New York City – The race for mayor of the largest city in the United States has New Yorker Chris Berwick saying things he never thought he would.

As the November 4 election day approaches, the self-described moderate conservative has been weighing the three-way contest between Democratic candidate Zohran Mamdani, former Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo and Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa.

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“I have to do what’s best for New York,” the 58-year-old told Al Jazeera outside his apartment complex in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. “It’s wild that this is actually coming out of my mouth: Andrew Cuomo is best for New York.”

Of course, Berwick, a regular Republican voter, said he would prefer to cast his ballot for Sliwa, a New York stalwart who rose to prominence by leading a controversial volunteer crime-fighting group, the Guardian Angels, in the 1980s.

But in the Democrat-dominated metropolis, he feels it would be a waste.

“So it’s the lesser of two evils,” the retired contractor said. “I don’t like Cuomo, but I’m not into socialism…I don’t think this country was built on it.”

Cuomo’s campaign hopes that there are many voters in the city like Berwick, willing to hold their nose and vote for a Democrat to stop Mamdani, an avowed democratic socialist who surged to surprise success in the June Democratic primary on a broad and ambitious platform of affordability and progressive reform.

Peeling off conservatives, while rallying independents and Democrats wary of Mamdani, could be Cuomo’s clearest shot at victory.

Even the most charitable polls show the 67-year-old political scion trailing the 34-year-old frontrunner, Mamdani, by at least eight percentage points. Most polls considered as the highest-quality show Mamdani’s lead between 13 and 24 percentage points. Sliwa has been polling anywhere between 9 and 23 percent.

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Cuomo, who left his post as governor amid sexual misconduct allegations in 2021, has leaned into the conservative outreach, touring right-wing media megaphones and the city’s Republican strongholds in the final weeks of the race.

“I need your listeners to vote for me,” Cuomo told firebrand conservative host Sid Rosenberg in an appearance in mid-October.

“I don’t have horns,” he assured. 

‘Not up for experimental plans’

Many of Cuomo’s supporters are optimistic that pollsters are not taking the true temperature of the city, hoping that both Republicans and independents, who could not vote in the closed Democratic primary, will make the difference in the race.

About 20 percent of the 4.7 million registered voters in New York City were unaffiliated with a party in 2024. Just 11 percent were Republican.

Come election day, Cuomo supporters believe that electoral vulnerabilities related to Mamdani’s inexperience in leadership and concerns over the massive obstacles to his affordability plans could shift the calculus.

Mamdani has run a campaign on pledges of rent freezes, universal childcare and free buses, paid for, in part, by increasing taxes on corporations and the wealthiest city residents. Any changes to the city’s tax code would require wide-scale, hard-won support from state lawmakers. New York state Governor Kathy Hochul has endorsed Mamdani, but said a tax change would be a non-starter.

“I like to wish that Zohran supporters will take a little bit of a more critical lens to what he’s proposing,” said Yiatin Chu, 58, from White Stone Queens, who leads the Asian Wave alliance, a political group that supports Cuomo.

Chu said she is particularly concerned about public safety under Mamdani, who has pledged a raft of police reforms. She has thrown her support behind Cuomo’s plan to increase the New York City Police Department (NYPD) force by 5,000 officers.

“A city this size is not up for experimental plans,” Chu told Al Jazeera. “You can say all these great things, but to actually manage a city with a $116bn budget with 300,000 city employees – I’m sorry it’s not something you can just step into and wing it.”

In the primary, Cuomo performed well in affluent neighbourhoods of Manhattan, where he has sought to hammer home the claim that Mamdani’s policies would force the wealthiest residents of the city to flee. He did well with Black voters and in the farthest reaches of the outer boroughs of many middle-class and upper-class neighbourhoods.

Seeking to cut into Mamdani’s base, Cuomo has rolled out his own affordability plans since the primary, framing them as more realistic than his opponent’s. That included unveiling a policy in August to make buses free to the poorest New Yorkers. He has said the plan is fairer than Mamdani’s signature pledge, which would make them free for everyone.

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Michael LaRosa, a 30-year-old from Middle Village, Queens, said he expected a groundswell from across the political spectrum for Cuomo, especially among city residents who work in trades like his.

“My father’s a carpenter. I’m an electrician, and we rely on people that have our backs,” said LaRosa, whose union has endorsed the former governor. “And from what we gather, Cuomo has our back.”

Angie Tobie, 63, who lives in public housing in the Mott Haven neighbourhood in the Bronx, said that many voters see the same youth that has energised Mamdani’s as a liability in a leader.

She expressed particular disquiet over Mamdani’s past statements, including a call in 2020 to defund the police. Mamdani has since moved away from the position, issuing a broad apology to police officers.

“He’s so young, he’s got no experience,” she told Al Jazeera. “He’s going to get into office and realise he made promises that he can’t keep.”

‘Fear-mongering, hate speech and Islamophobia’

To be sure, the most expedient path to victory for Cuomo would be Sliwa’s last-minute exit from the race.

Cuomo has said that a vote for Sliwa is a “vote for Mamdani”. Sliwa has remained defiant, instead saying that Cuomo should leave the race to “hang out with your billionaires in the Hamptons”.

Some conservatives, including prominent businessman John Catsimatidis, who funds Sliwa’s radio show, have also called on the Republican to drop out of the race.

The former top Republican in the New York City Council, Joe Borelli, told Fox News that he would vote for Cuomo to not “light my vote on fire”.

The rallying effort in the final days of the race has seen Cuomo re-up increasingly caustic tactics, including escalating a months-long attack that has framed Mamdani as a “terrorist sympathiser” for his pro-Palestine views and baselessly accusing him of anti-Semitism. Prior to his run, Cuomo had joined a legal team representing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu against an International Criminal Court arrest warrant for war crimes committed in Gaza.

In the interview with Rosenberg, Cuomo appeared to agree with the radio host’s suggestion that Mamdani would be “cheering” if attacks like those on September 11, 2001, in the US, happened again.

“That’s another problem,” Cuomo said in response, in what many saw as blatant Islamophobia and racism. Mamdani would be the first Muslim, first person born in Africa and first person of South Asian descent to lead the city.

“Fear-mongering, hate speech and Islamophobia are beneath New York – and everything we stand for as a state,” Governor Hochul, Cuomo’s former deputy, said in response to the exchange.

Cuomo has also supercharged his attacks on Mamdani’s affiliation with the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), seeking to capitalise on deep distrust towards the term “socialist” among US conservatives. The DSA does not define Democratic Socialism, but it is usually interpreted as a collection of broad progressive policies aimed at creating a more equitable society, achieved through democratic means.

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Speaking during a recent Fox News interview, Cuomo warned of a “socialist city” under Mamdani, in what he dubbed the “death of New York as we know it, whether you’re a Democrat or Republican”.

‘Experience versus experiments’

On a gusty day in October, Sidcornia Winston, a 48-year-old from East New York, was one of two volunteers attending a canvassing event for Cuomo in front of the Barclays Center arena, a hulking mass of oxidised steel in the Prospect Heights neighbourhood of Brooklyn.

The final weeks of the race have been a counterpoint in campaigning. Mamdani has leaned into an army of volunteers, leveraging the DSA’s sprawling infrastructure, while remaining omnipresent in his personalised social media videos.

Cuomo’s ground game has been far less pronounced, with his run buoyed instead by advertisement buys in traditional media.

All told, pro-Cuomo and anti-Mamdani political action committees (PACs) raised more than $14.5m between June 25 and October 20, according to an analysis by Bloomberg News. Pro-Mamdani PACs had raised more than $1.7m in that period.

The fact that Cuomo’s top donors, including business and real estate industry leaders, as well as influential pro-Israel billionaires Bill Ackman and Miriam Adelson, often overlap with supporters of US President Donald Trump has drawn particular condemnation from Mamdani’s base.

But Cuomo volunteer Winston sees the perceived proximity to Trump, who has promised to target city funding and deploy the National Guard if Mamdani wins, as an asset.

“Trump has promised to bankrupt the city if Mamdani is elected,” said Winston, a certified chef. “I don’t care who you are, we don’t need to pick a fight [with the federal government] right now.”

Another volunteer in her late 60s, Anne, who declined to give her last name, was hoping to convince wary voters that Cuomo was the experienced hand needed to lead the city in the age of Trump.

“It’s experience versus experiments,” she said. “That’s why we’re out here.”

‘I still might change’

As election day approaches, Cuomo has received a boost from the endorsement of current Mayor Eric Adams after he abandoned the race.

But shifting electoral allegiances can cut both ways.

In Crown Heights, Brooklyn, 67-year-old Junior Shall was drawn to a familiar face in Cuomo during the primary.

Shall, who works in child care, described him as someone who “understands the older people” in the city.

But the excitement surrounding Mamdani has prompted a second look.

“The young people want something different,” she said. “I voted for Cuomo, but I still might change.”