|
In a local result that is nearly the reverse of the citywide tallies in this week’s Mayoral election, victor Zohran Mamdani lost Lower Manhattan to Andrew Cuomo by 12 percentage points. In the citywide race, Mr. Mamdani (the Democratic candidate) won with 50.4 percent of the vote, while Mr. Cuomo (running as an independent) lost the election with 41.6 percent of ballots.
Within Lower Manhattan (defined here as Community District 1, roughly the area south of a line formed by Canal, Pearl, and Baxter Streets, and the Brooklyn Bridge), the Mayor-elect trailed the former Governor by 2,803 votes, out of 22,936 ballots cast.
Broken down by neighborhoods, Mr. Cuomo won in Battery Park City (with 2,944 votes out of 4,863), Tribeca (with 4,692 votes out of 7,525), and the South Street Seaport/Civic Center (with 1,314 votes out of 2,551). Mr. Mamdani prevailed only in the Financial District, where he won 4,187 votes out of 7,997). (The Republican candidate, Curtis Sliwa, garnered 3.6 percent of the local vote, with 841 ballots.)
This week’s outcome reversed the local results of the Democratic primary (held in June), in which Mr. Mamdani defeated Mr. Cuomo, but carried Lower Manhattan only by 11 votes, out of a total of 9,871 ballots cast. That amounted to a margin of slightly less than one-tenth of one percent. But the June result mirrored this week’s tally in one respect: In the primary election, Mr. Cuomo outpolled Mr. Mamdani in the same trio of neighborhoods, winning in Battery Park City, Tribeca, and the Seaport/Civic Center area. Only in the Financial District did Mr. Mamdani take the lead, but his margin there was so wide – nearly doubling Mr. Cuomo’s total – that it offset his deficit elsewhere.
Local residents were sharply divided on the Mayoral race, reflecting the rancor of the discourse throughout the campaign. Kendall Chapman, a Tribeca resident who recently graduated from nursing school, said, “I voted for Zohran Mamdani primarily because I think he actually cares about New Yorkers. Policy-wise, although I would love for him to accomplish everything he ran on, even if he doesn’t accomplish anything, I trust him to make more empathetic choices, explore our options, and challenge political status quo more than the other candidates.”
“It doesn’t hurt that I’m voting against a repeated sexual assaulter who has a demonstrated lack of integrity and someone who, for all his amazing quotes, believes teenagers who can’t even vote should be charged as adults, and that we should reinstate qualified immunity for an even larger NYPD,” Ms. Chapman continued. “I’m not naive enough to think it will be easy or entirely possible for Mamdani to accomplish all his campaign goals, but as soon as we write off as impossible change oriented toward helping people, we get stuck in the political environment the nation finds itself in now. We need to reimagine how we support each other as a City and I think Zohran will do that. I want change in politics, not passiveness or regression. I crave humanism and Mamdani feels like hope in that direction.”
Maud Maron, a leader among Lower Manhattan conservatives, said, “I never considered voting for Mamdani, because his ideas are retreads of failed socialist and communist policies that have immiserated and impoverished millions of people around the world. The fact that his antisemitism is a feature and not a bug of his platform disgusts me. And his self-righteous luxury belief system is everything I do not want in an elected official – from Mayor to dog catcher.”
But Tribeca resident Jess Coleman said, “for so many young New Yorkers, it feels like we’re being pushed out, like the City belongs only to those who already have financial security. Whether it’s his commitment to building more housing, transforming our streets to serve people and not just cars, or making childcare accessible and affordable, Zohran was laser-focused on the things that actually make it possible to build a life here. He made us feel like we belong in New York’s story – that this city we love so much still has a place for us.”
Matthew Fenton
| 
