Former Governor Andrew Cuomo continues his mayoral campaign as an independent candidate after his primary defeat to Zohran Mamdani, who could become New York’s first Muslim mayor.
Cuomo, the former three-term New York State governor who resigned from office in 2021 amid multiple scandals, has decided, for now, to move ahead and run in the general election as an independent candidate, two sources confirmed to Fox News on Thursday night.
The announcement by Cuomo came two days after progressive upstart Zohran Mamdani shocked the political world, as he topped Cuomo and the rest of the 11-candidate field in heavily blue New York City’s Democratic Party mayoral primary and took a big step toward becoming the first Muslim mayor of the nation’s most populous city.
Mamdani, a 33-year-old democratic socialist state assemblyman from Queens who originally hailed from Uganda, captured 43.5% of the first round unofficial primary results, with Cuomo at 36.4%.
REPUBLICANS USE MAMDANI BOMBSHELL VICTORY OVER CUOMO AS AMMUNITION TO BLAST DEMOCRATS AS EXTREMISTS
While he acknowledged Mamdani’s victory in the primary, Cuomo left the door open to a November run as an independent candidate, which election rules in New York State permit.