The Democratic candidates vying to be New York City’s next mayor spent Wednesday night’s debate making a case for why they would be the best person to defend the city from President Donald Trump.
The debate unfolded hours after Trump threatened Columbia University’s accreditation as part of a crackdown on universities across the country and arguments that colleges are fostering antisemitism in the United States. When moderators asked the nine candidates on stage for their reactions to the news, multiple called the move an overreach of the administration’s power.
Trump’s threat against Columbia is “literally attacking the foundation of democracy,” said former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, the frontrunner in the mayoral race.
That was just the tip of the iceberg when it came to attacks on the president. Many candidates talked up their experience during the first Trump administration to answer questions about how they would navigate leading the city now.
“I know how to deal with Donald Trump because I’ve dealt with him before many times,” Cuomo said. “We’ve had many encounters. We fought on a daily basis through COVID, and I won many of those battles. I fought him on [Immigration and Customs Enforcement].”
Trump’s Justice Department launched an investigation earlier this year over allegations that Cuomo and his team intentionally undercounted nursing home deaths by editing portions of a report during the COVID-19 pandemic. Multiple candidates at the debate said they don’t believe the administration’s investigation is in good faith, but that they agree with allegations that Cuomo lied to Congress about the numbers.
Cuomo was often criticized during the first Trump administration for failing to call out the president by name when lambasting federal policies. He was unambiguous on Wednesday.
“I am the last person on this stage that Mr. Trump wants to see as mayor, and that’s why I should be the first choice for the people of the city to have as mayor,” he said.
New York state representative Zohran Mamdani, meanwhile, painted himself as the opposite of Cuomo. Mamdani has leaned into traction he’s gained from his left-leaning policy platform and his attempts to distance himself from the national Democratic party, and was in second place in the race last week according to Emerson College Polling.
“I don’t think there’s any question that there’s any mayor here that will be free from being attacked by Donald Trump,” Mamdani said. “What’s more important, however, is that we have a mayor who will actually fight, and that’s what I will do.”
Mamdani also leaned into attacks on Cuomo’s record, including alleging that Cuomo’s mayoral campaign is “funded by the very billionaires who put Donald Trump in D.C.”
Billionaire Trump backer Bill Ackman donated more than $200,000 to a super PAC that’s backing Cuomo, and Ken Langone, the founder of The Home Depot and a GOP megadonor, has also supported the former governor. (Ackman also donated about $2,000 directly to mayoral candidate Whitney Tilson earlier this year.)
Cuomo — who is attempting a political comeback after findings that he sexually harassed 13 women who were state employees while he was governor — spent a large portion of the debate defending himself from attacks by other candidates. But recent polls showed him leading the race by more than 10 percentage points last week.
Much of the Trump-centered talk on the stage Wednesday was about the administration’s rollbacks to federal funding, which could impact hundreds of millions of dollars of New York City’s budget.
“We should be ready to withhold our federal taxes,” New York state senator Jessica Ramos said when asked how she’d handle federal funding losses if she became mayor. “When Trump unlawfully takes away funding from the things that we need, we have to play chess and we have to be smart, and our taxpayer dollars are our leverage.”
Michael Blake, a former New York state representative and former Democratic National Committee vice chair, echoed support for withholding tax dollars from the federal government.
Mamdani emphasized the need to raise city taxes to make up for gaps in federal funding.
“The Donald Trump administration will use the fact that they fund percent of our city budget as leverage over us to try and give up whichever category of New Yorkers,” Mamdani said. “Ultimately, what we need to do is tell those same institutions, we will provide them that funding and we’ll get that funding by taxing the 1% and the wealthiest corporations right here in New York City.”
The administration’s immigration agenda was also a point of contention. ICE has carried out multiple arrests in New York City over the past weeks, including that of international student Mahmoud Khalil, a lawful permanent resident who is detained at an ICE facility in Louisiana.
Blake said he would ban ICE from places of worship, and New York state senator Zellnor Myrie said he would ignore federal immigration laws.
Multiple candidates also suggested they’d take legal action against Trump.
It’s a strategy that’s familiar to Democrats in New York, with Attorney General Letitia James filing more than two-dozen lawsuits — including against the president’s tariffs and his executive order halting offshore wind projects — against the administration since Trump took office.
New York City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, a close political ally of James, said she would also get involved in lawsuits if she became mayor.
Cuomo, however, criticized that approach, arguing that the path to standing up to Trump is through other means, like Congress.
“The way you fight him is not by suing him. Yes, of course, you sue him, but he gets sued 10 times before he gets out of bed in the morning, right?” Cuomo said. “We need a national coalition we can put together of like-minded states and cities that will oppose these actions, and then we’re going to have to eventually beat him politically in the Congress, but you cannot give in to his demands.”
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Shifra Dayak is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.