New York City has not had a Republican mayor since 2007, when Michael Bloomberg left the GOP to finish his remaining time in office as an independent. Republican fortunes in the traditionally left-leaning city could change this year, however, as New York’s Democratic establishment reels from its fractured primary process.

Even before competition became fierce among the 11 eventual Democratic contenders, incumbent Mayor Eric Adams dropped out to run for reelection as an independent when early polling showed that he would probably lose the nomination to disgraced former New York governor Andrew Cuomo. Then, on Tuesday, Zohran Mamdani, a 33-year-old New York state assemblyman, stunningly defeated Cuomo, by 43 percent to 36 percent. The margin was so high that Mamdani did not have to rely, as was widely predicted, on the city’s bizarre ranked-choice voting system, introduced in 2021, which allows voters to select multiple candidates in order of preference and thus amalgamate support for underperforming candidates.

Cuomo was long favored to win the primary despite his scandal-plagued record. He racked up high-profile endorsements, secured millions in campaign contributions, and pledged a law-and-order approach to city governance. It was not enough.

Mamdani swept the former governor aside through a grass-roots campaign that promised affordable housing, free bus transportation, and other attention-grabbing socioeconomic pledges that appealed to dissatisfied younger voters, struggling immigrants, and guilty progressive elites. Mamdani was also perfectly situated to benefit from the Democrats’ increasingly vituperative intergenerational civil war, which has pitched the party’s younger and more racially diverse progressive faction against its more moderate gerontocratic and almost entirely white leadership. Mamdani’s campaign thus became an issue of national importance, scoring endorsements from Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders and New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the two most important national progressive leaders, while Cuomo, 67, looked like the corrupt creature of a decrepit old guard.

The race between Mamdani and Cuomo was bitter enough that both said that they, too, would run as independents if they lost the Democratic primary, mainly to deny each other ultimate victory. Cuomo has confirmed to The New York Times that he is still considering an independent run. If he follows through, New York City’s leftist voters will be divided into three rival groups supporting Mamdani as the official Democratic candidate, Adams as the incumbent mayor, and Cuomo as an unreconciled challenger to both.

All three camps have weaknesses that will alienate broad blocks of Democratic voters. Mamdani, a self-professed “anti-Zionist” and “democratic socialist,” is widely perceived as an anti-Semite and political radical whose policies would be prejudiced and economically ruinous. Cuomo would presumably retain support from the powerful but unpopular Democratic establishment while still trying to live down his bail reform policies, which led to New York City’s recent massive crime surge, his pandemic-era public health directives that are widely believed to have caused mass death among New York’s elderly, his humiliating 2021 resignation as governor following numerous sexual harassment claims, and other scandals. Adams, rated the least popular mayor in city history, has been mired in corruption allegations that led to his criminal indictment—the first of a sitting New York mayor—by Joe Biden’s Justice Department, and then to allegations of a quid pro quo in which Donald Trump’s Justice Department dropped the charges, possibly in exchange for responsible law and immigration policy enforcement by Adams.

These three deeply flawed candidates could easily cancel each other out. Progressives loathe both Adams and Cuomo as enforcers of a corrupt status quo and will certainly stick with Mamdani. Adams and Cuomo supporters regard Mamdani as a dangerous and inexperienced radical, and would split centrist Democrats, whose main issues are crime and business growth. Adams remains popular among blacks, Hispanics, and an important segment of city businessowners, while Cuomo would retain blue-collar Democrats, older voters, and Catholics. Mamdani will continue to win immigrants and younger voters but lose many Jews and most, if not all, moderates. Despite Mamdani’s surprise victory, his primary win rests on a mere 43 percent plurality, meaning that 57 percent of New York Democrats voted for someone else in a contest where voters already tend to skew further to the activist left than they do in general elections.

The Republicans have the discreet advantage of unity. Unlike the Democrats, they have one uncontested candidate, Curtis Sliwa, a radio talk show host who in the 1970s famously founded the Guardian Angels, a civic organization to fight crime. Sliwa was the GOP candidate in 2021, when he lost to Adams by nearly 40 points. Adams, however, was then running unchallenged on the left, on what many believed to be a promising professional record as a former transit cop and New York City police captain, and as a black man on the heels of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter protests. Sliwa was an anti-Trump Republican who had just disaffiliated from New York’s small centrist Reform party. In the years since, the electorate largely soured on Adams and Sliwa reentered the Republican fold with strong and dramatically more relevant anti-crime credentials. Meanwhile, Trump doubled his voting base in New York City from 15 percent in 2020 to 30 percent in 2024, with his greatest advances among minorities and in the outer boroughs, where Sliwa was strongest in the 2021 mayoral race.

Sliwa has some foibles and eccentricities, but they pale in comparison to the massive deficiencies present in the Democratic field. In any case, it is inconceivable that Trump’s 2024 voters would now drift back to uninspiring Democratic candidates. If Sliwa can match Trump’s numbers from 2024 and win over even a small percentage of anti-crime Democrats, it is entirely conceivable that he could win the mayor’s office by a plurality that beats out a non-Republican bloc divided among Mamdani, Adams, and Cuomo. It would be the first mayoral victory by plurality since John Lindsay prevailed in a three-way race in 1969, but a low bar above the three Democrats is all Sliwa would have to reach.

Some Republicans already see it. Even before the primary, former New York Governor George Pataki, the last Republican to hold statewide office, spoke strongly in favor of Sliwa and is the headliner of a New York state GOP fundraiser for the mayoral candidate scheduled for Thursday, just two days after the Democratic decision. Hours after the primary, New York Republican Congressman Mike Lawler posted in Sliwa’s favor.

Nothing is guaranteed, of course. Some observers have advocated for Republican voters to back Cuomo or the seemingly reformed Adams as a firewall to stop Mamdani. New York City’s often abashed and self-effacing GOP will have to get behind Sliwa full-steam, and apathetic city Republican voters will have to turn out in greater numbers than usual. But the path to victory is there, if they have the guts to take it.