Joe Borelli, Former New York City Council minority leader Interview

Mendte in the Morning talks to Joe Borelli about the NYC Mayoral race as the polls continue to change and show more support for Zohran Mamdani.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Now let's go to Joe Burrelli, Managing director of Chartwell
Strategy Group and former Minority leader of the New York
City Council.

Speaker 2 (00:06):
Good morning, Joe, top of them more, Larry, thanks for having.

Speaker 1 (00:10):
Me sure absolutely all the time, every week. And listen,
there's two polls out today, and both polls show that
on the Democratic primary side in the mayoral election, it
is a two person race. I guess we've known that
for a while. The the I guess the big news
is the difference in the two polls. Both have Mom

(00:30):
Donnie and Cuomo going to the eighth round and being
the two men standing. One from a pack that supports
Cuomo has him winning by twelve. The other with a
pack that is run or supports Mom Donnie, has Cuomo
winning by two. Do we read anything into that at all.

Speaker 2 (00:54):
Let's split the difference and say he's you know, winning
by about six or seven points. But the real number
is that both have him going to the eighth round,
meaning this is a neck and neck horse race until
that last minute. And like you know, there really is
no way of predicting how people are going to vote
in their fourth, fifth, six choices on ranked choice voting

(01:17):
You know, we only have familiarity with saying who do
you like in a poem? Right, I like Joe Schmo,
I like Mary Jones. But we've never had really a
knowledge of polling eight rounds down the ballot, seven rounds
down the ballot. So I still think it's anyone's race. However,
the change really has been the the Cuomo packs, the

(01:37):
outside money that's supporting Andrew Cuomo have shifted a little
bit from support just doing ads supporting Andrew Pomo to
also doing ads attacking Zohra and Mam Donnie. There was
a great ad I just saw on the TV this morning,
you know, just highlighting all the crazy things Mam Donni
wants to do, which is the antithesis of what essentially

(01:58):
Andrew Pomo's saying, raising cap defunding the NYPD, stuff like that.
The problem is a lot of people remember when Andrew
Cuomo had some of these same positions, right, This is
the guy who raised taxes and raised state spending over
his ten years in office so much that New York
led the country in out migration. And he, I don't
know if you remember, he tried to blame the weather.

(02:18):
He said, the weather is why people are leaving upstate
New York and it's just not true. The number one
destination for New Yorkers by by percentage was actually Vermont,
of all places, colder than New York, worse weather than
New York. So it's I still think, Larry, I've been
saying it for a couple of weeks now. I still
think it's a closer race with Cuomo in the lead.
But it's closer today than it was last week.

Speaker 1 (02:40):
Yeah, And it's definitely two people at this point when
it gets past this primary, because almost the primaries don't
really matter as much anymore because both Cuomo and Mamdani
are going to be on other lines as independent so
as a working Families party. But so they're all going

(03:01):
to be on this ballot coming on, coming up a
little bit later. And one of the people on the
ballot is the incumbent Mayor Adams, who, more than anyone
else is if you put them all together, he's polling
the least. Does he have any shot whatsoever?

Speaker 2 (03:17):
Well, yeah, I mean it's really gonna depend on the
Democratic crimery. I mean, you know, we could say that
they're all on the ballot, and that's that's true, but
the person who has the pole position is gonna be
the person who's running as a Democrat. The enrollment Democrat
to Republican is something like six to one in New
York City. So it's mission critical really for Andrew Cuomo
or Zowrin Mondoni to be on the Democratic line. If

(03:40):
Zorn happens to win, you know, it's gonna be tough
for Andrew Cuomo to win. It's gonna be tough for
Eric Adams to win. But at that point, it would
only take a plurality of voters, and it might be
a plurality that doesn't go higher than the low thirties.
You know, thirty three, thirty four to thirty five percent
could actually win a mayoral race when you have you

(04:03):
know this many candidates, right, you have you'll have two
major party candidates, whoever they are to be determined, right,
we know Curtis Lee will be on the ballot, but
to be determined on the Democratic side. But then you
have essentially an incumbent mayor, right Mayor Adams, and you
have an incumbent governor with such high name recognition. This
is a dynamic we just have never seen in politics

(04:25):
in New York in modern history, it's always been sort
of whoever the Democrats came out of the Democratic primary
versus whoever the Republicans had and if the city was
bad enough, if the city was you know, decaying enough,
the Republican had a shot. We had that with Mayor
Giuliani when the city was really twenty three twenty four
hundred murders a year. And we had it with Michael

(04:46):
Bloomberg after nine to eleven when people really wanted a
stability and restoration of the city coming out of that
horrible attack. I just you know, if we didn't flip
to Republican under build a Bloso. It's tough to see,
but we've never had this dynamic. If Nicole Melly attackus
who ran in twenty eighteen, twenty nineteen, rather, if she'd

(05:08):
ran in a race where she had the chance to
have a plurality of votes and win, if she only
needed thirty five percent, thirty six percent, thirty seven percent
a win, she could very well be on her second
term as maya right now.

Speaker 1 (05:23):
No, I see that. I mean, this is something Curtis
Lee has been talking about for well over a month now,
that this gives him an opportunity. But as you're saying
it probably gives any Republican with any type of credibility possibility,
because what do you think they would need to get
thirty three percent?

Speaker 2 (05:41):
I think a Republican needs to get thirty four percent,
thirty five percent. Those are possibilities. I think if a
Republican gets thirty nine percent forty percent, they probably win.
So Curtis's challenge is trying to convince people that he
is not the showman that he was. I mean, this
is a guy who's been in your industry, right, He's
been on the radio, he's been on the on the
on the talking head circuit kind of you know, he's

(06:02):
been sort of the avant garde of challenging authority in
New York City, you know, with the Guardian Angels going
back forty years. But can ken voters see him as
someone who is capable of leading the city. That's what
if I was advising Curtis Lee, what I would advise
him to do. And I think he's taking my advice
because you know, he's he's coming through events. I've seen

(06:23):
him events. He's coming to events, you know, wearing suit
and ties and trying to look the part of the mayor.
Who can also be a confident manager on the issues.
When you pull the issues, he is right on most
of the issues, and neither issues that range from eighty
twenty issues in his favor to you know, fifty five
forty five in his face.

Speaker 1 (06:43):
Yeah, it's a great point. It's a great point. I
think he has a real shot. Joe Burrelli, Managing director
Chartwell Strategy Group and former Minority Leader of the New
York City Council