October 1, 2025 - 6:30pm
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has said that Zohran Mamdani winning the New York City mayoral race may be good for both the Republican Party and the city in the long term.
“I kind of like Mamdani winning,” Bessent told Vanity Fair, “because the worst thing in a way would be when [Andrew] Cuomo comes back in, you just keep losing a little bit of altitude for four or eight more years, and they kind of hold it together, and more people leave. So if you could just say, ‘Okay, he’s a shock to the system, and there’s a chance you can come back from it.’ ”
At the weekend, incumbent Mayor Eric Adams abandoned his reelection bid, leaving a three-way race between Democratic candidate Mamdani, Republican Curtis Sliwa and independent Cuomo.
Bessent’s comments come a week after he said that “New York City will be coming to the federal government for a bailout if the Mamdani plans are implemented.” When asked whether he would grant such a bailout, the Trump appointee told Fox Business Network that “it will be the same thing that Gerald Ford said: ‘Drop dead.’”
The Treasury Secretary is not the only one on the Right who thinks the Republican Party could gain from the fallout of Mamdani’s socialist economic policy. The Democratic candidate has mooted looking into the “abolition of private property” and, according to Politico, some Republican strategists are even “giddy” about the potential for his radicalism to push a swathe of centre-left voters towards the Right.
On Monday, President Donald Trump urged New Yorkers not to vote for the “self proclaimed New York City Communist”. He said that if Mamdani wins in November, “he is going to have problems with Washington like no Mayor in the history of our once great city.” He added: “Remember, he needs the money from me, as President in order to fulfill all of his fake communist promises. He won’t be getting any of it, so what’s the point of voting for him?” Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders responded that “nothing says ‘law and order’ like the President extorting his own city if they don’t vote how he wants.”
Recent polling compiled by Marist University before Adams’s exit showed Mamdani leading the New York race with 45% support, with Cuomo in second place on 24%. Sliwa had 17% of the support and Adams was at 9%. The election will take place on 4 November.
With Mamdani leading in the polls, Bessent gestured that the forces of economic instability which brought Trump back into the Oval Office last year could give the Democratic candidate the mayoralty. Political outsiders “are going to come and take it… if you don’t fix the way the system is built”, he said.
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