On Oct. 22, 2025, the three candidates for New York’s mayoral office joined the stage to participate in the second round of the mayoral debates. The candidates include former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo who is running as an Independent, Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani and Republican nominee Curtis Silwa.
While Cuomo served three terms as New York’s Governor, he was forced to resigned from office after 13 sexual harassment accusations against him came to light. Zohran Mamdani may be the freshest face out of the three candidates, but he has been representing parts of Queens in the New York State Assembly since 2021. Lastly, Curtis Silwa is widely recognized for his signature red beret, a symbol of his founding of the Guardian Angels. This is a non-profit organization that has conducted unarmed community patrols since 1976.
Some highlights in the debate include the handling of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) raids and federal jurisdiction overreach, housing-policy proposals as well as public safety and policing plans.
Silwa opens the debate by asserting his campaign as being “about the people,” distinguishing how “it’s us versus them,” of which includes his opponents. Cuomo emphasizes the city’s necessity in electing a candidate who is going to “save this city … [and] get it done, not just talk about it,” and mocks Mamdani’s qualifications by saying “he’s never had a real job.”
Mamdani retorts with how his counterparts “spend more time trying to convince the other to drop out… [instead of] proposing policies, speaking only of the past because that’s all they know.” By the five-minute mark, there’s a clear tension present amongst the candidates.
When moderators questioned the candidates as to how the mayor and New York Police Department (NYPD) should have handled the confrontation on Canal Street where ICE swarmed street vendors, Mamdani critiqued ICE for disregarding “the law and caring even less for the people they’re supposed to serve.” He proposes ending Mayor Adams and the federal government’s collaboration, along with passing street vending reform bills that have been “overridden by Mayor Adams.”
Cuomo claimed he would call the president and threaten to have the NYPD forcefully stop ICE when outside of their jurisdiction as policing illegal vendors is “a basic policing function for NYPD [and] consumer affairs.” Finally, Silwa maintains that the federal government overstepping its jurisdiction “can’t tolerate citizens attacking our federal law enforcement forces … because that will just lead to anarchy.”
Moderators followed by asking about each candidate’s housing-policy proposals. Mamdani’s main focus surrounded rent-stabilization, building 200,000 “truly affordable” homes (based on the $700,00 median household income) across the five boroughs—Manhattan, Brooklyn, the Bronx, Queens and Staten Island – and increasing the “Every Child and Family is Known” program which links a child living in a homeless shelter with an employee of the public school system, encouraging improved school attendance and a “sense of belonging” in their community.
Cuomo disagrees about the effectiveness of rent-stabilization, and proposes focusing on building affordable housing as the core solution. Silwa deviates from both his counterparts and argues that bringing teachers into homeless shelters would tackle the issue quickly and head-on as it “takes 5 years to build affordable housing.”
The mayoral candidates were questioned as to their specific public safety and policing plans aimed at addressing crime. Mamdani addressed his focus on incorporating the use of having mental health experts to respond to mental health crises. He seeks to create a department of “community safety… [which] focuses on the mental health crisis, homelessness crisis, and ensuring police officers can focus on serious crimes,” which is believed to help improve their response times to serious crimes.
Both Cuomo and Silwa critiqued this “social worker” approach, proposing that hiring thousands more police officers to patrol the subways would be more efficient. To be specific, Cuomo proposed hiring 5,000 officers and Silwa 7,000 officers to the NYPD force.
Ultimately, each mayoral candidate demonstrated their diverging views on how to solve pressing issues New York has recently faced including ICE raids, housing policies and rising crime rates. On Nov. 4, 2025, New Yorkers will elect their new mayor, who will later be inaugurated on Jan. 1, 2026. The winning candidate will oversee New York’s municipal government for the following four years.
