Elon Musk Backs Cuomo Against Zohran Mamdani in NYC Mayoral Race

Elon Musk has chosen his preferred candidate in the New York City mayoral election: former Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

The world’s richest man urged New York City voters on Monday to vote for Cuomo, who’s running an independent bid against the Democratic nominee, state assemblyman Zohran Mamdani.

He also said that a vote for Curtis Sliwa, the GOP candidate in the race, amounted to a vote for Mamdani.

“Bear in mind that a vote for Curtis is really a vote for Mumdumi or whatever his name is,” Musk wrote on X. “VOTE CUOMO!”

Musk had previously been critical of Mamdani, and recently he said that the self-described Democratic socialist was “the future of the Democratic Party.” But he hadn’t gone as far as to back either of Mamdani’s opponents.

While Musk and Mamdani have both spoken in support of the idea of making government run more efficiently, Mamdani made Musk into an issue in the race.

During an appearance on Fox News last month, he said that “instead of actually meeting the needs of people who couldn’t afford to live in the city,” Cuomo, as governor, gave $959 million in tax breaks to Elon Musk.”

That was an apparent reference to subsidies that Cuomo approved for a solar panel company owned by one of Musk’s family members that was later sold to Tesla.

In a statement to BI, Sliwa also hit Cuomo for the subsidies, while saying that Musk “couldn’t care less about what happens in New York City.”

“Of course he wants Andrew Cuomo back because Cuomo handed him about a billion dollars in state subsidies for the failed Buffalo solar panel project,” Sliwa said.

Spokespeople for Mamdani and Cuomo did not immediately return requests for comment.

The tech titan joins several other big-name billionaires who have opposed Mamdani’s candidacy, some of whom have spent millions of dollars on the race.

They include former Mayor Mike Bloomberg, Airbnb cofounder Joe Gebbia, hedge fund manager Bill Ackman, and others.

President Donald Trump has also said that he preferred Cuomo winning the race, telling CBS News in a “60 Minutes” interview that “if it’s gonna be between a bad Democrat and a communist, I’m gonna pick the bad Democrat all the time, to be honest with you.”