Zohran Mamdani dodges attacks, straight answers and cant say how hell pay for socialist proposals in heated NYC mayoral debate

Socialist Zohran Mamdani skirted tough questions and offered few specifics as he smoothly swatted off a barrage of attacks from ex-Gov.Andrew Cuomo during a heated first general mayoral election debate Thursday.The rat-a-tat verbal brawl between the three contenders – including a zinger-lobbing Curtis Sliwa – from a 30 Rockefeller Center stage made for good TV, but arguably left New Yorkers without an idea how their next mayor would handle the nitty-gritty while governing the nation’s largest city.The front-runner Democratic candidate Mamdani stayed on his “affordability” message, but could offer few specifics of how he’d actually put his platform into practice — and dodged straight answers when pressed on some contentious issues.“Well, Zohran, boy, you have fantasies,” Sliwa said at one point during the two-hour slugfest hosted by NBC 4 New York, Telemundo and POLITICO.“Never going to come about in terms of funding everything you want.

It’s going to be free, free, free.It’s a fantasy.

Let’s deal with reality.”Cuomo, the former governor who’s running as an independent, spared no opportunity to hit Mamdani over his Democratic Socialists of America-backed policies on prostitution and misdemeanors, stance on Israel, past tweets calling the NYPD “racist” and lack of experience.“He has literally never had a job,” Cuomo charged, adding, “God forbid — a 9/11, a health pandemic” should happen while he’s in office.”But Mamdani, a Queens state assemblyman, appeared at ease on the stage, interlacing his dreamy, ambiguous promises of free buses, universal childcare and freezing the rent with put-downs tying Cuomo to President Trump and billionaires.“As much as Andrew Cuomo wants to bring up tweets from 2020, which is around the same time that he was sending seniors to their death in nursing homes, I am looking to work with police officers, not to defund the NYPD,” he said.The unrelenting torrent didn’t hit on any new issu...