Boomer New York’s last bellow

New Yorkers received visits from two ghosts of Christmas past and one ghost of Christmas present at its last 2025 mayoral debate on Wednesday night. Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa and champion of himself Andrew Cuomo lobbed Grumpy Old Man insults across the stage at each other while Zohran Mamdani stood center stage, fresh and gleaming, deflecting blows and acting with all the confidence of a football team that has a three-touchdown lead at the two-minute warning. The historical turn, potentially tragic, that will lead to the Democratic Socialists taking over America’s largest city, is reaching its conclusion, and there won’t be a final twist.

Sliwa, who won’t become mayor in this or any other reality, offered passionate proposals to reform the housing-court system and to protect New York’s forgotten animals. If cats and dogs could vote, Sliwa would be a shoo-in. He played the populist card in his opening, saying “it’s us versus them, it’s us versus the insiders and the billionaires. It’s us versus Cuomo, it’s us versus Zohran. We’re not going to be silenced any more, we’re going to fight.”

Cuomo spent most of the night deflecting attacks on his now-settled sexual harassment allegations, on his mishandling of the MTA in the summer of 2017, and on his disastrous policies in the early days of COVID that led to the deaths of thousands of elderly New Yorkers. He countered by saying that if (when) Mamdani wins, Donald Trump will be running the city. “He has said he will take over New York if Mamdani wins, and he will. He thinks Mamdani is a kid and he’ll knock him on his tuchus.”

Mamdani said, “My opponents, who spend more time convincing each other to drop out, speak only of the past, because that’s all that they know. I am the only one who speaks to the future of the city.”

He had a point. At times, the debate was like watching a community-theater production of The Sunshine Boys. One of the moderators even said, at one point, as Sliwa and Cuomo carped at each other over some ancient issue that even they barely understood, “we’re going to stay in this century, guys.”

The three candidates debated housing issues, transit issues, policing issues, education issues and various finer points of New York policy that matter to me only marginally, because I live in a state with no income tax in a city recently named the most-affordable housing market in the United States. Not my movie. But antisemitism is my movie, so my ears perked up substantially when the candidates started debating the “Jewish question” like this was Berlin in 1931.

“I will be the Mayor who doesn’t just protect Jewish New Yorkers, but also celebrates and cherishes them,” said Mamdani, who hundreds of rabbis denounced this week.

“Not everything is a TikTok video,” said Cuomo. “You’re the savior of the Jewish people? You won’t denounce ‘Globalize the Intifada,” which means “kill Jews.” Sliwa, who apparently has Jewish children, said they view Mamdani “as an arsonist who fanned the flames of antisemitism. You’ve got a lot of explaining to do, a lot of apologizing to do.”

Mamdani said he has never once “spoken out in favor of global jihad” and said that criticisms of him were, in fact, Islamophobic. “New York deserves a leader who takes antisemitism seriously, not one who weaponizes it to score political points.”

Mamdani, who has an uncanny ability to wriggle out of tough spots, has run a slick campaign, but he’s also been fortunate in his choice of opponents. Sliwa is a quintessential New York tough-guy character, and might even be a good mayor if given a chance, but he’s also extremely goofy and there’s no way liberal New York will elect a Republican populist mayor in the age of Trump. And Cuomo is perhaps the most flawed candidate in a generation. This attempt to revive his political fortunes, given the disgraces he suffered earlier in the decade, has been a pathetic display of hubris. He touted himself as the candidate of “experience,” which led Mamdani to say,

“We have all experienced your experience. We have experienced you taking a five million dollar book deal while sending seniors to their death in their nursing homes. The Issue IS your experience.”

This debate was the last bellow of Boomer New York. The ghosts of Christmas past are vanquished and the Free Palestine Gen-Z TikTok kids are taking over. Winter is coming. To paraphrase Tiny Tim, God help us, everyone.