NEW YORK (AP) — In his final ad of the New York City mayoral race, Andrew Cuomo opens on a dour note: “Life in New York is tough right now.”

Then comes a dig at Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee whom the former governor has argued is too inexperienced to lead the city: “Candidates who need on-the-job training can’t fix it,” he says.

In their last days on the campaign trail before Election Day on Tuesday, Cuomo, Mamdani and Republican Curtis Sliwa are offering their closing arguments to voters.

For Cuomo, 67, it’s a message that voters must stop Mamdani from leading the city into ruin, casting himself as the only one who can keep the city safe and move it forward.

Meanwhile, Mamdani is trying to keep riding the wave of progressive excitement that carried him to victory in June’s primary — while weathering the final barrage of attacks from Cuomo and other critics wary of giving a 34-year-old democratic socialist the reins to America’s biggest city.

With early voting concluding Sunday, he’s shaking hands with everyone from social media influencers to airport taxi drivers as he urges his supporters not to grow complacent. “People say ‘We got this. It’s over. Cuomo is cooked,’” he says in one of his many popular online videos. “Do not believe it.”

And Sliwa is running an aggressive ground-level campaign of his own, hitting the city’s subways and streets with his public safety-focused pitch and a warning that his Democratic opponents are “two sides of the same coin.”

Cuomo, a Democrat on the ballot as an independent, has spent the final stretch working to convince Republicans he is a more viable candidate than Sliwa.

He has met with Jewish and Muslim leaders. There have been an array of media hits on traditional news........

© The Times of Israel