New York City mayoral candidate Andrew Cuomo was roundly criticized on Wednesday for a released — and then quickly deleted — AI-generated attack ad that depicted one supporter of opponent Zohran Mamdani as a Black character shoplifting while in a keffiyeh and others as trespassers and abusers.
The ad, posted on social media during the second mayoral debate on Wednesday, began with Mamdani strolling through New York streets with a set of keys and eating rice with his hands. It then featured clips of AI-generated “supporters” — including pimps, drug dealers and drunken drivers — explaining why they supported Mamdani. It ended on Mamdani releasing a horde of criminals from a jail cell before flashing to images of a ravaged New York City in flames.
The clip was quickly deleted from Cuomo’s social media accounts but was re-uploaded by Zeteo reporter Prem Thakker. The reception was unflattering.
“Well this is sad,” MSNBC’s “The Weekend: Primetime” co-host Antonia Hylton posted on X. “And pretty racist.”
“This is so gross and full of racist stereotypes, including a Black man dressed like a pimp trafficking a car full of white women,” Shannon Watts, the co-founder of Moms Demand Action, wrote on X. “Cuomo needs to be thrown in the ash heap of history.”
Cuomo spokesperson Rich Azzopardi said in a statement the video was “a draft proposal that was neither finished nor approved, did not go through the normal legal process, and was inadvertently posted by a junior staffer — which is why it was taken down five minutes later.”
The video came just hours before Cuomo sat down with radio host Sid Rosenberg and asked him to “just imagine” Mamdani as mayor should another Sept. 11-like attack happen in the city.
“Yeah, I could,” Rosenberg responded. “He’d be cheering.”
“That’s another problem,” Cuomo said with laughter.
Mamdani, who would be the first Muslim elected mayor of New York City, responded to the comments on X: “Just disgusting.”
Azzopardi said the former governor was referring to Mamdani’s April interview with the popular Twitch streamer Hasan Piker, who said in 2019 he believed America “deserved” the Sept. 11 attacks. Piker later said the comments were a misguided attempt at satire and were “inappropriate,” and Mamdani said during the first mayoral debate that Piker’s comments were “objectionable and reprehensible.”
But he also defended his appearance with Piker, saying the Democrats remained in the political minority because they were “looking only to speak to journalists and streamers and Americans with whom we agree on every single thing that they say.”
The episodes reflect the viciousness that has consumed the city’s mayoral race since Mamdani pulled off his surprise victory over Cuomo in June’s Democratic primary. Cuomo later tried to reignite his electoral chances through a “more aggressive” run as an independent in July, one that has included multiple uses of AI to depict non-mayor jobs he was not skilled for and another that compared Mamdani to former New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, another Cuomo enemy.
The moves have not amounted to much electoral success. The gulf between Mamdani and Cuomo is still vast in public polling, with Mamdani taking a double-digit lead in nearly all of them. And while current Mayor Eric Adams has dropped out, Republican opponent Curtis Sliwa has refused to exit the race to try and help Cuomo.
“I’m supposed to drop out for a loser who destroyed the state?” Sliwa told Newsmax on Monday when asked about widespread calls to leave the race to boost Cuomo’s bid. “And you want me to give him an opportunity to put the last nail in the coffin and destroy New York City, too?”
Even President Donald Trump, a New York native who has derided all of the city’s mayoral candidates, seems resigned to the likelihood of a Mamdani win. The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday that Mamdani appeared unbeatable and that a Sliwa exit was not likely to boost Cuomo’s chances.
He also told reporters on Tuesday that it “looks like we’re gonna have a communist as the mayor of New York.” (Mamdani has said he is a Democratic socialist but has denied claims he’s a communist.)
“But maybe, I don’t know, if he dropped out, maybe Cuomo would have a little bit of a chance, but not much, because it looks like the lead is, it’s not a great lead, but it’s big enough that he should be able to win,” Trump told reporters on Tuesday.
