Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said in a video released Monday that he will run an independent campaign for New York City mayor, weeks after losing the Democratic primary to Zohran Mamdani.
Can there be multiple independents? As in, those who got neither the dem or rep nominations, but still want to run in the general election, do they all end up on the general ballot, or will ll they have to face each other in a semi-primary first?
Yes, and they are not required to run in a primary because those are run by each party (being independent means you don’t have a party to begin with)
There’s no limit (AFAIK) to the number of candidates on the ballot, but there is a deadline to file and that deadline has passed. Cuomo had preemptively filed as an independent candidate in case he didn’t win the primary (I think Mamdani did this too), but had not publicly stated whether he would use it until now.
In some places in the US (I’ve never lived in NY, so I’m not sure if it applies there) when you file as an independent candidate, you have to produce a petition with a certain number of signatures with your paperwork.
This generally limits the number of crazy uncles who can appear on the ballot.
A couple months ago I ran into a guy collecting signatures for Cuomo by Atlantic center (a major transit hub in Brooklyn). I was just like “why?? Why are you doing this??” But sadly I was in a hurry and didn’t have time to engage with him very long
Can there be multiple independents? As in, those who got neither the dem or rep nominations, but still want to run in the general election, do they all end up on the general ballot, or will ll they have to face each other in a semi-primary first?
Yes, and they are not required to run in a primary because those are run by each party (being independent means you don’t have a party to begin with)
There’s no limit (AFAIK) to the number of candidates on the ballot, but there is a deadline to file and that deadline has passed. Cuomo had preemptively filed as an independent candidate in case he didn’t win the primary (I think Mamdani did this too), but had not publicly stated whether he would use it until now.
In some places in the US (I’ve never lived in NY, so I’m not sure if it applies there) when you file as an independent candidate, you have to produce a petition with a certain number of signatures with your paperwork.
This generally limits the number of crazy uncles who can appear on the ballot.
A couple months ago I ran into a guy collecting signatures for Cuomo by Atlantic center (a major transit hub in Brooklyn). I was just like “why?? Why are you doing this??” But sadly I was in a hurry and didn’t have time to engage with him very long