Cuomo Supporters Urge East End Voters to Change Registration to NYC to Vote in Mayoral Election

Zohran Mamdani’s shocking victory in the New York City mayoral primary over former New York State Gov. Andrew Cuomo has upended the local political landscape in Gotham.

Now supporters of Cuomo and incumbent Mayor Eric Adams, both of whom are remaining in the race as independents, are scrambling for every vote they can get. Case in point: Steven Cohen, a board member of Fix the City, a Political Action Committee supporting Cuomo, is trying to persuade East End voters who also own or rent residences in the city to switch their registrations in order to vote in this November’s mayoral election.

In a race that also includes Curtis Sliwa, the Republican nominee and a prohibitive longshot, Cohen believes that dual New York City/East End residents are a potentially game-changing voting bloc for Cuomo.

“They’re older, they’re familiar with Andrew Cuomo’s successes as governor and I think they are inclined to support him,” Cohen says of Hamptons and North Fork voters who maintain homes in New York City. “I also think they tend to be more moderate voters.”

Appealing to centrist Democratic voters and contrasting the former Governor’s experience with the 33-year-old Mamdani’s thin political resume, populist economic policies and sometimes controversial rhetoric are essential strategies for Cuomo supporters.

“Zohran Mamdani is an extremely talented and charismatic person who has close to no experience managing one of the most complicated organizations in the world,” Cohen says, referring to New York City’s vast and byzantine government. “The number of employees, the complexity of the decision making — these are things that do not lend themselves to on-the-job training. And I happen to disagree with a lot of Mamdani’s policy proposals, which sound wonderful, but also seem to defy economic reality.”

A former assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Cohen is a longtime Cuomo ally, having served as secretary in the former governor’s administration and also as counselor and chief of staff in Cuomo’s office when Cuomo was the Attorney General of New York. He stresses Cuomo’s bona fides as a comparatively centrist alternative, running firmly to the right of the Democratic Socialist Mamdami while at the same time presenting the former governor as the best person to stand up to what he sees as a direct threat to New York City from President Donald Trump and the national Republican Party.

“In a time where you are dealing with very difficult economic issues that are going to get worse because of what’s going on in Washington, I have no doubt in Andrew Cuomo’s ability to both accomplish what’s needed to make this city run and to be a bulwark against the efforts of the MAGA right — to undermine funding, to undermine support, to undermine everything that is required for New York City to function,” Cohen says.

For East End homeowners or renters who are currently registered Suffolk County voters and also own or rent a New York City residence, changing their registrations to, say, their Manhattan or Brooklyn homes is a simple and straightforward process. And according to attorney and election law expert Jerry Goldfeder, as long as a voter owns or rents a “bona fide residence” in New York City, they have every right to change their voter registration address at will.

Goldfeder, who currently serves as Director of Fordham Law School’s Voting Rights and Democracy Project and chairs the New York State Bar Association’s Voting Rights and Democracy Task Force, stresses that changing one’s voter registration does not in any way affect a voter’s primary residence status — which would be a potential source of concern for some dual NYC/East End homeowners.

“For the purposes of election law, changing your voting address from one bona fide residence to another doesn’t impact your tax situation, your DMV situation, your rent regulation situation or your mortgage situation,” Goldfeder explains. “Voter registration is only one indicator of residence for the purposes of other laws — tax laws, DMV, mortgage regulation and so on.”

In fact, some Hamptonites and North Forkers were known to have changed their registrations from New York City to the East End in 2024 in order to support John Avlon, a centrist Democrat who ultimately lost his bid for a House seat in New York’s District 01 to Republican incumbent Nick LaLota.

While registration-switching did not ultimately push Avlon over the top in his congressional race, Steven Cohen argues that actively pursuing dual residents is part of a strategy that could help Cuomo find a viable path to election.

In addition to Mamdani’s relative inexperience and ultra-progressive policy positions, Cohen believes that several of Mamdani’s statements on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict could help to convince a large, potentially determinative swath of East End voters to oppose his candidacy for mayor.

Though he later softened his rhetoric somewhat, Mamdani initially refused to condemn the term, “globalize the intifada,” an incendiary phrase among many Jews and supporters of Israel. And in a 2021 speech in Brooklyn, Mamdani, who if elected would become New York City’s first Muslim mayor, described the New York State Assembly as a “bastion of Zionist thought.”

“We’re living in a world where Jews are being assaulted, shot, hit with a flamethrower,” Cohen says. “And so what the language of ‘globalize the intifada’ triggers in a whole lot of people is fear — or a condoning of a kind of conduct that puts other human beings at risk.”

Eligible East End residents interested in changing their voter registration from Suffolk County to New York City must do so by Oct. 25 of this year in order to vote in the Nov. 4 mayoral election. Early voting runs from Oct. 25 through Nov. 2.