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New Yorkers will discover the identity of their next mayor this election day, in a race that will determine who runs and protects the nation's largest city at a time when the former president has vowed to send armed forces to the city.

In this context, New York has experienced a mayoral election that has pitted two distinctly opposing Democratic figures against one another. The election has turned into an increasingly bitter face-off, laced with accusations of racism and Islamophobia, but it is the ideological divide between the two leading contenders that could have significant consequences for how the Democratic party performs in next year's midterm elections.

The Progressive Challenger

In the progressive corner is the democratic socialist, the 34-year-old progressive candidate whose rapid ascent and grassroots campaign has attracted global notice. Representing the old guard is Andrew Cuomo, the former Democratic New York governor now running as an independent – and benefiting from the backing of wealthy contributors and big business.

With days to go, it is Mamdani, the one-time underdog who defeated Cuomo in the party primary who is firmly installed as the frontrunner. Mamdani, who has run on a agenda of economic justice and promised to halt rent increases for about two million New Yorkers, has outpaced his rival by significant margins across all surveys taken in the fall, and it is very much the progressive's election to throw away.

The Controversial Campaign

Yet, Cuomo, who resigned as the state's leader in recent years amid allegations of sexual harassment, has made it clear he will battle to the end, and not necessarily in an fair manner. He has trashed his opponent's goals as unachievable, and in recent days chuckled along as a radio host made anti-Muslim comments about the candidate, who is a Muslim. Recently, the independent was widely condemned as bigoted after posting an artificial intelligence video that included a slew of racist stereotypes and showed his opponent freeing a convicts.

It's been a rather grubby conclusion to an race that could be key to the direction that the Democratic party, struggling in its reaction to the former president's power moves, takes in the near future.

National Implications

If Mamdani wins convincingly, the establishment party leaders who have declined to support his bid will be forced to reckon with a message that has resonated with Americans' anger at inequality, inflation and the political elite. It would be difficult for Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries not to embrace at least a portion of Mamdani's progressive proposals about economic justice, given the newcomer has generated an excitement within the party perhaps not witnessed since the Vermont senator ran for president in 2016.

However, if Cuomo, who had been predicted to win easily in the June primary, complete a surprising comeback victory, it could cement the party's current model of cautious, uninspiring resistance – a strategy that has infuriated grassroots members. A New York defeat of Mamdani's progressive, positive message could convince Schumer and Jeffries that the best plan is to remain in the political center – even as surveys show the present version of the Democratic party is deeply unpopular nationwide.

Campaign Energy

Residents of the city appear to favor the Mamdani vision. Surveys show that his backers are far more enthusiastic about their choice than his opponent's supporters, something that has been evident throughout the campaign. The candidate's engaging content on social media, his hopeful outlook for New York and his willingness to actually get out and meet people in the city has attracted an force of more than 50,000 volunteers, many of them young or first-time voters.

Personal Attacks

However, the former governor, in his late sixties, continues to fight. And with the stakes stacked against him, the former governor has resorted to ugly messaging in the final days.

After spending months throwing basically everything at his opponent to see what might stick, the independent has concentrated on attacking the candidate personally. He has called Mamdani, who was of Ugandan origin to South Asian heritage, an “extremist”, and popped up on conservative media for an interview with Maria Bartiromo, where Cuomo claimed New York “will not survive” his opponent as mayor. It hit bottom recently, when the former governor chuckled and said “that’s another problem” after a broadcaster said Mamdani would “cheer” another 9/11-style attack.

Political Landscape

The line of attack mirrors much of what the former president, who has deployed the national guard to Washington DC and warned to do the same to New York, has said about the progressive, and maybe that shouldn’t come as a surprise. A group of wealthy residents, including some who donated to the Republican in the last presidential race, have pumped millions into trying to get Cuomo elected, as other powerful voices have pressured Curtis Sliwa to drop out from the race.

Political Histories

As far as the his team, and his wealthy backers, are worried, it should never have come to this. When the assemblyman, one of 150 New York state assembly members, started his campaign for mayor in October 2024, not many had known him, and in reality, few even noticed.

The former governor, by comparison, eased his way into the race in this year and became the instant favorite. He was the political heavyweight who apparently held all the advantages. The classic political insider, he had married a Kennedy and served in Bill Clinton’s administration. He assumed office as New York governor in 2011, seventeen years after his parent, Mario Cuomo, stepped down from the identical role.

Mamdani, who was elected to the New York state assembly in recently, does not have the comparable background. But his dedication to providing no-cost transit and free childcare – along with the freeze-the-rent pledge – offer a brighter outlook of the city's direction than Cuomo’s dire warnings about “mayhem” and rising criminal activity, and his promise to increase police presence.

Campaign Controversies

Nevertheless, Mamdani has encountered some challenges in the final phase, after video emerged suggesting him suggesting the New York police department and the Israel Defense Forces were connected.

“We have to make clear that when the boot of the NYPD is on your neck, it’s been laced by the Israeli military,” Mamdani said in the clip, recorded at a Democratic Socialists of America gathering in 2023. Mamdani, a longtime critic of the Israeli government who has said the country is engaging in atrocities in the Palestinian territory, suggested he was criticizing cooperative programs between the NYPD and Israeli forces.

Powerful Moment

With the election nearing, Mamdani appears to have won empathy and backing, however, for his response to Cuomo’s increasing rhetoric.

Mamdani responded to Cuomo’s terrorism comments in an heartfelt recording. In it, the candidate remembered how, when he first campaigned for the legislature, a family member advised to him that he did not have to disclose about his Muslim faith. It was a realization, he said, that many Muslim New Yorkers had been told “again and again”: “That security could only be found in the shadows of our city. That it is in those shadows alone where Muslims could embrace their full identities, and that if we were to emerge from those shadows, then it is in those silence that we must leave our faith.”

Speaking to the behavior of Cuomo and Sliwa, who has claimed Mamd