At last, it’s official: Andrew Cuomo is running for mayor of New York City.
That sentence would have seemed inordinately strange a year or two ago. But Cuomo had been telegraphing for many months that he wanted to launch a comeback. And now he’s running, with a Manhattan launch event and 17-minute campaign video under his belt.
Cuomo has led the Democratic field in every publicly available poll for the last several months. He is, unquestionably, the front-runner, and there are reasons to believe he won’t crumble like past front-runners for citywide posts like Eliot Spitzer, Chirstine Quinn and Andrew Yang. Cuomo was governor for more than a decade and there are many New Yorkers, weary of the chaos and corruption of the Adams administration, who may want to turn to an experienced executive.
But now the rubber hits the road. Can Cuomo, a candidate at the start of March, remain at the front of the pack through June? Will he falter? Or is he inevitable?
The slate of endorsers that Cuomo launched with is not overwhelming. He does have the support of one sitting congressman, Ritchie Torres of the Bronx, and a handful of city and state legislators. The District Council of Carpenters enthusiastically backed him, and George Gresham, the president of the powerful healthcare workers union 1199 SEIU, reportedly is already pushing for a Cuomo endorsement, if one isn’t immediately forthcoming.
Cuomo will continue to hunt for backing from other large labor unions, as well as wealthy real estate and Wall Street donors. Both made up his base when he was governor, and his relationships run deep with many different interest groups.
For now, most endorsers will remain on the sidelines, which is good news for the large field that will focus exclusively, for the next month at least, on attacking Cuomo. Brad Lander, the city comptroller and proud progressive who is hoping to evolve into Cuomo’s primary competitor, held a press conference denouncing him, and several other candidates cut scathing anti-Cuomo videos.
An increasing nonfactor is Eric Adams himself. Given how poor his poll numbers are, winning seems, at best, a remote possibility. The Trump Justice Department’s decision to drop the corruption charges brought against him last year will ensure no prison time for the mayor, but his political prospects are grim. Democrats are fed up, and Republicans don’t care much for him, either.
Cuomo, though, will need to worry about an Eric Adams who has nothing to lose. The mayor still retains some popularity with the Black working- and middle-class voters that Cuomo is going to aggressively court. Orthodox Jewish voters may desert Adams for Cuomo, but there are still some Orthodox and Hasidic voters who resent Cuomo for the targeted lockdown measures he pursued in the first year of the pandemic.
As a candidate, Cuomo is plainly running toward the center. In his launch, he denounced progressives who wanted to defund the police and railed against subway crime and homelessness. He wants to frame himself as the tough-talking executive willing to pick fights with the left and win. For most of his tenure as governor, Cuomo certainly antagonized progressives, so this is a natural posture for him.
One complication for Cuomo is that, in his third term, he signed several major pieces of progressive legislation into law, including bail reform, congestion pricing and the legalization of the e-bikes and e-scooters he now decries so much. The New York Post editorial board, which theoretically would be a natural supporter, has instead denounced Cuomo as the “biggest liar in New York.” The Post is currently trying to goad NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch into running.
Cuomo’s vulnerabilities fall into two categories: the sexual harassment scandals that drove him from office in 2021 and his handling of the pandemic, which included misleading New Yorkers about the death toll in nursing homes and accepting millions to write a memoir of his year combating Covid. If his rivals are able to steadily chip away at him over these next months, and outside PACs raise enough cash to cut tough television ads, Cuomo is in trouble.
He’ll need to outlast these attacks. We’re about to find out if he’s got what it takes.
Ross Barkan is a journalist and author in New York City.
