By Vashti Smith
HAMPTON, Va. (HUNS) – As New York City’s mayoral race enters its final hours, candidates Andrew Cuomo, Zohran Mamdani and Curtis Sliwa are running to replace Mayor Eric Adams.
Hampton University students from New York are exercising their right to vote.
Earllissia Perry, a sophomore elementary education major from the Bronx, is voting because she feels it will make a difference in her family and community. “My parents never voted for any of the past mayors,” Perry said, “and I want a change to be made in New York.”
She believes candidate Cuomo did nothing for New York as a former governor, and in the debate between him and Mamdani, he didn’t try to fix any recent or past issues in New York. Perry believes Cuomo is “more worried about his political status and being in Trump’s pocket” than about helping New Yorkers.
Regarding candidate Mandani, she supports his goals: “He is what New Yorkers need, such as making the bus fares free. He doesn’t care to be in Trump’s pocket because he wants New Yorkers to have a better chance than what has gone wrong before, and he is trying to fix it.” She ended by saying,” I think that Mamdani is going to win the election because he’s actually trying to help fix New York as a whole.”
Meanwhile Hampton student, Zharia Batson, a sophomore pre-nursing major from Queens, is voting because she feels that every election is important to the future and New Yorkers need good representation. “I do think voting is very important, every vote counts towards something, even if the person doesn’t win,” said Batson.
Batson has no opinions about the candidates, but she has heard rumors about the former governor. “I’ve definitely heard bad things about Andrew Cuomo,” she said “and people have complained about him for years, but apparently, Trump is scared of him and won’t touch New York.”
Batson was not sure who her vote will go to because she believes, “Everyone who runs for anything, there’s always some kind of dirt found on them to make them look worse than they actually are.”
Despite her uncertainty about her vote, Batson believes Zohran Mamdini will win.
The writer is a student in the Scripps Howard School of Journalism and Communications
