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The New York City mayoral race is quickly becoming a full-blown social media war between Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani and former Governor Andrew Cuomo.
Mamdani, a self-described Democratic Socialist, blew away Cuomo in June’s primary election. The disgraced former governor refused to bow out of the race, choosing instead to run as an independent. He’s been trying a variety of tactics to keep up with Mamdani, and Politico reported on Tuesday that the Democrat is even hoping President Donald Trump will be able to boost his struggling campaign — even though he has denied this publicly. Cuomo reportedly said at an event in the Hamptons over the weekend that he “knew the president very well” and that “there will be opportunities to actually cooperate with him.”
Mamdani won the primary in part because of a slick social media strategy focused on video content — one that Cuomo and his team have struggled to replicate. In recent weeks, the Cuomo campaign has attempted to pivot its social media presence to something that feels more like Mamdani’s, without much success. The campaign attempted to replicate Mamdani’s direct-to-camera short form social videos, and has begun using memes to attack the Democratic nominee. In one instance, the Cuomo campaign edited a video to malign Mamdanifor living in a $2,300 rent-controlled apartment — leading to backlash from New Yorkers who, unlike Cuomo, actually pay rent.
It feels pretty half hearted, as if Cuomo is out of his political comfort zone, and now it turns out that the campaign may be outsourcing some of their meme creation to unvetted online trolls — including one who supports the president Cuomo reportedly wants to “cooperate” with.
On Tuesday, X user Jason Levin — who describes himself as the founder of “Memelord Technologies,” an AI-based meme generation platform — posted a lengthy social media thread in which he claimed that he was “making memes for the mayor.”
“Yes, actually. I made a meme for Andrew Cuomo that hit 5M+ views. Tonight I met with Cuomo and his team to talk about marketing strategy,” he added.
In the thread, Levin slammed Mamdani as an “idiot,” and included screenshots purporting to show text exchanges with a member of the Cuomo campaign in which Levin suggested a post and corresponding caption that was later used on the campaign’s X account.
“I got referred to the team last week. So I made this meme in 2 minutes and sent it over, Cuomo’s team posted it and we hit 5M+ views in under 24 hours,” he wrote. “Boom. Memelord 🤝 Mayor.”
One cannot claim to produce content for a prominent political campaign — much less publicly declare themselves a “memelord” — and expect not to have their own content scrutinized. X users quickly found that the man providing content for the Cuomo campaign posts a lot of cringe, including explicit xenophobia and misogyny.
Lowlights include a post in which Levin wrote that he calls ICE on “my employees who aren’t working hard enough so I don’t have to pay them.” In another post, he wondered “how many carrots do I have to eat for my eyesight to be good enough to see through women’s clothing?”
Levin supported Trump during the 2024 election cycle, writing in November that he “Voted Trump in Pennsylvania so yeah I guess you can say I’m kinda a big deal call me Ron Burgundy.”
Cuomo campaign spokesperson Rich Azzopardi wrote on X that Levin “is not paid or part of the campaign. He suggested a few memes to a staff member & you can see what we used on our feed. Our social media head was previously reported. If we want to play guilt by association with the other side, there’s plenty to choose from.”
Azzopardi told Rolling Stone over the phone that there was “no room in this race” for bigotry.
