New York City hits high temps as mayoral candidates make their final push on Primary Day

Politico

24-06-2025

NEW YORK — As voters headed to the polls in New York City in triple-digit temps to cast a vote in the contentious mayoral primary Tuesday, the once-clear frontrunner Andrew Cuomo appeared to be on his back foot — and begging.
'We can do it, but it's going to take all of us,' Cuomo said Monday night in a leaked private call with health care worker union members entrusted with getting out the vote for him. 'Please, please, please make the special effort.'
Real-feel temps in New York City exceeded 105 degrees Tuesday, and older voters — who make up Cuomo's base — faced dangerous conditions across the city.
By 12 p.m., the city's board of elections said 605,543 voters — including 384,338 who opted for early voting — checked into polling locations to cast their ballot.
What started as a race defined by a decisive frontrunner and a distant, crowded field of candidates has winnowed down to a two-person race, with recent polls showing Zohran Mamdani has closed the gap between him and Cuomo.
'Our vote doesn't tend to come out until Election Day,' Cuomo warned in the private call. 'The problem is, Election Day is tomorrow, and it's supposed to be near 100 degrees, so we have to make sure we get people out early in the morning, later in the evening, but it's going to be all about the turnout.'
Cuomo spokesperson Rich Azzopardi said of the call, 'It was a portion of a GOTV call he did with members, which is typical.'
In one section of Brooklyn, the air conditioning system broke in a retirement home doubling as a polling site — one example of the difficulty posed by the heat.
'Do you or someone you know have a portable AC to lend or donate for the day?' Council Member Jen Gutiérrez wrote in a public plea on social media from one of the city's 1,213 polling stations. 'We need it to keep voters cool and seniors safe.' (The city's board of elections said it was sending over two fans, which Gutiérrez said was insufficient.)
As some poll workers boiled inside, Mamdani campaigned with fellow mayoral candidate Brad Lander on Manhattan's high-turnout Upper West Side. Mamdani's bodyguard handed the candidates, who cross endorsed each other recently, bottles of blue Gatorade.
'Goal No. 1: Add our votes together to block Andrew Cuomo,' Lander said. 'At the same time, something quite beautiful has happened. People are excited by the idea of a politics that's more collaborative. They like the idea of a Muslim New Yorker and a Jewish New Yorker campaigning together.'
'This could be the tonic to the politics of the Trump administration,' Mamdani added. 'It is what people are looking for. They don't want a mirror image of Washington, D.C. They want an antidote to it.'
Lander also found himself on the defensive, with voters criticizing the city comptroller for cross-endorsing somebody they consider antisemitic.
'He does not support Hamas,' Lander told a voter, who declined to give her name. When she kept pushing, Lander tried to end the conversation. 'I respect your point of view and that will have to be a place we disagree,' he said.
The anti-Cuomo alliance was also felt in Brooklyn's Prospect Lefferts Gardens, a volunteer for Zellnor Myrie — who is polling in the low single digits — said canvassers from competing campaigns aligned against Cuomo were sharing water.
'That kind of shit is only possible with ranked-choice voting,' the volunteer Matthew Baer said. 'It's wild. It's kind of nice. Everybody's kind of working together — except for one.'
As Mamdani's die-hard volunteers fanned out to drive turnout Tuesday, Cuomo's operation relied on unions and a well-funded super PAC to get out the vote, in some cases paying people to hand out literature.
'In all our field work, we've not seen Cuomo campaign field people out at all,' said one operative involved in campaign work, who requested anonymity to speak frankly about the Cuomo camp. 'It's nothing short of shocking, the lack of field infrastructure and ground presence from the campaign that has considered itself the leading campaign.'
Azzopardi pushed back on that claim.
'We've had an active and robust targeting, field and pull program for months focusing on expanding and bringing out our base and — yes — we're humbled to have the support and the assistance of unions representing 650,000 working New Yorkers,' he said in a statement. 'This is a campaign of work horses, not show ponies, and I'd like to remind people that the last time we ran against a Silver Spoon Socialist in a Trump backlash year, we actively expanded the electorate and Governor Cuomo ended up getting an historical all time high number of votes.'
He was referring to Cynthia Nixon, an actor who was raised in a walkup by a single mother and lost to Cuomo in the 2018 gubernatorial primary.
Cuomo voted around 10:30 a.m. in midtown Manhattan, where he noted that 'yes, it's a little bit warm.'
'We've learned the hard way that when you don't vote and only a small number of people come out, you often get a perverse outcome,' he said. 'Yes it may be a little inconvenient to vote on a hot day, but vote today and change the trajectory of the city of New York.' Cuomo said.
As Baer, the Myrie volunteer, was out trying to generate votes for his candidate, he did spot one canvasser for Cuomo. But the person soon asked him for a Zellnor Myrie T-shirt, and, according to Baer, told him, 'I need a job for today, so I'm working for Cuomo, but I like Zellnor.'