NEW YORK (AP) — Their chances of becoming the next mayor of New York City may have dimmed. Their mission now? Stopping former Gov. Andrew Cuomo from getting to City Hall.
In the final day of campaigning before the city's Democratic primary, candidates who are seen as longer shots to win the nomination urged voters to leave Cuomo off their ballots in the city's ranked choice election in a last-ditch effort to block the former governor's comeback from a sexual harassment scandal.
“Let’s make sure Andrew Cuomo gets nowhere near City Hall,” candidate and city Comptroller Brad Lander said Monday on WNYC radio, which interviewed the major candidates ahead of the election.
State Sen. Zellnor Myrie, another candidate, similarly asked voters not to vote for Cuomo, telling the station, “We need fresh leadership, we need to turn the page and we need bold solutions at this moment.”
The pitches came as Cuomo, who has been considered the frontrunner for months, has been trying to fend off a charge from Zohran Mamdani ahead of Tuesday's election.
Mamdani, a 33-year-old state assemblyman, would be the city's first Muslim and first Indian American mayor if elected. A democratic socialist who got elected to the Legislature in 2020, Mamdani started the campaign as a relative unknown but has won support with a energetic campaign centered on improving the cost of living.
He spent part the second-to-last day of the campaign visiting businesses and potential voters in northern Manhattan, followed by a crowd of supporters and a man banging a drum.
"This is the most expensive city in the United States of America and New Yorkers are tired of having to worry each and every hour of each and every day of whether they can afford to live here,” said Mamdani.
Cuomo spoke at a union hall, where he warned Democrats against both radicalism and picking a candidate without experience.
“This is not a job for a novice. This is not a job for a person who never really had a job before,” Cuomo said. “We need someone who knows what they are doing on day one, because your lives depend on it.”
Mamdani, meanwhile, exuded confidence, telling WNYC he is “one day from toppling a political dynasty.”
Mamdani and Cuomo represent the Democratic Party’s ideological divides, with Cuomo as an older moderate and Mamdani a younger progressive.
Former President Bill Clinton endorsed Cuomo on Sunday, saying voters should not “underestimate the complexity” of the challenges faced by a mayor. The New York Times didn’t issue an endorsement this year, but wrote an editorial praising Lander and saying Cuomo would be a better choice than Mamdani, who it said was unworthy of being on people’s ballots.
Mamdani has been endorsed by U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders.
The two candidates' reactions to the American bombing of Iran’s nuclear sites on Sunday offered more evidence of the party’s internal split.
Cuomo, in a statement, criticized “the way Trump went about this without consulting Congress, without consulting the normal congressional officials” but stressed that “Iran cannot have nuclear capability.”
Mamdani released a statement that slammed Trump but quickly shifted focus back to his key issues, saying “these actions are the result of a political establishment that would rather spend trillions of dollars on weapons than lift millions out of poverty, launch endless wars while silencing calls for peace, and fearmonger about outsiders while billionaires hollow out our democracy from within.”
Cuomo, who won three terms as governor, resigned in 2021 after a report from the state attorney general concluded that he sexually harassed 11 women. He has denied wrongdoing.
New York City is using ranked choice voting in its Democratic mayoral primary election Tuesday, a system that allows voters to rank up to five candidates in order of preference. If one candidate is the first choice of a majority of voters, that person wins the race outright. If nobody hits that threshold, the votes are then tabulated in multiple rounds. After each round, the candidate in last place is eliminated. Votes cast for that person are then redistributed to the candidates ranked next on the voter's ballot.
That continues until one candidate gets a majority.
Cuomo's opponents have urged voters not to rank him at all and therefore deprive him of support in later rounds of counting.
Eleven candidates are on the ballot in the Democratic mayoral primary. Incumbent Mayor Eric Adams isn’t one of them. He’s a Democrat but is running as an independent. The Republican Party has already picked its nominee, Guardian Angels founder Curtis Sliwa.
Associated Press video journalist David Martin contributed to this report.
FILE - Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani talks to people after the New York City Democratic Mayoral Primary Debate at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in the Gerald W. Lynch Theater on Thursday, June 12, 2025 in New York City. (Vincent Alban/The New York Times via AP, Pool, file)
FILE- Democratic mayoral candidate Andrew Cuomo speaks during a Democratic mayoral primary debate, Wednesday, June 4, 2025, in New York. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura, file)
HOUSTON (AP) — Former Uvalde, Texas, schools police Officer Adrian Gonzales was among the first officers to arrive at Robb Elementary after a gunman opened fire on students and teachers.
Prosecutors allege that instead of rushing in to confront the shooter, Gonzales failed to take action to protect students. Many families of the 19 fourth-grade students and two teachers who were killed believe that if Gonzales and the nearly 400 officers who responded had confronted the gunman sooner instead of waiting more than an hour, lives might have been saved.
More than 3½ years since the killings, the first criminal trial over the delayed law enforcement response to one of the deadliest school shootings in U.S. history is set to begin.
It’s a rare case in which a police officer could be convicted for allegedly failing to act to stop a crime and protect lives.
Here’s a look at the charges and the legal issues surrounding the trial.
Gonzales was charged with 29 counts of child endangerment for those killed and injured in the May 2022 shooting. The indictment alleges he placed children in “imminent danger” of injury or death by failing to engage, distract or delay the shooter and by not following his active shooter training. The indictment says he did not advance toward the gunfire despite hearing shots and being told where the shooter was located.
Each child endangerment count carries a potential sentence of up to two years in prison.
State and federal reviews of the shooting cited cascading problems in law enforcement training, communication, leadership and technology and questioned why officers from multiple agencies waited so long before confronting and killing the gunman, Salvador Ramos.
Gonzales’ attorney, Nico LaHood, said his client is innocent and public anger over the shooting is being misdirected.
“He was focused on getting children out of that building,” LaHood, said. “He knows where his heart was and what he tried to do for those children.”
Jury selection in Gonzales’ trial is scheduled to begin Jan. 5 in Corpus Christi, about 200 miles (320 kilometers) southeast of Uvalde. The trial was moved after defense attorneys argued Gonzales could not receive a fair trial in Uvalde.
Gonzales, 52, and former Uvalde schools police chief Pete Arredondo are the only officers charged. Arredondo was charged with multiple counts of child endangerment and abandonment. His trial has not been scheduled, and he is also seeking a change of venue.
Prosecutors have not explained why only Gonzales and Arredondo were charged. Uvalde County District Attorney Christina Mitchell did not respond to a request for comment.
It’s “extremely unusual” for an officer to stand trial for not taking an action, said Sandra Guerra Thompson, a University of Houston Law Center professor.
“At the end of the day, you’re talking about convicting someone for failing to act and that’s always a challenge,” Thompson said, “because you have to show that they failed to take reasonable steps.”
Phil Stinson, a criminal justice professor at Bowling Green State University who maintains a nationwide database of roughly 25,000 cases of police officers arrested since 2005, said a preliminary search found only two similar prosecutions.
One involved a Florida sheriff’s deputy, Scot Peterson, who was charged after the 2018 Parkland school massacre for allegedly failing to confront the shooter — the first such prosecution in the U.S. for an on-campus shooting. He was acquitted by a jury in 2023.
The other was the 2022 conviction of former Baltimore police officer Christopher Nguyen for failing to protect an assault victim. The Maryland Supreme Court overturned that conviction in July, ruling prosecutors had not shown Nguyen had a legal duty to protect the victim.
The justices in Maryland cited a prior U.S. Supreme Court decision on the public duty doctrine, which holds that government officials like police generally owe a duty to the public at large rather than to specific individuals unless a special relationship exists.
Michael Wynne, a Houston criminal defense attorney and former prosecutor not involved in the case, said securing a conviction will be difficult.
“This is clearly gross negligence. I think it’s going to be difficult to prove some type of criminal malintent,” Wynne said.
But Thompson, the law professor, said prosecutors may nonetheless be well positioned.
“You’re talking about little children who are being slaughtered and a very long delay by a lot of officers,” she said. “I just feel like this is a different situation because of the tremendous harm that was done to so many children.”
Associated Press writer Jim Vertuno in Austin, Texas, contributed.
Follow Juan A. Lozano: https://x.com/juanlozano70
FILE - Flowers are placed around a welcome sign outside Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, May 25, 2022, to honor the victims killed in a shooting at the school. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong, File)
Velma Lisa Duran, sister of Robb Elementary teacher Irma Garcia, cries as she reflects on the 2022 Uvalde, Texas, school shooting during an interview on Dec. 19, 2025, in San Antonio. (AP Photo/Kin Man Hui)
Velma Lisa Duran, sister of Robb Elementary teacher Irma Garcia, poses with photos of her sister and brother-in-law, Joe Garcia, as she reflects on the 2022 Uvalde, Texas, school shooting on Dec. 19, 2025, in San Antonio. (AP Photo/Kin Man Hui)
FILE - This booking image provided by the Uvalde County, Texas, Sheriff's Office shows Adrian Gonzales, a former police officer for schools in Uvalde, Texas. (Uvalde County Sheriff's Office via AP, File)
FILE - Crosses with the names of shooting victims are placed outside Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, May 26, 2022. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong, File)
