Zohran Mamdani’s dithering performance in the final mayoral debate pointed up the ongoing problem with his campaign. It’s a house of cards built on sound bites and laced with antisemitism. But he stumbles and dodges when asked to venture beyond his surface-level focus on affordability and his four, and only four, narrow planks: child care, buses, rent, and grocery stores.

It is not only naïve and maddening, but dangerous for a future mayor and points up how unfit he is for the office.

While Andrew Cuomo has plenty of well-documented flaws, including those that drove him from the governor’s mansion in 2021, a decade as governor proves that he is a competent executive and could well do the job of running the city government.

He knows which issues matter to New Yorkers and how to act on them. Mamdani, with no experience running anything, offers no such assurance.

The Daily News, therefore, endorses Cuomo to be the next mayor of New York.

The real Mamdani surfaces

Mamdani, at 34, likes to present himself as a youthful new type of politician. He likes to say he doesn’t want to talk about what can’t be done and flashes his optimism like a shiny plastic badge. But governing is, in the end, about doing and Mamdani has proven himself as callow and mealy-mouthed as any grizzled hack in skirting questions that put him on the spot or actually force him to explain how he might execute on his game plan.

The pattern repeats itself on issue after issue.

How will he pay for his expensive plans if his hoped-for state tax increases don’t materialize? His combined programs will cost billions every year and his goal to have Albany impose two new taxes, one on the personal income of top earners and the other on corporations, are both dead letters in the state Capitol. Mamdani waves away any concern, when in truth it means the initiatives would be nothing more than unredeemed campaign wishes: No universal child care, no buses without fares, no nothing left of his promises.

How will he manage the NYPD, that not too long he called for “defunding” and accused the majority nonwhite force of being “racist” and a “threat to public safety?” Mamdani claims he’s changed his views. Still, he has no plans to address attrition and rejects calls to increase headcount, including from the incumbent police commissioner, Jessica Tisch, who Mamdani says he wants to keep on. Pressed to answer how his new proposed social worker-based Department of Community Safety would deal with dangerous situations, again, Mamdani has no clear answers.

He says he is opposed to mayoral control of the city’s public schools, but doesn’t explain why or what his alternative is. He offers only general comments about parental input. If mayoral control lapses, it would bring back to life the dysfunctional old Board of Education, with the five borough presidents having the commanding say and leaving the mayor, the students and their families to the BPs’ politicking and patronage. Mamdani also wants to end the highly-sought gifted and talented programs for the youngest students, but what he doesn’t realize is that doing away with accelerated learning in the early grades will cause families to abandon the public school system for religious or private schools or by moving out of the city.

With development and housing a critical issue, Mamdani won’t say where he stands on the critical ballot questions related to actually producing more desperately needed housing in New York. One key measure would end the antiquated practice of allowing a single Council member to torpedo development in their district. The only smart answer is Yes, which Cuomo supports. During the debate, even the audience lost patience as Mamdani danced away from the issue.

Looking for details on his plan to decriminalize prostitution? Experts say that’s even worse than legalization. And this is not some old stand of Mamdani’s, like he says of his anti-cops tweets. It is his current position, as he cosponsored the decriminalization bill in the state Assembly three months after he began his mayoral run, and could well lead to ending the arrests of johns and pimps and madams. Want details? It’s not part of his campaign as he again ducks tough questions.

Mamdani’s efforts to thread a needle on Israel and Gaza are sadly transparent. “Globalize the Intifada” — to many — means killing Jews everywhere. First he wouldn’t condemn it, then he said he would discourage its use. Sorry, you can’t — rightly — rail against Islamophobia on the one hand while excusing the rising voices of antisemitism. Mamdani’s disdain for Israel is palpable but he is trying to put a coat of acceptable paint over it. Just more hypocrisy.

As for his pledged rent freeze, forcing the city Rent Guidelines Board to ignore state statutes and the agency’s own rules and blindly vote for zero increases on stabilized apartments for four years in a row probably is illegal. But even if it does happen, it only puts off until the future the inevitable rent increases, which will have to be larger to catch up with inflation, which Mamdani can’t stop. What will happen if a landlord can’t balance the rising costs and a frozen income and just leaves units vacant? Mamdani said the city would help the landlords. How? Again, no answer to that one.

On more than one occasion, Mamdani has been asked about any or all of the above.

His answer? I want to talk about affordability. Free. Free. Free. Like a good salesman, he knows what he is trying to sell and sticks to it.

But it’s important to pa y attention to what Mamdani is not talking about. He won’t answer when it gets tough. He may be appealing on the surface with his slogans and promises, but underneath there is a hollowness that will ultimately disappoint his supporters and put New York in a bad place.

Why Cuomo?

Unlike Mamdani, Cuomo has a very long, very public record on just about everything you could imagine, having been a governor, state attorney general and HUD secretary under President Bill Clinton.

Cuomo would come to City Hall with more top level government experience than any of his 110 predecessors going back four centuries. He is strong on controlling spending, having passed on-time budgets in Albany. From housing to jobs to schools to policing to health care, to even parks, Cuomo has done it and knows how to run an administration.

It was Cuomo who brought in same-sex marriage, the $15 minimum wage and congestion pricing. And he is a proven builder who has raised the new Tappan Zee Bridge, new LaGuardia Airport, new Moynihan Train Hall and new Second Ave. subway.

As mayor, Cuomo would prioritize building more housing at all strata in every neighborhood, which is why he wants a Yes vote on the ballot questions. Only more units will solve the shortage and also bring down the rents for everyone. The mayor is also the landlord for the hundreds of thousands of new New Yorkers who live in NYCHA, which finally must get the attention it needs.

To ease the strain on the NYPD and reduce the budget-breaking overtime, Cuomo wants to boost the ranks by 5,000 new cops and deploy those cops to accelerate the downward trend in crime stats. With less forced OT, more veteran cops will stay on the job instead of putting in their papers and signing up to work elsewhere.

One place those cops will be is the subway, assisting outreach workers to find and remove the unfortunate people who, sick with mental illness or addiction, or both, are living underground amid squalor. Using the newly strengthened involuntary commitment laws, those folks will get the compassionate care they need. The same goes for street homelessness. They don’t just need homes, they also need intensive treatment to help them reclaim their lives.

Since Albany passed a misguided law to require smaller class sizes, Cuomo may tap into his old bargaining skills to get Albany to pay for the mandate they imposed, as he will carefully guard the city’s own budget.

New York isn’t a city that stands still, it must advance or fall back. With Mamdani we risk regressing. With Cuomo we can move ahead.

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