As Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Eric Adams continued to hammer Zohran Mamdani over his policing policies, the Democratic nominee for mayor sought to focus on his proposal for universal childcare.
The competing messages amounted to an early test of whether voters’ views have shifted in the wake of last week’s mass shooting — or whether Mamdani’s winning primary campaign centered on affordability will resonate with a broader electorate that includes over 1 million independent voters.
Speaking at an event in Manhattan with Sen. Elizabeth Warren and DC37, the city’s largest municipal union, Mamdani pledged to deliver on universal childcare if elected mayor.
“After housing, childcare is the cost that is pushing New Yorkers out of these five boroughs,” he said.
Warren, who endorsed Mamdani in the primary, said the choice was clear. “If you’re for the billionaires,” she said, “then, shoot, go with Andrew Cuomo. Go with the Republicans.”
“But if you actually think we are an America that needs to work harder to make this country affordable for working families, then this is the fight to be in.”
At a press conference in Midtown, Cuomo continued to attack Mamdani for his statements harshly criticizing the police. Cuomo laid out a set of proposals to add 5,000 officers with new incentives such as signing bonuses and retention stipends at the event that amounted to a reboot of his campaign, complete with a new logo and slogan “to build a new NYC.”
In a proposal that took direct aim at Mamdani, the former governor said he would add 400 officers to the Strategic Response Group, a specialized NYPD unit known as the “SRG” that responded to last week’s shooting but which has been controversial for its aggressive handling of protesters.
“They are key to counter-terrorism, key to mass protests,” he said. “It’s only going to get worse, not better.”
Mamdani has said he would disband the unit, pointing to the millions of dollars the city has paid to settle civil lawsuits over its treatment of protesters.
His public safety plan has centered on hiring more social and mental health care workers so that police officers are not depended on to respond to incidents involving the homeless and mentally ill.
“We are making it more and more difficult for them to respond to the very responsibilities that drew them to the job in the first place,” Mamdani said.
As a mayoral candidate, Mamdani has distanced himself from some of his past statements and said he is no longer interested in reducing police funding. But his previous criticism of the NYPD as “racist” and “anti-queer” has opened him up to questions about how he would earn the trust of the country’s largest police department.
“I don’t think the assemblyman understands public safety at all,” Cuomo said.
At the same time, his relationship with the family of the slain officer, a South Asian Muslim, has blunted some of those attacks.
Adams has similarly disagreed with Mamdani over policing and the SRG. At a press conference on Monday morning, Adams credited the SRG team with doing “floor-by-floor search” inside the Midtown building where the shooting took place. The gunman was later found dead with a self-inflicted wound to the chest.
“Thank God, the SRG was there to go inside that building and do a floor by floor search,” Adams said. “Specialized, well-trained law enforcement officers know how to do their specialty.”
The mayor also criticized Mamdani’s recent comment that hate crimes could also be diverted to a different type of police team. Adams also referenced a 2020 podcast interview where his rival questioned the way police handle domestic violence complaints.
Adams cited a domestic violence complaint in 2022, which turned violent and resulted in the fatal shooting of two police officers.
“That’s irresponsible and reckless,” Adams said of Mamdani’s suggestion that police are not best equipped to respond to such incidents.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
