JTA — For anyone looking to decide which mayoral candidate to support in New York City’s upcoming election, the endorsements page on former Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s campaign website could suggest ample Jewish support.
But at least two of the nine Jewish groups and leaders listed on the campaign website say their endorsements applied only to the primary election and that they have not yet decided whom to support in November.
Cuomo lost to the Democratic candidate, Zohran Mamdani, in the primary last month and announced on Monday that he had decided to run as an independent in the general election, solidifying the slate of major candidates in November’s race.
In addition to Mamdani and Cuomo, incumbent Eric Adams is also running as an independent; voters will also be able to choose from Republican Curtis Sliwa and independent Jim Walden. Many analysts believe — and current polling shows — that if both Cuomo and Adams run, they will split moderate votes and Mamdani, a progressive and critic of Israel, will win. Both Adams and Cuomo have sought to curry the city’s Orthodox Jewish voters, who tend to vote in blocs.
The Crown Heights PAC, which Cuomo lists as “one of the largest Orthodox communities in Brooklyn” in the endorsement on his website along with Crown Jewish United, said it had not determined whether it would support Cuomo’s candidacy.
“We have not yet decided on who to endorse in the general election,” Shmuel Rosenstein, a representative from the Crown Heights PAC, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. He said he did not speak for Crown Jewish United, which did not return a request for comment.
But he also said his group would not be asking Cuomo to remove its primary endorsement from his website. “There is no need to request that,” Rosenstein said, adding, “In the next few weeks we will sit down and discuss who we are backing in the general election.”
Democrat mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani speaks during a rally at the Hotel & Gaming Trades Council headquarters in New York, July 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)
JTA reached out to all of the Jewish groups listed on Cuomo’s website to ask whether their endorsement still applies. In addition to the Crown Heights groups, Cuomo also lists endorsements from two Satmar Hasidic sects in Brooklyn, the leaders of the Bobov Hasidic sect, Far Rockaway Jewish Alliance, Flatbush Jewish Community Coalition, and Sephardic Community Federation.
None of the other groups responded to multiple inquiries before and after Cuomo’s decision to stay in the race.
The Cuomo campaign did not immediately respond to an inquiry Tuesday about whether it will be removing from its website primary endorsements from groups that have not yet endorsed Cuomo in the general election.
Another endorser listed on the site, the former national director of the Anti-Defamation League Abe Foxman, said he had not yet decided whom to endorse in the general election. He said he was trying to work out which candidate would be best poised to defeat Mamdani.
“Most caring Jews in nyc are focused on who would be the best candidate to defeat ZM,” Foxman wrote in a text message to JTA. “They are willing to overlook faults, foibles and weakness if they are convinced he can win.”
For many Jewish groups, Mamdani’s record of support for the boycott Israel movement and refusal to condemn the popular pro-Palestinian slogan “globalize the intifada” have knocked him out of the running for any potential endorsements.
Abraham Foxman (Miriam Alster / Flash 90)
There are signs that a third primary endorser of Cuomo, Brooklyn’s Satmar Hasidic community, may not be backing him in the general election. Prior to the primary, Rabbi Moishe Indig, a top leader in the community, said during an event on combating antisemitism alongside Adams that the community would support him.
“In November, you’ll see the same thing with God’s help,” Indig said at the time. “We will come out to show our great support for our great mayor and brother, Eric Adams.”
Foxman signaled that he was concerned that if both candidates run in the general election, as they say they are doing, Mamdani will win.
“There is no question that if Cuomo and Adams run ZM will win. So at the moment the Jewish community faces a dilemma — trying to determine which of the two is the stronger without alienating the other,” Foxman wrote. “Both Cuomo and Adams are not making it easy. For the candidates it’s power and ego; for the Jewish community it is of critical consequence.”
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