It was cold enough to lose feeling in your hands in the shadow of Andrew Cuomo's newly minted Sutton Place apartment building on Friday morning, but a small gaggle of reporters clustered around Queens State Assemblymember and mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani anyway, as he answered questions in a windbreaker layered over a Carhartt hoodie. Residents popping in and out of the hulking "Oriana" at 420 54th Street, stopped to gawk and snap photos as Mamdani fielded questions and took shots at Cuomo and Mayor Eric Adams, the opponents he's focused the majority of his criticism on so far this race.
"I don't think this mayor has a chance to win in this election, no matter what line he's running on," Mamdani said of Adams, when asked about rumors that Hizzoner could run as an independent. And when a reporter asked Mamdani what he'd say if Cuomo walked out of the building and into the press conference, Mamdani immediately jumped to a callout in defense of Columbia graduate and campus activist Mahmoud Khalil.
"I would ask him why he hasn't clearly called for the release of the New Yorker who was dragged out of his apartment lobby, who was detained and disappeared to Louisiana, and who it took 72 hours for this [former] governor to issue any statement of before then walking it back after another 24 hours," he said. "Effectively, what I would ask him is, when is he going to find his spine?"