Exclusive | NYC bodega leaders voice support for Andrew Cuomo –

Exclusive | NYC bodega leaders voice support for Andrew Cuomo –

Leaders of a key New York City bodega and restaurant group are taking the uncommon step of talking out about the mayoral election and throwing their support behind Andrew Cuomo — just days after a rival group obtained rocked over a Zohran Mamdani endorsement, The Post has discovered.

“We don’t endorse candidates,” said Francisco Marte, founder and president of the Bodega and Small Business Group, which represents some 3,000 bodegas, barber retailers, magnificence salons, mechanics and eating places in the Big Apple.

“But we favor Andrew Cuomo,” Marte told The Post. “He’s the best of what we have now.”

Francisco Marte is the president of the Bodega and Small Business Association. Robert Miller

At issue for many of these small companies are Mamdani’s plans to open metropolis-owned grocery shops that would supply prospects wholesale costs. Small enterprise house owners, particularly retailers, have likewise been rattled by Mamdani’s past comments about defunding the police.

Cuomo, the enterprise house owners imagine, will probably be more durable on crime and shoplifting.

He is “guaranteeing more public safety and is not coming with this crazy idea to compete with us with city owned grocery stores,” Marte said. 

Marte’s group is taking a stand after a rival group, United Bodegas of America, blindsided its members this week, including its co-founder Fernando Mateo, by endorsing Mamdani. In response, Mateo angrily resigned from the commerce group, which The Post completely reported on Wednesday.

Now, United Bodegas’ President Radhames Rodriguez, who made the shock endorsement at a local eatery in the Bronx this week, is dropping members, according to Marte and other grocers.

“I think a quarter of the United Bodega Association’s members will leave because they feel betrayed,” Marte told The Post, including that a number of have already told him that they’re leaping ship to his group.

Zohran Mamdani was endorsed by United Bodegas of America’s President Radhames Rodriguez. James Keivom

Rodriguez didn’t instantly reply for remark.

His group has about 2,000 members in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, out of roughly13,000 bodegas in New York City.

“We are planning to ask Mateo to sit with us and to bring members with him to the real association,” said Carlos Collado, who owns two Fine Fare supermarkets in the Bronx and is a vice chairman of the Bodega and Small Business Group.

Earlier this week, Mateo called Rodriguez’s Mamdani endorsement a “betrayal” and a violation of the commerce group’s bylaws as a nonprofit, which isn’t presupposed to publicly again a politician.

Mateo also told The Post on Wednesday, “Hundreds of bodega owners already reached out expressing their discontent. I had to explain to them that I had nothing to do with it.” 

Carlos Collado is the proprietor of two Fine Fare supermarkets in the Bronx and a VP of the Bodega and Small Business Group. Helayne Seidman

An outspoken conservative, Mateo unsuccessfully sought the Republican nomination in 2021’s mayoral race.

But Mateo and Marte weren’t always on the same web page.

They operated under the same umbrella – Bodega Association of the USA – until 2017, after they had a beef over who would take the lead at a press convention on crime at bodegas, according to Marte.

Mateo and Rodriguez cut up off to type the United Bodegas of America.

“If we see that we have common ground, we can find a way” to work together again, Marte said.

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