Even as Zohran Mamdani remains the front-runner heading into New York City’s mayoral election next Tuesday, some emerging signs indicate that his momentum is flagging in the final stretch of the race — underscoring potential vulnerabilities for the 34-year-old democratic socialist.

Early voting returns over the weekend, for example, showed a notable surge among older New Yorkers turning out in City Council districts on the Upper East and West Sides, in what some experts interpreted as more favorable results for former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo — running as an independent after losing the primary to Mamdani.

Meanwhile, a new Suffolk University poll released on Monday showed a tightening race, with Cuomo cutting Mamdani’s lead in half to just 10 points — 44% to 34% — in the closing week before the election.

The polling followed a debate performance last week in which Mamdani frequently found himself on the defensive — and faced criticism from Cuomo and Curtis Sliwa, the Republican nominee, over his continued refusal to confirm his position on a series of ballot proposals.

“Cuomo’s numbers are going up because people are now paying more attention,” said Hank Sheinkopf, a Democratic consultant leading an anti-Mamdani super PAC.

Mamdani, a state assemblyman from Queens who would be New York City’s first Muslim mayor if elected, had spent the last few days accusing his rivals of pushing Islamophobic attacks, delivering a series of emotional addresses in which he expressed pride in his faith and vowed to “no longer look for myself in the shadows.”

The Democratic nominee came under scrutiny on Monday after clarifying that he had misidentified a family member who he said had stopped riding the subway after the 9/11 attacks, “because she did not feel safe in her hijab.” The woman, Mamdani said, was his father’s cousin, not his “aunt,” as he initially stated during a speech on Friday outside a mosque in the Bronx.

Despite his outreach to Jewish community leaders in recent weeks, Mamdani has doubled down on his base as the election reaches its conclusion. He held a rally on Sunday evening whose attendees included Hasan Piker, the far-left streamer who has espoused antisemitic rhetoric and has said “America deserved 9/11,” a comment Mamdani disavowed during a debate earlier this month.    

Cuomo, who has recently escalated his criticism of Mamdani, said on Monday that Piker’s presence at the campaign rally “is insulting to all New Yorkers.” The former governor’s rebuke came after he himself had faced backlash for laughing with a conservative radio host who said that Mamdani would celebrate another attack like 9/11.

Thanks in part to his continued relationships with extreme figures, Mamdani’s recent campaign efforts have done little to reassure many Jewish voters who remain worried about his hostility to Israel and his refusal to condemn calls to “globalize the intifada,” among other issues.

“I think there’s a genuine and legitimate concern that Jews are not going to be comfortable living in New York with him as mayor,” said Mitchell Moss, professor of urban policy and planning at New York University. “This is not a matter of affordability but survivability,” he added, using a twist on Mamdani’s top campaign focus.

In an unprecedented show of organized Jewish opposition to Mamdani, more than 1,000 rabbis from all leading denominations signed on to an open letter last week that raised alarms about his candidacy and said that, if elected, he would threaten “the safety and dignity of Jews in every city.”

Mamdani has vowed to protect Jewish New Yorkers and voiced sensitivity to rising antisemitism across the city. He is likely to receive an endorsement from a Satmar Hasidic faction in Brooklyn representing a sizable constituency, according to a person familiar with the matter, following recent engagement with the community, which is theologically anti-Zionist. 

But mainstream Jewish groups and leaders continue to hold reservations with Mamdani’s campaign. New York Solidarity Network, a local pro-Israel advocacy group, released an open letter on Monday urging all of the candidates in the race to recognize Israel as a Jewish state, oppose boycott efforts against Israel and “engage a broad spectrum of Jewish voices, including Zionists,” among other things. 

The letter, which was presumably aimed at Mamdani but did not mention him by name, was signed by more than 5,500 Jewish New Yorkers, according to NYSN.

One Democratic consultant not currently involved in the mayoral race said Mamdani has “made some very questionable decisions about who he hangs out with and the rhetoric he uses” with regard to Israel — issues that a number of Jewish New Yorkers believe he has failed to adequately address in his campaign.

While the consultant echoed others who still expect that Mamdani will win next Tuesday, he added that the current trajectory of the race suggests his share of the vote may not ultimately be so commanding to deliver a mandate.

“Based on the data now, five points seems much more likely than 25 points,” the consultant said.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams’ decision on Sunday to drop out of his race for reelection was met with a mix of tempered hope and continued resignation among political consultants and Jewish community leaders who have long been waiting for an opening to block Zohran Mamdani, the front-runner and Democratic nominee.

In choosing to suspend his campaign for a second term with just five weeks remaining until the Nov. 4 election, Adams, the scandal-scarred mayor who had been running as an independent, may not offer the escape hatch that many Mamdani critics have been hoping for.

Adams, a deeply unpopular mayor whose tenure in office had been marred by a series of damaging corruption scandals and accusations that he had become cozy with the Trump administration, will remain on the ballot. And Curtis Sliwa, the GOP nominee polling ahead of Adams, reiterated on Sunday that he will stay in the race, rejecting calls for him to step aside and help to clear the field for former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo — who is also running as an independent after badly losing the June Democratic primary.

But some critics of Mamdani, a democratic socialist and Queens state assemblyman leading in the polls, suggested that the consolidated field could now move previously reluctant donors to invest in a late-stage effort to help bolster Cuomo — who had been casting the race as a two-man contest with Mamdani even before Adams ended his campaign.

“Sentiment among some major donors had been that unless the field started to narrow, they were going to keep their powder relatively dry,” Jake Dilemani, a Democratic strategist who was involved in Cuomo’s primary bid, told Jewish Insider. “With Adams out, that dynamic starts to change, pressure will mount on Sliwa to drop his bid, and dollars will follow.”

Hank Sheinkopf, a veteran Democratic strategist who is leading an anti-Mamdani super PAC called Protect the Protectors, said Cuomo “can win only if there are independent committees that are talking about” Mamdani’s far-left positions and “how they are dangerous to New York.”

“Failure to do that means Mamdani will win,” he told JI, while noting Cuomo’s “argument that he is more experienced isn’t working,” demonstrated by his negative voter ratings in polls.

Sheinkopf speculated that new donors could now be energized to open their checkbooks if they are convinced, as he believes, that a Cuomo victory will require outside groups, which have struggled to raise money even as they have begun to place ads in recent weeks, work on chipping away at Mamdani’s relatively favorable polling numbers.

“You can knock Mamdani to 30 or below,” Sheinkopf predicted. Recent surveys have shown Mamdani’s favorability ratings in the mid to high 40s.

Another political consultant who is involved in a separate anti-Mamdani super PAC, speaking on the condition of anonymity to address the current state of the race, said he is “hopeful that the donors who were sitting on the sidelines will now become more active,” but he had no details to share about any new movement on that front. 

The consultant acknowledged that Sliwa’s choice to remain in the race, threatening to peel support from Cuomo, “is certainly an impediment, but hopefully not a major one,” suggesting that “Cuomo can get a lot of Sliwa’s vote.”

Chris Coffey, a Democratic consultant who helped to advise Cuomo’s primary campaign, said that the race had been “frozen” until Adams finally dropped out on Sunday. “Both donors and reporters spent three-plus weeks on whether Eric would drop out,” he told JI. “Now he has. It’s still going to be uphill for Cuomo but to have any shot, he needed Eric out and he’s out.” 

“If donors and press now turn to Curtis, that won’t help Cuomo,” Coffey continued. “I’d expect to see national and local GOP push folks to Cuomo. That’s a double-edged sword but again, he needs it to have a meaningful shot.”

Eric Levine, a top GOP fundraiser who had been backing Adams’ bid, said that he is now supporting Cuomo and believes that Sliwa “needs to get out” if the former governor has any chance of prevailing in the race. 

While he did not anticipate that Sliwa — whose campaign said in a statement on Sunday that he “is the only candidate who can defeat Mamdani” — will likely step aside, Levine called on GOP leadership in New York to urge him to drop out and help clear the field for Cuomo.

“He was a terrible governor, he’s an even worse person and will be a horrible mayor,” Levine said of Cuomo. “But compared to Mamdani,” the choice is easy, he told JI, citing the nominee’s hostile stances toward Israel that have fueled concern among many Jewish community leaders. 

“The city is heading for a world of hurt, and any Republican who thinks that it’s a good idea to have Mamdani be the new face of the Democratic Party is too cynical for me,” Levine, a Republican Jewish Coalition board member, said on Sunday.

Cuomo, for his part, praised the mayor’s decision to ultimately drop out of the race, as he had called on Adams to do. “The choice Eric Adams made today was not an easy one, but I believe he is sincere in putting the well-being of New York City ahead of personal ambition,” the former governor said in a statement on Sunday. “We face destructive extremist forces that would devastate our city through incompetence or ignorance, but it is not too late to stop them.”

But while Cuomo’s campaign hopes to gain new backing from Black and Orthodox Jewish voters who were behind Adams, the mayor himself did not offer an endorsement, even if his announcement left open the possibility he could end up taking a side in the race. Adams otherwise warned, in a veiled swipe at Mamdani, that “insidious forces” are now seeking to “advance divisive agendas.”

“Major change is welcome and necessary,” Adams said in his announcement posted to social media on Sunday. “But beware of those who claim the answer is to destroy the very system we built together over generations.” 

Leon Goldbenberg, an Orthodox leader in Brooklyn who is an executive board member of the Flatbush Jewish Community Coalition and had been backing Adams, said that he was encouraged by the mayor’s choice to suspend his campaign. “At this point, it’s more of a horse race,” he told JI, predicting Cuomo will see solid support in the Orthodox community as it seeks to register new voters ahead of the election.

“I think that you are going to see a tremendous turnout in the Orthodox community,” Goldenberg said. “Whether it makes a difference or not, I can’t tell you.”

Some activists in the broader organized Jewish community were less confident that the campaign shake-up on Sunday would meaningfully influence the outcome of a race that Mamdani has continued to dominate. 

One Jewish leader, speaking on the condition of anonymity to address private discussions, said it was “too soon yet” to conclude if a critical mass of new donors would now be motivated to step up to help oppose Mamdani. “But new conversations are happening.”

Another Jewish leader who fears a Mamdani win, and also spoke on the condition of anonymity, was far less sanguine about Adams’ decision. “It doesn’t make a difference,” the Jewish leader told JI, while referring to such remaining obstacles as Sliwa and the mayor’s name still appearing on voters’ ballots.

A credible effort to beat Mamdani “would require about $10 to $15 million to make a difference,” the Jewish leader estimated. “I just don’t know that we have that chance.”

With that in mind, “the best thing that I’m hoping for is that we can keep him under 50%,” the Jewish leader said of Mamdani, “to make him govern from a minority position and not a mandated position.”

Just when it looked like far-left New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani was on track to become mayor, in part thanks to persistent divisions among his opposition, there are signs of a possible consolidation of the crowded field.

The New York Times reported that embattled Mayor Eric Adams is considering a job offer from the Trump administration — a position at the Department of Housing and Urban Development or an ambassadorship have been floated — that would entice him to withdraw from the race. The paper is also reporting that Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa has also been approached by Trump allies, but Sliwa has remained adamant that he is sticking in the race. 

All told, Trump’s team is doing everything it can behind the scenes to eliminate the structural hurdles for a successful anti-Mamdani coalition, without publicly putting its finger on the scale for the leading Mamdani challenger, former Gov. Andrew Cuomo. (It’s also notable that Trump, even though it would be in his political interest to use a Mamdani mayoralty as a battering ram against Democrats, is more concerned about the policy consequences of a socialist mayor in his hometown.)

A one-on-one Mamdani-Cuomo general election showdown is still far from a sure thing, but it’s worth noting that the matchup would be quite competitive, according to the available public polling. Even the pro-Mamdani pollster Adam Carlson found in July that Mamdani only led Cuomo by three points among registered voters in a head-to-head matchup, though the lead expanded to double digits when the most likely voters were polled.

An August poll conducted by Gotham Polling and Analytics for the AARP found Mamdani leading Cuomo 44-25% with all the candidates running, but also found that only 4% of respondents chose Mamdani as their second choice. (Adams was the second choice of 17% of respondents, while Cuomo was the second choice of 14%.)

The data suggest Mamdani would remain the front-runner, but the race would get a lot more competitive if the field narrowed. It would also put renewed pressure on business groups, Jewish organizations and moderate Democratic politicians who have refused to endorse Mamdani to decide whether to go all in for Cuomo — or maintain the same cautious posture that has defined the post-primary portion of the campaign.

For New York’s Democratic leaders who haven’t backed Mamdani, the partisan instinct to support the nominee of one’s party will probably prevent party leaders from siding with Cuomo. Indeed, for Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), their hesitance to support Mamdani is driven by a realization that his brand of left-wing politics could taint the party’s candidates down the ballot — and it’s simply smart politics to keep their distance. It’s hard to see them going as far as backing Cuomo, even in a close race.

For New York Democrats in moderate districts, the calculation could get a lot more interesting. Swing-district moderates such as Reps. Tom Suozzi and Laura Gillen have been among the most outspoken critics against Mamdani, but aren’t endorsing an alternative. But if Cuomo looked like he was within striking distance of winning, there would be a lot of pressure for them to step off the sidelines.

The biggest test will be whether outside groups truly mount an all-out offensive against Mamdani if the race gets close. So far, many business leaders and other skeptical stakeholders have preferred to see if they can negotiate with the mayoral front-runner, in hopes of persuading him to moderate his past positions. 

That looked like a smart play with the opposition hopelessly divided, and Mamdani on cruise control. But if Trump, of all people, manages to do the hard, dirty work of opening up an opportunity for Cuomo, will the Mamdani opposition take advantage of the new political dynamic?