Zohran Mamdani dodged questions on his file Thursday as he tried to show the tables on his mayoral opponents — who gave him a shellacking over his measly resume and lackluster legislative displaying.
“I spent 90 minutes on stage with Andrew Cuomo and I, like many right here, may inform you his critiques of me, his critiques of Curtis Sliwa, however I couldn’t inform you what he was really operating on to ship for this metropolis,” Mamdani stated, addressing Wednesday’s debate throughout an unrelated press convention in Murray Hill.
However the Queens state assemblyman averted a Submit reporter’s questions, refusing to confront the bruising assaults from impartial candidate Cuomo and Republican nominee Sliwa over his paltry political cred.
“This man by no means even proposed a invoice on housing or training. By no means even proposed a invoice,” Cuomo railed on the socialist front-runner at one level throughout the closing mayoral election debate on Spectrum NY1.
“You by no means completed something. There’s no motive to consider you might have any advantage or qualification for 8.5 million lives,” Cuomo railed. “You don’t know the way to run a authorities. You don’t know the way to deal with an emergency…
“You had the worst attendance file within the Meeting… Disgrace on you!”
The three-term socialist state lawmaker has been recurrently knocked for less than getting 4 payments handed within the Meeting over his half-decade in workplace.
Mamdani, 34, additionally grabbed his paycheck and fled Albany after the state finances handed in April — and hasn’t returned since.
He missed a whopping 50% of votes within the Meeting this yr whereas campaigning for New York Metropolis mayor, The Submit reported in June.
Mamdani fired again throughout the debate, getting in his personal licks on the thrice-elected Democratic governor Cuomo’s decades-long political file.
“We simply had a former governor, say in his personal phrases, that the town has been getting screwed by the state,” he stated from the stage.
“Who was main the state? It was you!” he charged at Cuomo, 67, to roaring laughter from supporters within the viewers. “You had been main the state for 10 years.”
A fiery alternate ensued, throughout which Sliwa snapped at Mamdani: “Your résumé may match on a cocktail serviette.”
Cuomo additionally dinged at Mamdani after he complained that the state hasn’t delivered funding for applications meant to assist juvenile offenders beneath the controversial Increase the Age regulation.
“If Zohran thought that there was cash locked up in Albany, possibly he ought to have gone to Albany and proposed a invoice to launch it,” Cuomo sniped.
Mamdani, who was first elected in 2020, handed all of 1 invoice this yr, The Submit beforehand reported — and he wasn’t even in Albany when his measure got here up for a vote.
That’s the identical variety of payments signed into regulation as 88-year-old Assemblyman David McDonough (R-Nassau) who’d been fully bodily absent from Albany’s legislative session this yr as he offers with well being points.
Even upstate Assemblyman Chris Tague (R-Schoharie) — an unabashed critic of Gov. Kathy Hochul who’s additionally clashed together with his Democratic colleagues within the Legislature — managed to get 9 payments, albeit on non-controversial native points, signed this yr.
“I present up! I’m there on a regular basis doing my job,” Tague informed The Submit Thursday.
“I feel he took up the unsuitable line of labor. He must be an actor in Hollywood. All the things is theatrics and appearing with him,” he stated of Mamdani.
The variety of standalone payments handed or enacted isn’t at all times essentially the most complete measure of a lawmaker’s effectiveness, given {that a} important bulk of coverage is crammed into the sprawling state finances.
However Mamdani has struggled to affect the large spending package deal previously as properly over his three phrases.
Whereas he was profitable in getting a pilot program for his signature free bus proposal included within the finances in 2023, this system was killed behind the scenes by Meeting Speaker Carl Heastie (D-Bronx) the yr after as a result of Mamdani refused to vote in favor of the spending plan.
Nonetheless Heastie, who endorsed Mamdani shortly after Hochul did final month, has dismissed the notion that the Democratic Socialists of America pol was ineffective as an meeting member.
“Once I tried to be speaker, you guys tried to do the identical factor to me by saying I didn’t go as many payments as different individuals who had been operating,” Heastie griped to reporters earlier this summer time.
During the last week, Mamdani was absent for legislative hearings in Albany about authorized protections for renters and defending ratepayers from hovering electrical prices – two of his hallmark coverage points.
“Thanks for stopping by,” a notice on Mamdani’s closed Albany workplace door learn Thursday, additional instructing guests to e mail a staffer to make an appointment.
