Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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We're going to get out to a conversation now with former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo on the state of New York City's mayoral race. And he is speaking to Bloomberg's David Gurra. I him up 25 points to you.
Of course, it's a four candidate race. How do you see the path forward here, given the polling and sort of where things stand? I should note that the polling hasn't changed a tremendous amount in recent weeks.
Yeah, it will change dramatically. What you see in the polls is Mamdami is always about 40 percent. That leaves 60 percent, as you accurately pointed out. You have a multi-candidate field, so four people or three people are breaking up that 60 percent. I don't think you're going to wind up, ultimately, with that larger field. I think the field is going to collapse.
I think it's going to come down to me versus Mr. Mamdani. And as I said, Mamdani has 40%. He has very radical ideas, which are exciting to one group of the population, especially young people, but are polarizing to many other people. And I think it's going to come down to a one-on-one. And then it is a totally different race, David.
Curtis Lee, with a Republican candidate, says he's not dropping out. The incumbent mayor, Eric Adams, says he's not dropping out. We've passed the ballot deadline. If we were to have a race where it's you against Orrin Mondani, polls still show him leading you by a substantial amount. What do you see in the electorate that the data aren't showing when it comes to that particular configuration?
Yeah. Well, polls are historically wrong, especially this year, especially in New York. On your first point, you can stay in the race. First of all, technically, nobody can get off the ballot, right?
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Chapter 2: What are Andrew Cuomo's thoughts on the current mayoral race?
The question is, are you viable in the race? And you can have people who are in the race, but the voters just think they're not really competitive, they can't win, I'm not going to waste my vote. And I think that's what happens here. I think it comes down to me and Mamdani.
I think when people understand what Mamdani stands for, besides what he has said on TikTok, he's anti-police, disband the police, legalize prostitution, legalize the drug trade, abolish jails. This would be anarchy in New York. Socialism does not work in New York City. It's antithetical. We're the business capital, right? We're pro-business. Business is the engine that drives the train.
So none of that has been communicated yet. And when it does, I can tell you the minds will change.
Is there an effort by you and your campaign to try to convince Eric Adams or Curtis Lee to drop out of this race? Are there conversations that are happening behind the scenes to make what I imagine you see as a compelling case for them to step aside to make this more of a one-on-one race?
No, I'm sure they're making their own decisions. Look, I've been in elections where I have dropped out because I thought it was the right thing to do. They have a decision to make. There is no apparent path to victory for them. They, in essence, would act as a spoiler, and that's a decision they have to make. They have to make it personally, and that's their business.
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Chapter 3: How does Cuomo perceive the polling dynamics in the race?
But again, I think it's going to come down to a two-person race no matter what, because that's what the polls are going to say, and that is the choice. I am a Democrat. My father was a Democrat. I worked for Bill Clinton. Zoran is a socialist. They call themselves democratic socialists, right?
Didn't support Democrats, said Barack Obama was a liar and evil and didn't support Kamala Harris against Trump, right? So this is a very different, this is apples and oranges between the two of us.
I want to ask you about some comments that Curtis Lewa made yesterday. I'm sure you heard them. He was campaigning and suggested that your affiliates of your campaign had reached out to him and offered him money to the tune of $10 million to drop out of this race. And I'm going to quote from what he said during that campaign event. He called these classic Andrew Cuomo tactics.
Why don't you strap up Cuomo to a lie detection machine and ask him and we'll all be blown to kingdom come because he's behind it. I don't have a polygraph machine with me here. But how do you respond to what he's alleging in those comments?
Look, you can't, you have to take Sliwa with a grain of salt, right? He is a known con man. He's lied about being victims of crime before. But it's very simple, David. When he said that, someone should have said, who? Who offered you the money? Let him answer the question because it would happen to be a crime, right? Who offered you money?
He never said who, which sort of tells you, right, that it's all malarkey. There was no person who did it.
I want to ask you, Leslie, we've talked about the state of the race where you hope that it's headed. And if we can, I'd like to look back to 1977, so a ways. You were 19. You were a student at Fordham University. Your dad was making a run for mayor, and you were helping out on the campaign. He didn't win the Democratic primary and decided to run on an independent line for mayor.
He ended up losing that race by nine points. They say that history doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes, and I know that you don't want history to repeat itself here. You'd like to win this race in a way that he wasn't able to back then, 50 years ago.
I'm not the first to point out this historical parallel, but I imagine you've thought about it, and I wonder how that experience has informed your outlook on this race. There was introspection after the primaries. You didn't do as well as you wanted to do. You decided to make this run.
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