It was the last day of campaigning in one of New York's wildest mayoral elections, and Zoran Mamdani - the surprise winner of the Democratic Party primary - made his final pitch, sounding a little Reagan-esque.
"Do we want it to be morning again in New York, where we feel the warmth of the sun on our skin and the possibility inherent and innate to every new day, or do we want to shiver in the night passed by a politics of fear and self enrichment? Our time has come. New York, our time is now."
Smooth, telegenic, energetic, charming and combative, Mamdani emerged as the surprise package not just in this Mayoral election, but across the whole slate of Democrats taking part in elections this year.
A self-declared Democratic Socialist who has made headway in the most capitalist city in the world, the 34-year-old Muslim has also been unbowed in supporting Gaza, the Palestinian cause and not praising Israel - very unusual in a city that is home to the largest population of Jews apart from Tel Aviv.
He is the favourite to win, but his candidacy has sparked controversy inside the Democratic party.
His main challenger in the mayoral race is the man he beat in the party primary election - former Governor of the State of New York Andrew Cuomo.
The Scion of a famous political dynasty, Cuomo faced allegations from female staffers in the governor's office and was forced to resign.
He fought back from the allegations and the party hierarchy picked him to replace incumbent mayor Eric Adams. A corruption scandal involving the new Turkish consulate building in the city had seen Adams booted from the party, but the Justice Department dropped charges against him under pressure from President Donald Trump, allowing Adams to run as an independent - albeit one beholden to the President.
But when Mamdani defeated Cuomo in the Democratic Primary, against virtually all the polling evidence, Cuomo refused to quit, and backed by billionaires and the party top brass, ran as an Independent. So Mamdani, the Democrat candidate, faced two heavy hitting independent challengers that had previously won office as Democrats.
Eventually President Trump pressured Adams to drop out of the race to give Cuomo a better chance.
The Republicans do have a candidate, but Curtis Sliwa, the red beret wearing founder of The Guardian Angel Subway Patrol has not made much headway. Many anti Mandani figures would prefer if he had followed Eric Adams and dropped out of the race. At his final campaign stop at Coney Island subway station yesterday, he said no.
"My entire campaign has been based on people telling me to drop out, trying to bribe me to drop out with $10 million and then when I said, No, no, 1,000 times no, the threats to kill my wife, Nancy and me, never before in my life, 71 years, shot by the Gottis and Gambinos - five times with hollow point bullets - I never needed armed security once I recovered.
"But because you don't bend, you don't bow to the power elite, to the billionaire class who think that they're the shot callers. Well, guess what? I believe in people power. It's the people who will determine, not the billionaires, not the influencers, not the insiders. I trust people. I don't trust politicians. I don't trust billionaires, and I don't trust the insiders", Sliwa said.
Up in Washington Heights, at the top end of Manhattan, Andrew Cuomo was sounding like everyone else who has ever run for mayor here - with one new twist: "We need to clean up the city. We need a better public school system. We need more police to keep us safe on the street. And we need to be able to stand up to Donald Trump and fight for New York".
A twist indeed to attack the person who is doing so much to help his campaign.
Cuomo lost the Democratic primary because the former governor's establishment pedigree didn’t cut it with the younger, more racially diverse city, according to spin doctor and political consultant Hank Sheinkopf.
"The city's demographics have changed dramatically. 18% of the population today is Chinese. We haven't seen that before. The era of the 'Dese, Dems and Doze' guys from Brooklyn is over. They've either gone to Florida or to heaven. So you know, the populations are shifting. Therefore Mamdani's moment is this moment - if he's to win, it's because the demographics are different."
And there is Mamdani’s appeal to the hard pressed younger population, not normally big voters, but increasingly a group that is feeling priced out of everything and ready to rebel, believes Sheinkopf.
"Younger people are here. They're working in the computer or internet related industries, and they're not making the kind of money they think they should be, or need. A revolt of some kind going on. And when you have that kind of revolt and the demographic shift at the same time, you come up with something new. And that something new may very well be Zohran Mamdani."
Having failed to persuade Sliwa to quit the race to help Cuomo's chances, President Trump threatened to pull federal funds from New York if Mamdani wins.
In an interview with CBS' 60 Minutes on Sunday night he said: "It's going to be hard for me as the President to give a lot of money to New York, because if you have a communist running New York, all you're doing is wasting the money you're sending there. So I don't know that he's won, and I'm not a fan of Cuomo one way or the other, but if it's going to be between a bad democrat and a communist, I'm going to pick that bad Democrat all the time to be honest with you".
And last night, President Trump formally abandoned the Republican candidate posting online that a vote for Sliwa was a vote for Mamdani, and urging Republicans to back the one time Democratic Party big wig.
Trump friendly Tesla billionaire Elon Musk also urged New Yorkers to vote for Cuomo.
It prompted this late night riposte from Mamdani: "Donald Trump just put out a statement encouraging New Yorkers, saying they must vote for Andrew Cuomo.
"We know and have known for months that Donald Trump would favour Andrew Cuomo as the mayor. They share the same donors. They share the same small vision. They share the same sense of impunity. And yet, in these final days, what was rumoured, what was feared has become naked and unabashed.
"The MAGA movement's embrace of Andrew Cuomo is reflective of Donald Trump's understanding that this would be the best mayor for him, not the best mayor for New York City, not the best mayor for New Yorkers, but the best mayor for Donald Trump in his administration."
According to the latest RealClearPolitics polling average, Mamdani leads with a 45.8% share, holding a 14.7-point advantage over Cuomo who is on 31.1%, and a 28.5-point lead over Sliwa, who is on 17.3%.
Perhaps those poll numbers were behind Mamdani's confident tone last night:
"Donald Trump ran a presidential campaign with the promise of cheaper groceries. Donald Trump ran a presidential campaign committing to lowering the cost of living. What our success will show is that it is not enough to diagnose the despair in working class Americans lives. You have to actually deliver on the agenda. And that is what we intend to do each and every day while we are in office."
Rarely have municipal politics anywhere in the 21st century been this exhilarating, or attracted so much attention.
Early voting has seen four times the usual number of people cast their ballots: today is the full polling day, with results declared tonight.
