Several Jewish groups endorsed Andrew Cuomo for New York City mayor on Sept. 29, a day after Mayor Eric Adams suspended his reelection campaign, according to JTA.
Crown Heights United PAC, a political group “anchored in the Crown Heights Jewish community” which is the center of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement, endorsed Cuomo that morning.
“We proudly endorse Andrew Cuomo for Mayor of New York City,” Crown Heights United PAC wrote in a statement, which was signed by 13 rabbis and community leaders. “With extremism and antisemitism on the rise, and the city facing an unprecedented crisis, it is more important than ever to make our voices heard and vote.”
The Sephardic Community Federation has gotten fully behind Cuomo. After regularly posting generic messages urging people to vote in the November election, the SCF is now calling for donations to his campaign.
“It’s easy, DONATE NOW! MUST BE DONE TODAY,” the group wrote in an Instagram post Sept. 29, referencing the impending matching funds deadline. “Ask friends and family to contribute $100 to help protect our city and our community. If we lose, the current wave of anti-Jewish sentiment could spread further; a win here can stop that momentum in its tracks.”
The endorsements point to how the race is changing now that Adams has dropped out. Groups and individuals who may have stayed out of the race out of deference to the incumbent mayor are now jumping in to try to tilt the race away from frontrunner Zohran Mamdani.
Mamdani’s criticism of Israel, which has drawn accusations of fueling antisemitism, prompted a number of Jewish groups to seek out his most viable opponent. More broadly, opponents of Mamdani’s democratic socialist politics — including Jim Walden, who recently suspended his own mayoral campaign in an effort to unite against Mamdani’s “antisemitic obsessions” — have been calling for the frontrunner’s opponents to coalesce around one challenger.
