Andrew Cuomo officially launched his New York City mayoral bid on Sunday with a boisterous rally inside a Manhattan union hall, dwelling in nostalgia for the high points of his governorship and positioning himself as a strong leader capable of rescuing a city “in chaos.”
Speaking to a crowd of union members and longtime loyalists at the District Council of Carpenters’ headquarters, Cuomo continued painting the dark picture he had sketched out in his video announcement a day earlier — describing an unsafe, unaffordable city beset by homelessness, subway crime and out-of-control e-bikes. The brief speech marked the former governor’s first appearance on the campaign trail since in 2018 and showed him basking in his early front-runner status in the race to unseat Eric Adams — although his advantage may be weakened in the coming days by an expected barrage of attacks by rivals.
Cuomo was officially endorsed on Sunday by the carpenters’ union, known for staking out stances separate from the rest of the so-called building trades and for sparring aggressively with the real estate industry. He also won support from District Council 9, a union of painters and artisans — although more influential unions like the Hotel and Gaming Trades Council and 32BJ SEIU have not yet endorsed candidates for mayor.
The rally also offered an early view of Cuomo’s campaign apparatus. Kevin Elkins, the pugilistic political director for the carpenters’ union, was directing the proceedings near the stage. Also present was Charlie King, the longtime operative who is now an executive at the public relations firm Mercury; other Mercury employees were on hand to staff the event.
Longtime Cuomo adviser Bill Mulrow and State Assemblyman Eddie Gibbs of East Harlem were in attendance. Elkins and Mulrow both declined to disclose their official titles in the Cuomo campaign, and Gibbs — who was until recently a vocal ally of Mayor Adams — jogged away from reporters when asked whether he was switching his support to Cuomo.
Cuomo’s speech remained light on policy specifics, although he drew cheers from the union crowd by promising to use union labor to build affordable housing. He also took a swipe at his opponents in the crowded mayoral race over their public safety records.
“These politicians now running to be mayor made a terrible, terrible mistake,” he said. “They uttered the three dumbest words ever uttered by a government official: cut police funding.” (Cuomo claimed, misleadingly, that the city cut $1 billion from the police department’s budget. Mayor Bill de Blasio trumpeted that figure when the city passed its 2020 budget, but the projection relied on overly optimistic reductions in overtime pay that were ultimately not borne out.)
Cuomo also made no mention of the scandals that brought down his governorship, although he thanked the allies who had stayed loyal during his “tough spot.” Before beginning his speech, Cuomo was introduced by his three adult daughters — one of whom, Cara Kennedy-Cuomo, said she no longer feels the “sense of safety I once felt in New York.”
The long list of people hoping to bring down Cuomo’s early front-runner status are wasting no time. A coalition of female activists, including the two leaders of the left-leaning Working Families Party, protested outside the launch to draw attention to the sexual harassment charges lodged against Cuomo by about a dozen women — charges Cuomo denies and has spent more than $20 million in taxpayer money attempting to rebut in court.
“Once a corrupt power abuser, always a corrupt power abuser,” said Erica Vladimer, leader of a group combating sexual harassment in New York politics. “New York City needs and deserves better.”
A new anti-Cuomo independent expenditure committee sent reporters a memo on Friday that criticizes Cuomo’s handling of Covid-19, the city’s subway system and “bad business deals” including the Buffalo Billion economic development plan that failed to live up to its loftiest promises.
Rival candidates in the mayoral race have sought to publicize unsavory aspects of Cuomo’s record — including his funding cuts to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and the related service crisis that engulfed the subway system during his governorship in the late 2010s.
“Andrew Cuomo is in this for his own ego, not New Yorkers,” city comptroller Brad Lander said at his own press conference outside City Hall on Sunday.
State Sen. Zellnor Myrie, one of three Black candidates running in the June Democratic primary, alluded to Cuomo in a Sunday appearance at a Bronx church, in which he tried to undercut Cuomo’s efforts to capitalize on his longtime base of Black voters.
“We have leaders that come back that have promised to help us,” Myrie said. “On Sunday they were in our pews, and on Monday they were cutting our schools.”
