Good morning. It’s Tuesday, and it’s Election Day. We’ll catch up on the last-minute campaigning in the race for mayor. We’ll also look at a storied restaurant that is planning a celebration — not for any of the candidates, but for itself.
It all comes down to today.After an upset in the Democratic primary for mayor in June, a third-party candidacy by the former governor who lost and a campaign that has spent millions on advertising, the voters will now decide who will be the 111th mayor of New York City. Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani remains well ahead in the polls against former Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Curtis Sliwa, the radio personality and founder of the Guardian Angels. Mamdani, the Democratic nominee, made affordability the centerpiece of his campaign — and was blasted by his rivals for his views as a democratic socialist and his criticism of Israel. Cuomo courted moderate Democrats and conservatives — and picked up a backhanded blessing from President Trump. “I’m not a fan of Cuomo one way or another, but if it’s going to be between a bad Democrat and a communist,” Trump said on the CBS News program “60 Minutes,” falsely characterizing Mamdani, “I’m going to pick the bad Democrat all the time, to be honest with you.” That was on Sunday. On Monday, he wrote on social media that “whether you personally like Andrew Cuomo or not, you really have no choice.” He added: “You must vote for him, and hope he does a fantastic job. He is capable of it. Mamdani is not!” After the “60 Minutes” broadcast, Mamdani mocked Cuomo on social media, addressing him directly: “I know how hard you worked for this.” Cuomo has said that he has no special allegiance to Trump, and Cuomo’s spokesman said that “only one candidate has a record of standing up to Trump when he tried to hurt New York and winning, and that’s Andrew Cuomo.” Mamdani ran a high-energy campaign that built on social media exposure and voter outreach: It said it had knocked on more than 103,000 doors on Sunday. Cuomo’s supporters worried that Mamdani would bring down the political and governmental order that has largely prevailed in New York for decades. And Sliwa, the Republican nominee, said on CNN that he had been offered as much as $10 million to drop out of the race on Cuomo’s behalf. “I would rather impale myself like Mel Gibson did at the end of ‘Braveheart,’” he said, without saying who had made the offers. Mamdani began the last day of campaigning by walking across the Brooklyn Bridge at sunrise to symbolize the dawn of a new day for the city. He was joined by Letitia James, the state attorney general; Brad Lander, the city comptroller; and supporters who chanted “tax the rich” as they neared City Hall. Standing in front of the building he hopes to preside over, Mamdani again attacked Cuomo, saying the former governor would not stand up to Trump if he won. “The answer to a Donald Trump presidency is not to create its mirror image here in City Hall,” Mamdani said. He also made it clear that he understood how far he had come. When he entered the race a year ago, he said, he was polling at 1 percent. Early votingNew Yorkers came out en masse to vote early. More than 735,000 ballots were cast early, a record for a nonpresidential election, including a high of 151,000 on Sunday, the last day of early voting. High turnout among voters under 35 brought the median age of in-person voters down to 50. Here’s the borough-by-borough breakdown: Brooklyn had the largest turnout, with more than 243,000 voters, followed by Manhattan with 212,000, Queens with 166,000 and the Bronx with 57,000. Staten Island trailed with 53,000. More than four times as many early ballots were cast as in 2021, the first mayor’s race when early voting was built into the calendar. Still, the early turnout this year fell short of the 1.09 million early voters in last year’s presidential election. But a different number may figure in the final count: Since the June primary, more than 107,000 first-time voters have registered in New York City. How to vote The polls in New York will be open from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. You can find your polling place here, and check your voter registration status here. The city’s Board of Elections warned voters to expect lines at polling places today. And remember that your ballot has two sides. Don’t forget to turn it over and vote for the proposals on the back. And in New Jersey … Representative Mikie Sherrill, a former Navy pilot who is the Democratic nominee, is facing Jack Ciattarelli, a businessman and former state legislator who is the Republican candidate, in the closely watched contest for governor. The polls will be open from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. You can find out where to vote here. WEATHER Sunny with a high near 61. Wind gusts up to 31 miles an hour are expected. The evening will be mostly clear with a low around 45 and gusty winds continuing. ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING Suspended for Election Day. The latest New York news
We hope you’ve enjoyed this newsletter, which is made possible through subscriber support. Subscribe to The New York Times. At Junior’s, a celebration of what happened on Election Day, 1950
Junior’s, the storied Brooklyn restaurant with the famous cheesecake, is planning a celebration today — not for any candidates, but for itself. Junior’s opened 75 years ago, on Election Day in 1950. Alan Rosen, a member of the third generation to run the family-owned restaurant, suspects the timing was coincidental. “I don’t think they purposefully picked Election Day,” he said. “It was probably the soonest they could get open and get the register ringing.” At the polls in 1950, voters in New York City chose Vincent Impellitteri to succeed William O’Dwyer, who had resigned a couple of months earlier as a police corruption scandal closed in. O’Dwyer was the former cop-turned-district attorney who had prosecuted the Murder Inc. gang. The Daily News had called him “100 percent honest.” But the Democratic machine run by Tammany Hall had a mutually beneficial relationship with the mob in those days, and later testimony indicated that he had met with the mob boss Frank Costello regularly for years. President Harry Truman had suggested a face-saving solution, offering to appoint O’Dwyer ambassador to Mexico. O’Dwyer presented his diplomatic credentials in Mexico City three weeks after the election. For Junior’s 50th anniversary in 2000, Alan Rosen sold cheesecake for 50 cents a slice. He is not doing that today. He has memories — painful memories — of cutting more than 5,000 slices. “I couldn’t cut the slices quick enough,” he said. “My fingers were bleeding at the end of the day.” Today he will take $7.50 off the price of a whole cheesecake. That would lower the price of a six-inch plain cheesecake to $14.50, from $22. METROPOLITAN DIARY Alisha and Coco
Dear Diary: After a particularly tipsy night celebrating my boyfriend’s birthday, my friends and I stood outside a wine bar on Jones Street, passing around a last cigarette. That’s when she walked by, all bones and charisma, dragging behind her a dog with the same disposition. “Nice to see young people smoking cigarettes on stoops again,” she said in a gravelly voice. “Used to be normal.” We laughed. She didn’t keep walking. We asked if we could pet the dog. “Sure,” she said. “His name is Coco.” She told us that her name was Alisha, and that she had moved to the city in the 1970s. “I had a place near Times Square,” she said. “Hundred eighty a month. Paid extra for a hot plate and a fridge.” She lit a cigarette of her own as she spoke. She told us she was a makeup artist. “I worked on a lot of faces,” she said. She looked at us for a second, not quite smiling. Her eyes wandered past us, as if she remembered that she had something better to do. “Don’t let the city eat you,” she said before turning and walking away, Coco clattering along beside her. The street was quiet again, wet with rain from earlier. We stood there a little while longer, not saying much, until the cigarette was gone. — David Reyes-Mastroianni Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Tell us your New York story here and read more Metropolitan Diary here. Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B. P.S. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword and Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here. Lauren Hard and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at nytoday@nytimes.com. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox.
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