority of voters,” said the Times, “despite months of attacks against him.”
Rafi Schwartz has worked as a politics writer at The Week since 2022, where he covers elections, Congress and the White House. He was previously a contributing writer with Mic focusing largely on politics, a senior writer with Splinter News, a staff writer for Fusion's news lab, and the managing editor of Heeb Magazine, a Jewish life and culture publication. Rafi's work has appeared in Rolling Stone, GOOD and The Forward, among others.
