Zohran Mamdani Scores Major Boost in NYC Mayoral Race With Conservatives
Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content.
Zohran Mamdani has scored an unlikely boost in New York City's mayoral race — from conservatives.
The latest Siena poll, conducted between August 4-7, shows that 23 percent of conservatives back Mamdani, which is higher than former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo's 18 percent and New York Mayor Eric Adams' 9 percent. Cuomo and Adams are expected to battle for the mayoralty as independent candidates in the general election in November.
Mamdani sent political shock waves across New York in June when he defeated Cuomo in the Democratic primary.
Since then, some polls have shown the Queens Assemblymember miles ahead of his opponents, with Mamdani leading among almost all demographics.
NYC Mayoral Candidate Zohran Mamdani speaks during a press conference outside of the Jacob K. Javitz Federal Building on Aug. 7, 2025, in New York City.
NYC Mayoral Candidate Zohran Mamdani speaks during a press conference outside of the Jacob K. Javitz Federal Building on Aug. 7, 2025, in New York City.
Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images
This is a developing story and is being updated.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
New York Post
2 minutes ago
- New York Post
Chris Christie applauds Trump for ‘taking responsibility' with DC crime crackdown: ‘No excuse'
Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie lauded President Donald Trump for taking decisive action to crack down on crime in the nation's capital, telling Fox News' Brian Kilmeade that the move is not only right, but it's also long overdue. 'It's a federal city, and I think the president is taking responsibility for what he needs to take responsibility for and what Joe Biden didn't take responsibility for,' he said Monday on 'The Brian Kilmeade Show.' Advertisement 'There's no excuse for our nation's capital to be a crime-ridden place.' Trump, on Monday, announced that he is activating National Guard troops and is taking over the Metropolitan Police Department to tackle crime in Washington, D.C., after beefing up federal law enforcement presence in the area on Saturday. He told reporters at a press conference that the National Guard deployment seeks to 'reestablish law, order, and public safety' in D.C. and that the Metropolitan Police Department is being placed under the authority of Attorney General Pam Bondi to mitigate crime. 4 Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie lauded President Donald Trump for taking decisive action to crack down on crime in the nation's capital. Boston Globe via Getty Images Advertisement 4 Trump announced that he is activating National Guard troops and is taking over the Metropolitan Police Department to tackle crime in Washington, D.C. AP The moves come in the wake of a violent assault on a former Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) staffer on Aug. 3 in Washington's Logan Circle. Christie, who has been a vocal Trump critic at times, said the current state of lawlessness should be an 'embarrass[ment],' and he hopes the president's plan succeeds for everyone's benefit. 'We have people from all over the world who want to come to Washington, D.C. to see the seat of the greatest democracy, and when they walk around the city, we should be embarrassed,' he said. Advertisement 4 U.S. military personnel walk outside the D.C. Armory after U.S. President Donald Trump's announcement to deploy the National Guard. REUTERS 4 'It's a federal city, and I think the president is taking responsibility for what he needs to take responsibility for and what Joe Biden didn't take responsibility for,' Christie said. Corey Sipkin for the NY POST 'So I'm glad the president's doing what he's doing. I hope he does it well, because if he does well, everybody who lives in Washington and everybody who visits Washington are going to benefit by it.' Advertisement Christie also weighed in on the New Jersey gubernatorial race, believing Republican Jack Ciattarelli has a 'legitimate shot' to defeat Democratic candidate Mikie Sherrill. 'People in New Jersey are growing very tired of one-party rule in the state,' he said.
The Hill
2 minutes ago
- The Hill
Trump BLS pick suggests suspending monthly jobs report over data concerns
President Trump's nominee to lead the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) suggested the agency should stop issuing monthly jobs reports, claiming that the data the agency uses to calculate them is not reliable. E.J. Antoni, whom Trump nominated Monday to lead BLS, said the agency should 'suspend issuing the monthly jobs reports, but keep publishing more accurate, though less timely, quarterly data.' 'Major decision-makers from Wall Street to D.C. rely on these numbers, and a lack of confidence in the data has far-reaching consequences,' the nominee told Fox Business. Trump nominated Antoni, the chief economist at the far-right Heritage Foundation think tank, to lead BLS after the president fired the agency's previous chief, Erika McEntarfer, after the release of the dismal July jobs report. The report showed not only showed meager job growth last month, but also included steep downward revisions to the May and June employment reports. On net, the report showed the U.S. adding roughly 100,000 jobs over the past three months — barely a third of what economists deem necessary to prevent unemployment from rising. Trump fired McEntarfer the same day, accusing her and the agency of manipulating jobs data to make Republicans look bad and hide Democratic mismanagement of the economy. The president has provided no evidence to support his claim, and BLS veterans from both parties have said that manipulating employment data for political purposes is nearly impossible based on the way the agency calculates it. BLS also frequently makes revisions to employment and inflation reports based on data compiled and received after the reports have already been released. While most economists attribute the scale of recent BLS revisions to post-COVID-19 pandemic issues with data collection and survey response times, Antoni is among a handful pro-Trump economists who've accused BLS of massaging data to protect Democrats and harm Republicans. 'For four years, the Biden administration and its sycophants in the media kept telling Americans that we had the strongest economy in history,' Antoni wrote in a May op-ed published by Townhall, claiming the Labor Department 'admitted' that thousands of jobs added during the prior administration, 'were fake.' 'The financial pain of families was ignored while misleading (and often inaccurate) statistics were paraded on the news to convince Americans not to believe their lying eyes or empty wallets,' he added at the time. Antoni, who contributed to Project 2025 blueprint for Trump's second term, is expected to be easily confirmed by the Senate, where he'll only need a majority of votes from the GOP-controlled upper chamber. But his actions at BLS could cast a shadow over the agency's influential reports on employment and inflation — especially if he makes major changes to the frequency or compilation of those reports. Economists across the ideological spectrum have accused Antoni of making misleading and inaccurate claims about the economy to support Trump's policies and criticize Democrats. 'EJ Antoni's commentary on labor statistics has unfortunately been quite poor,' Alan Cole, a senior economist at the conservative Tax Foundation, wrote on social platform X. 'I do not think it's anywhere near the capability or knowledge of e.g. Keith Hall or William Beach, both excellent Republican appointees, the latter of whom was appointed by Trump in his first term.' Kyle Pomerleau, senior fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, said on social media, 'There are a lot of competent conservative economists that could do this job. E.J. is not one of them.'
The Hill
2 minutes ago
- The Hill
We need more budget bipartisanship, not less
The director of the Office of Management and Budget, Russ Vought, was recently quoted saying that 'the appropriations process has to be less bipartisan.' While it's easy to think this would lead to less of the frustrating gridlock that can overtake the budgetary process, Vought is both procedurally and substantively wrong: The answer is more bipartisanship. If this sounds naïve, consider the alternative. The first and most obvious issue is realism. Thanks to the Senate filibuster, 60 votes are required to invoke cloture and end debate before proceeding to a final vote on legislation. With only 53 Republicans in the Senate, it's easy for Democrats to grind things to a halt, and vice-versa under Democratic majorities. Unless Vought is implicitly calling for an end to the filibuster — an unlikely event, though Trump has argued for it in the past — expecting government funding bills to be passed without a large, messy bipartisan effort is fanciful thinking. Presumably, Vought wants to make it easier to pass spending cuts such as the recent $9 billion rescissions package. The recissions process is notably exempted from the filibuster, meaning only a simple majority is required to rescind money which was previously appropriated (most likely with some degree of bipartisan support). We shouldn't scoff at those savings, but any frustration on Vought's part is understandable. $9 billion doesn't correct our budget problem. But going after the rest of appropriations won't, either. Last year, we spent $1.81 trillion on discretionary spending — the portion of the budget subject to appropriations — while the entire budget deficit was $1.83 trillion. Instead, we must fix mandatory spending programs — such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid — that are on autopilot outside of the appropriations process. But President Trump has repeatedly said these are off-limits. So, sure, we got $9 billion rescinded on a partisan basis. We also got $1.1 trillion in partisan spending cuts in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, a win for fiscal responsibility greatly overshadowed by $4.5 trillion in lost revenue. Indeed, as the act just illustrated, Vought's preferred partisan approach will fail to meaningfully fix our fiscal woes. That's because every large-scale partisan reform invites partisan opposition. For years, Democrats attacked Republicans over the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, deriding it as a giveaway to the rich. Republicans returned the favor in 2021 and 2022, relentlessly hammering Democrats for the American Rescue Plan and Inflation Reduction Act, respectively. Now it's the Democrats' turn again with the 'big, beautiful, bill,',with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) recently stating that it would 'rip healthcare away … and steal food from the mouths of hungry children, seniors, and veterans.' That's a strong statement about a bill that only cuts noninterest spending by about 1.5 percent over the decade. To be clear, holding politicians accountable for their voting record is essential. But this partisan cycle encourages politicians to accentuate policy differences — which are then used against incumbents during elections — rather than find areas of agreement. Taking away the filibuster or other processes that frustrate the party in power would turn political whiplash into even greater policy whiplash. Already, Republicans have repealed about $500 billion in IRA green tax credits to help finance the recently passed spending bill. For years, they tried to repeal the Affordable Care Act. And it's especially apparent in the back-and-forth we see in regulations and executive orders, with recent administrations immediately seeking to undo the actions of its predecessor. That puts any one-party reforms, regardless of how essential, at risk of being reversed. Even after considering the political blowback and fickleness of partisan reforms, some may dismiss fiscal bipartisanship as unrealistic. After all, Democrats only care about the Green New Deal while Republicans just want to enrich their wealthy donors, or so we're told. Setting these and other tropes aside, there are multiple bipartisan groups in Congress calling for fiscal responsibility and addressing the national debt. Each member of these groups holds different views on how spending should be reduced or revenue increased, but there is clearly a willingness to have those debates. Embracing bipartisanship, rather than lamenting it as so many have done, would bring common ground to the forefront in a way that's been missing. And so, while some will blame a lack of willpower for our fiscal situation, I blame the partisan approach that's been failing lately. It forces politicians more often into choosing between what they believe is right or what gives them the best chance for reelection. Americans deserve better. Let's brush aside the political barriers preventing bipartisanship and work towards our common objectives once again.
