By shouldering his way into the mayoral primary, Andrew Cuomo is betting that what New York voters want at City Hall is deep government experience, competent execution, and a mayor ready and willing to do battle with the Trump White House. His entry tests the political axiom that elections are about the future rather than the past.
“I think it changes everything and nothing at the same time,” Laura Tamman, a professor of political science at Pace University, told me. “All of the folks who are currently running have assumed he’ll get in the race; some of them have taken him on directly already. But at the same time, I think he’s going to bring a focus and an energy to the race that we haven’t seen yet, because New Yorkers know who he is, and they’re going to respond to his candidacy.”
Cuomo’s nearly 12 years as governor — not to mention four years as HUD Secretary and four as state attorney general — allow him to accurately claim to have far more experience than any of his rivals. But that also saddles Cuomo with more than a decade’s worth of budget choices and half-forgotten projects, policies, political fights, and personal behavior that his opponents are already attacking.
“He spent years treating New York City like his personal punching bag,” said candidate for mayor Scott Stringer, the ex-comptroller, on social media. “Slashing MTA funding and wrecking the subway while funneling money to upstate ski resorts, and trying to cut billions in funding for public school kids and Medicaid for city residents.”
Upstate ski resorts? Outside of chambers of commerce in the Catskills and Lake George, only a handful of government insiders remember that five years ago, Cuomo championed tax breaks for upstate lodges that installed renewable energy-powered lifts, snowmaking equipment, and other machinery. But a far more serious chapter of Cuomo’s history is the barrage of sexual-misconduct and hostile-workplace accusations that forced him from office in 2021, and were backed up by findings from State attorney General Letitia James and the Justice Department under President Biden.
Within hours of Cuomo’s video announcing his candidacy, the Working Families Party released a video, “Women Deserve Better,” that features well-known women activists reciting misconduct allegations and calling Cuomo “a bully and an abuser.” Those voices are not likely to go away. Ditto for those who criticize Cuomo’s handling of policies and information regarding nursing home deaths at the height of COVID and the $5 million advance he got for a book about the crisis that may have violated ethical rules by including work done by public employees.
On the flip side of the coin, Cuomo’s sizable lead over his rivals in recent polls is based in part on a record of accomplishments, including those memorable daily briefings during the COVID crisis, the successful fight to legalize same-sex marriage in 2014, and the completion of long-stalled public works projects, including the Moynihan Train Hall at Penn Station, the expansion of the Second Avenue Subway, the rebuilding of an expanded Kosciusko Bridge (the city’s first new bridge in 55 years) and the creation of a new terminal at LaGuardia Airport.
Cuomo is betting that a critical mass of voters will remember and reward his good deeds. “When I wear my wedding ring and put it on every morning, the thought goes through my head that I wouldn’t be able to wear it were it not for Andrew Cuomo,” political consultant Jon Reinish told me. “Not just people in New York, but for millions of people across the country, that memory is going to come back, and it’s a really big deal.”
Cuomo’s candidacy puts a spotlight on the central question of every municipal election year in New York: what are the main problems in the city that most urgently need fixing? For the last half century, each new mayor has been hired to fix a specific crisis that was caused, ignored or bequeathed by his predecessor.
Here’s how the shorthand, admittedly oversimplified, version of history goes: Ed Koch beat a crowded field in 1977 by promising budget austerity in the wake of the city’s near-bankruptcy; David Dinkins unseated Koch in 1989 by proposing a calm, less divisive approach to community relations in the wake of high-profile cases like the Central Park Five debacle; and Rudy Giuliani beat Dinkins in 1993 by vowing to crack down on crime after New York hit an all-time high of more than 2,000 homicides in a single year.
Mike Bloomberg, elected mayor less than 90 days after the 9/11 terrorist attack, won when the city needed a businesslike approach to reviving the local economy and rebuilding Lower Manhattan; left-leaning activist Bill de Blasio’s 2013 campaign was based on the argument that Bloomberg had built a prosperous city but neglected the needs of working families. And ex-cop Eric Adams was elected when the city’s emergence from COVID was accompanied by a spike in violent crime that he vowed to reverse.
Cuomo’s theory is that the main municipal crisis this election year is that Adams — plagued by massive high-level turnover and resignations — has turned out to be an ineffective leader who is too compromised as a criminal defendant to display the independence and forcefulness required to deal with President Trump.
The ex-governor has a case to make, but it won’t be easy.
“Every chief executive will have some accomplishments including Cuomo,” Sal Albanese, a former city councilman who made his own run for mayor in 1997, told me on social media, describing Cuomo as “a political mechanic with a ton of political baggage.” I’m not sure Cuomo himself would dispute that description. An image comes to mind of the ex-governor carrying a weathered, battered valise filled with a long list of allies, enemies, and tough decisions, slowly ascending the staircase into City Hall.
More on city politics
- Andrew Cuomo Is Officially Running for Mayor
- Christine Quinn Says Hochul Keeps Being Underestimated
- What Eric Adams Says About Trump Behind Closed Doors
