NYC mayoral race: How Mamdani, Cuomo and Sliwa plan to address public safety, transportation, housing and Trump

Whoever is elected New York City’s next mayor — the Democratic nominee, state Assemb. Zohran Mamdani; a third-party candidate, former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo; or the Republican nominee, Guardian Angels founder Curtis Sliwa — will become the 111th man to hold the job, one of the nation’s most powerful mayoralties.

Come Jan. 1 at midnight, he’ll control an almost-certain-to-grow $116 billion budget, oversee more than 300,000 municipal workers and set policy that ricochets beyond the city's five boroughs and 8.4 million residents.

Here are just a few of the policy areas in which the next mayor will make his mark.

Public safety

Boosting the NYPD headcount, which according to the latest Mayor’s Management Report is at 34,975 for the current fiscal year, is a central plank of two of the three candidates’ public safety platforms. Cuomo wants to add 5,000 more cops and pay $15,000 in sign-on bonuses, part of a plan estimated to cost $250 million over five years. Sliwa, who promises to raise top salaries “on par with Nassau and Suffolk PD,” wants to add 7,000 more cops. Mamdani — who apologized for past comments calling the NYPD “racist,” “corrupt” and “wicked” — would keep the headcount as is. He says he’s not running to defund the police, as he’d advocated in the past.

Mamdani, Cuomo and Sliwa all have said they would seek to retain Mayor Eric Adams’ fourth and latest police commissioner, Jessica Tisch. 

Of the three mayoral candidates, the NYPD under Mamdani would mark the greatest departure from the status quo, with Sliwa furthest to the right (his website promises “to restore law and order”), Cuomo more moderate and Mamdani to the left. 

Both Sliwa and Cuomo would bolster controversial units. Sliwa wants to reinstate the Anti-Crime Unit, which was involved in shootings over the years and disbanded in 2020; Cuomo would expand the Strategic Response Group, which has been subject to lawsuits and a settlement over its aggressive response to protests and unrest.

Mamdani would create a Department of Community Safety, which would supplement the police force and address mental health, gun violence, victim services and other societal problems. Mamdani has promised to rein in overtime and, unlike his opponents, would defer to disciplinary recommendations by the Civilian Complaint Review Board, rather than the police commissioner having the final word.

Mamdani, in the state Assembly, has called for the decriminalization of certain prostitution offenses, saying the laws don’t work and harm women who they   are purportedly aimed at helping. Sliwa and Cuomo want to keep much of the status quo on prostitution criminalization, arguing that neighborhoods and families are harmed by condoning prostitution. Sliwa at a recent debate said he wouldn’t focus on the prostitutes, but on the pimps, madams and  clients.

Sliwa and Cuomo want to keep open Rikers Island’s jails — which are required by law to close by 2027 in favor of four borough-based jails — although Cuomo had initially told Newsday and others months ago that the jail complex must close. Mamdani said he would do everything in his power to end the jails at Rikers, which date back to the 1930s. 

Transportation, transit and congestion pricing

Over 300,000 Long Islanders commute into the city for work on an average weekday, the majority via mass transit. While some take only the Long Island Rail Road, “riders often transfer to subway or bus services to reach their final destination in the City,” according to a 2023 report by the state comptroller's office.

Mamdani would make public buses “fast and free” — a slogan of his campaign plastered on placards and chanted at his rallies. Just how the program would be funded is a subject of long-simmering debate, along with whether making buses free would turn them into roving havens for the homeless. A 2023 estimate by the city’s Independent Budget Office put the price tag for free buses at $652 million. Mamdani wants to fund the free buses and other expanded social programs with higher taxes on the rich and big corporations. But he said at the first debate that he’s open to other revenue sources.

He said he’d “absolutely” drop his call for a tax increase if money could be found elsewhere. “The most important thing is funding these agenda items,” Mamdani said, a position Sliwa mocked.

Sliwa said of Mamdani: " ... your fantasies are never going to come about in terms of funding everything you want that’s gonna be free, free, free.”

Cuomo said that raising taxes would cause people to leave the city, adding, “You would see New Yorkers on I-95 fleeing to Florida."

Cuomo said he wouldn’t make buses free but would expand the Fair Fares NYC program, begun under Mayor Bill de Blasio, in which lower-income residents receive discounts on subway and bus fares.

Sliwa's transportation plan focuses on stopping fare-beaters. His website says: “Enforce fare evasion laws aggressively — fare-beaters are often connected to larger patterns of lawlessness.”

Mamdani has also proposed converting the subway systems' underground vacant spaces and empty storefronts into drop-in depots for the mentally ill and homeless.

Cuomo, who signed the state law authorizing a toll for entering parts of Manhattan, last year proposed it be delayed. But he now says he supports it because it appears to be working. Mamdani has always supported congestion pricing. Sliwa noted at a debate: “I’m the only candidate who’s opposed to congestion pricing.”

Confronting, or cutting a deal with, Donald Trump

Cuomo and Mamdani each have said they would stand up to President Donald Trump, although Mamdani has been his most consistent and harshest critic.

Cuomo says he battled Trump during the COVID-19 pandemic and kept Trump from sending the National Guard to New York during the unrest of 2020.

Mamdani said he’d be the most effective protector of New York from Trump, saying at a recent debate: “He’ll have to get through me.”

Asked about a recent raid by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement on immigrant vendors peddling counterfeit goods on Canal Street, Cuomo said: "I would have called the president, and I would have said, 'Look, you're way out of bounds, they're way out of bounds, call them back, or I'm gonna have the NYPD step in and stop them.'"

Sliwa has proposed a more deferential stance toward Trump in general, saying: "What I would do is sit and negotiate" when Trump tries to take grants and other federal money from the city, as he has since being sworn in earlier this year. 

Housing

A driver of high housing costs on Long Island is scarcity in neighboring New York City.

As Steven Romalewski, director of the CUNY Mapping Service in midtown Manhattan, told Newsday earlier this year: "The housing crisis doesn’t stop at the Queens-Nassau border. Scarcity means higher costs on both sides of the border."

In the city, the residential rental vacancy rate has dipped to 1.4%, one of the lowest since records have been kept. The city's restrictive zoning and other bureaucratic stumbling blocks — both worse on Long Island — mean New York is allowing just a fraction of the housing construction permitted in other big cities, including Boston, Seattle and Washington, D.C., despite skyrocketing demand, according to a report from The Pew Charitable Trusts. 

Mamdani and Cuomo both want to build more housing. Cuomo cites his experience as a federal housing official and earlier this month promised that 80,000 units of more affordable housing would be “quickly developed or returned to the market."

Cuomo has proposed means-testing new tenants for rent-regulated apartments, a jab at Mamdani, who lives in a $2,300/month regulated unit in Astoria with his wife.

Mamdani has promised a rent freeze on the city’s nearly 1 million rent-regulated apartments for the entirety of his mayoralty — a position that landlords argue is unfair due to their own increasing costs and would discourage upkeep.

Sliwa said he would repeal Adams’ signature City of Yes housing plans to build more homes and would seek to change state law to allow for more “reasonable rent increases.”