Brad Lander heads back to immigration court; Andrew Cuomo, Zohran Mamdani spar as campaign nears end
NEW YORK (WABC) -- With the hotly contested New York City mayoral primary election just days away, the candidates are in the final stretch of making their arguments amid record early voting turnout.
Polls show former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has held onto his lead, with Queens state Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani closing in, but still in second place.
City Comptroller Brad Lander and Mamdani teamed up in Brooklyn Friday afternoon to shore up support.
They arrived at Grand Army Plaza to canvas voters, riding Citi Bikes side by side in the Prospect Park West bike lane.
Lander said the bike ride is representative of ranked-choice voting, adding it's "a joyful form of politics, instead of a bitter, sour, backwards-looking form of poltics. And of course gathering all of our voters together, that's a majority of New Yorkers on Tuesday."
They're asking voters to rank one first and the other second for mayor.
The goal is to freeze out Cuomo, whom both candidates are trying to stop.
"I hope he will call on his superpac to take those hideous ads down," Lander said.
The super PAC acknowledged it had lengthened and darkened Mamdani's beard on a flyer, which was never distributed.
On Friday, Mamdani said there's a direct link between that ads by the super PAC and the death threats he and family members have received.
"If you design mailers that lengthen and darken my beard, if you paint me as a radical, it is not a surprise to see the kind of threats that come," Mamdani said.
Mamdani is also lobbying the Campaign Finance Board to lift the fundraising cap, saying the system isn't working, giving Cuomo a huge advantage.
"We raised $8.3 million from 20,000 people over donations of less than $70, a total of 8.3 million," Mamdani said.
Mamdani is also taking issue with how much money Cuomo's super PAC has raised and the way he has relied on some very big donors like the former Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
Meanwhile, the City Council President and mayoral candidate Adrienne Adams is also telling her supporters, many of whom are black and from Queens, to rank any of the Working Families Party candidates and not Cuomo.
But an endorsement by U.S. Rep. James Clyburn of South Carolina on Friday could work in Cuomo's favor.
On Friday morning, mayoral candidate and City Comptroller Brad Lander also entered a federal courthouse in lower Manhattan to observe immigration court proceedings, just as he did a few days ago.
But the last time he attempted to do that, he was taken into custody by federal agents during an immigration hearing for allegedly obstructing federal agents when escorting an immigrant out of court.
He was released a few hours later and appeared with Gov. Kathy Hochul who said the charges against him had been dropped.
Lander says he'll keep standing with immigrant communities.
"When I was sitting at the detention center on Tuesday, there was a sign asking if you've been separated from your child. We've normalized family separations. That's why I'll continue to fight and return to Federal Plaza to help more families," Lander said.
Day six of early voting ends with more than 250,00 votes cast. Early voting ends June 22 and the primary is June 24.
As we look ahead to Election Day, the race itself is heating up, but for Tuesday, it is expected to be a scorcher. The Board of Elections say they're prepared with fans.
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