Five Highlights From Our Mayoral Forum

We gave each candidate the opportunity to ask one of their rivals a question. You might have expected the knives to come out here — and they did, but not for anyone on stage.

Mamdani kicked things off: “Brad, my friend, what is the worst thing that Andrew Cuomo did?”

Lander asked Stringer why Cuomo has been so reluctant to criticize President Donald Trump. (“If this doesn’t work out for you, you’re going to be a staff writer for Focus,” Stringer quipped — which we’ll interpret to mean asking good questions!)

Stringer asked Mamdani for his diagnosis of Cuomo and Eric Adams’s mistaken understanding of the city’s relationship with Albany.

Cuomo dominates the polls, and his rivals would likely have to band together to have any hope of defeating him. None of the candidates agreed to make any cross-endorsements on stage — but they urged attendees not to rank Cuomo, and Lander recommended that voters rank both Mamdani and Stringer on their ballots. A few days after the forum, Mamdani released a video fundraising on behalf of another candidate, City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams.

Mamdani, who has leapt to second in the polls since entering the race in October with little name recognition, has focused his campaign around bold ideas like a rent freeze, free buses, and city-owned grocery stores.

One of those ideas met resistance from his fellow progressives on stage.

“I am not optimistic that the city can do a great job running grocery stores,” Lander said.

Lander has some big plans of his own, including one to build tens of thousands of affordable housing units on some of New York City’s twelve municipal golf courses.

Mamdani called that proposal a “good idea,” but Stringer characterized it as campaign fodder. “In campaigns, you send out a lot of policy to see what sticks,” he said. “With a lot of the ideas that we all have – I sometimes leave the forums saying, we have a $115 billion budget and we’ve spent $200 billion.”

He later added: “if you can build on golf courses you can damn well have a grocery store, too.”

Stringer’s plan to put a cop on every subway wasn’t supported by the other two candidates, meanwhile, with Lander instead emphasizing the need for more outreach workers.

The role of New York City mayor is sometimes described as the country’s second toughest job. President Donald Trump is likely to make it even tougher: He has already clawed back $80 million the city has spent housing migrants, tried to kill congestion pricing, threatened to withhold federal transit funding if the city didn’t curtail crime on subways, and cut federal programs that many New Yorkers rely on.

That could be the tip of the iceberg. Lander said he’d boost the city’s reserves to prepare for the possibility of bigger Trump cuts, as well as look for savings in claims against the city.

Mamdani said he’d seek to raise about $10 billion in taxes to weather any cuts, including by matching the corporate tax rate of “the radical socialist utopia of New Jersey.”

Lander said he’d support higher taxes on the wealthy if the federal government puts more money in their pocket by raising the SALT cap, but that “you’ll have to get Albany on board or you can’t get one penny.” Stringer echoed the point, saying that given his experience in Albany, he thinks Mamdani’s plan is a “fairy tale scenario that we shouldn’t count on.”

Given the chance to ask a fellow candidate a question, Stringer noted that as state legislator-turned city official, he has seen “just how much the future of New York [City] is really in Albany’s hands.”

Stringer asked Mamdani how he thought Mayor Eric Adams — and also former Governor Cuomo — had mishandled that relationship between the city and Albany.

“It’s been quite surprising to see just how late Eric Adams starts his advocacy in Albany,” Mamdani said. “There are some years when you think that he’s not even coming because you have no sense of what the city’s priorities are. And as you’ve said, the city is a creature of the state. Any mayor whose vision has a real kind of ambition will require the state’s partnership.”

He criticized Adams for focusing most of his Albany advocacy on the one issue of criminal justice, and specifically rolling back bail reform.

“You have to go to Albany for many of the things that we are talking about,” Lander acknowledged at one point.

Asked whether he’d send the NYPD to clear a group of students pitching tents in peaceful protest if a university president requested it, Lander said an emphatic no.

“You’re going to have to deal with it with the tools of your university, because those folks haven’t broken the laws of New York City,” he said. “And I honestly think if that had happened, the world might be different today.”

Stringer said he agreed. “We have to get back to the notion that it is good and it is necessary in our democracy to have protests,” he said.

The candidates discussed the rise in anti-semitic hate crimes and pledged to stand against them. Lander and Stringer — the two Jewish candidates in the race — sharply attacked Cuomo, who has campaigned aggressively on the issue.

“The way in which Andrew Cuomo and Donald Trump and Eric Adams are trying to weaponize anti-semitism and Jewish fears is abominable,” Lander said.

“The way [Cuomo] lied to the Jewish people about everything he was going to do to combat anti-semitism. As a Jew, I am so offended by it. I can’t stand it,” Stringer said.

Did you know Aaron Rodgers signed on to join the Knicks? We asked the candidates to name one player on the current New York Knicks team who is not Jalen Brunson and learned from Stringer that the Green Bay Packers quarterback made the jump.

What song do the candidates love to hear blasting out of a car window? Mamdani chose Many Men by 50 Cent, Lander said New York State of Mind, and Stringer chose Move Ya Body.

We also asked how each candidate would have fun on their off days if elected mayor. Mamdani said he would spend his days at his “secret wife’s art shows.” Lander said he would spend them at the reopened Delacorte Theater (perhaps playing to the crowd), and Stringer said he’d spend his days with his family. No mention of hookahs or a “shorty” in Rockaway.