What to know about New York City mayoral race

Here's some numbers. No math, just some numbers, so pay attention. New York City is counting on $7.4 billion in federal funding for its 2026 budget. That is 6.4% of all city spending, according to the state's comptroller. Why do I bring this up? Well, today, President Trump said much, if not all of that money could be held back if Zohran Mamdani wins the mayor's race, a contest that lost one badly trailing competitor yesterday when Mayor Eric Adams, running as an independent, dropped out. Mamdani said today that Trump was, quote, "going through the stages of grief," unquote, at the prospect of him becoming New York's next mayor. Former Governor Andrew Cuomo remains in the race, as does Republican Curtis Sliwa. Mamdani, running as a democratic socialist, retains in that race a double-digit lead. I want to bring in our reporter panel. Riley Rogerson reports for NOTUS--remember, that's News of the US--and Matt Brown for the good-old Associated Press, which stands for Associated Press. Great to have you both here. Your thoughts, either one of you-- who wants to go first-- on New York's mayor's race, which we cannot simply talk about too much? Riley? What I'm paying attention to mostly is how this is playing out on Capitol Hill. There has been an unbelievable amount of pressure on Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who are both from New York, to weigh in on this. And now that Eric Adams is out of the race, I'm really curious if this is going to incentivize them to weigh in or they're going to continue to keep their distance.

Because they still haven't-- They have not.

--not formally endorsed. They haven't even said what Kamala Harris has said, which Mamdani is the Democratic nominee. I support the Democratic nominee, which is a kind of shouldering up but not a full embrace. Yeah, they have not even done that.

Matt? No, and it's remarkable because while they haven't commented on endorsing Mamdani, they have had conversations with the leading Democratic nominee, but they had-- House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries actually did come out with a statement after Eric Adams dropped out and commended him for his service for the city, which we should just say that Eric Adams dropping out of this race is simultaneously something that is to be expected given Adams's poll numbers. I mean, he was behind the Republican, behind Mamdani, behind Cuomo in many polls, but also is extremely remarkable for a sitting mayor of New York City to not be re-elected. That is something that very rarely happens in New York City politics, and it's something that also might be a harbinger for what is the future of Adams in this. Can he maintain his popularity here, or what is his relationship going to be like in politics going forward? Your thoughts, Matt, on where we stand on the shutdown and the various posturing beforehand?

Well, it's interesting. We've seen, over the last couple of weeks, Republicans and Democrats have given their talking points. They've argued with each other and refused to sit down. Finally, we had a conversation between the leaders of the Democrats and Republicans in the Senate and House with President Trump just at the White House here, and you saw there that they are still entirely on different sides of the universe on this.

Still on their talking points.

Still on their talking points, and I think that this is going to be interesting now that they're really already gearing up for a shutdown or coming up with their justifications when it comes to what healthcare policies they're going to be focused on and where they're going to-- how they can see themselves getting out of this quagmire.

Riley? Right, and that is exactly what I'm hearing from sources on Capitol Hill. The conversation is less, Will there be a shutdown? and now, how do we get out of a shutdown? And how long will it last? Exactly. That's what I'm hearing. Sources are asking me, how long do you think it's going to last? And I'm like, hey, you work on Capitol Hill. You tell me.

I wasn't elected here. You have the votes. You run the committees. You're in charge, not me. We just observe. Right. And I think right now, people just-- they don't know. People don't know if it's going to be the Democrats or the Republicans who are going to cave. But, clearly, one party is going to have to give a little for this to end, and it's just unclear which one that will be. And, Matt, do you have any sense of the underlying issue, which Democrats have identified, which is health care? And Republicans have identified, look, we can discuss that, but first, you've got to keep the government open on a nonpartisan basis with a seven-week continuing resolution, no poison pills in there, no Republican policy priorities, which has happened in previous shutdown standoffs. Republicans are trying to be the reasonable governing class. Democrats are identifying one issue that they believe can pierce through that. Well, to your point, what's interesting about this scenario is that Democrats were very successful early on in making this shutdown about health care, in a lot of ways, but they've been less successful so far in justifying or coming up with an explanation for how, say, the ACA credits could be continued or how--

Who pays for it and how? Exactly. What would be the actual plan of how would you actually negotiate that from their positions? Whereas Republicans actually have now zeroed in on that as an issue. They've put out a lot of talking points that fact checkers are running through right now when it comes to questions of how much it would increase the deficit to be doing that, what that means for health care for undocumented immigrants and whatnot. But given the unity inside of the Republicans on their message on this, Democrats are now scrambling to figure out, how do they respond to that? And, Riley, the backdrop for this is Democratic voters and activists want the party to fight, and they see other evidence of things that discourage them or anger them. Like over the weekend, Missouri's Republican governor signed redistricting, which eliminates possibly one Democratic seat in Missouri. Democrats look at that and say, this is a partisan thing. We have to fight partisan fire with partisan fire. Right, and we're seeing California Governor Gavin Newsom try to do that with the maps in California. He's putting that up to a vote in November. So we'll see what happens with that. But absolutely redistricting is an issue where the Democratic base is insisting that leaders in the party fight fire with fire. This all started a couple of months ago with Texas, and it's continuing. And now we're seeing, like you mentioned, the first map being signed into law that does eliminate a Democratic seat. And if Democrats do sit back and they don't match this redistricting with their own redistricting, there could be huge consequences for control of the House of Representatives, and that's not something the base is taking lightly. And the shutdown scenario may ultimately come down to how you define fight and how much stomach you have for that fight. Matt Brown, Riley Rogerson, thank you so very much for coming in. I appreciate it.