State Sen. Jessica Ramos endorsed her rival Andrew Cuomo for mayor on Friday, an unexpected development that pads his front-runner status and signals that she sees few paths to victory for her own lagging campaign.
Ramos, a progressive who has harshly criticized Cuomo on the campaign trail, shared her decision with the New York Times and will appear with the ex-governor at a Friday morning rally in Manhattan. The Queens lawmaker told the Times that she considered Cuomo “the one best positioned right now to protect this city” and stand up to President Donald Trump.
Her decision contradicts her long history of criticizing Cuomo. In April, she made headlines by suggesting that the 67-year-old’s “mental acuity is in decline” and arguing the city could not afford a “Joe Biden moment.”
At a May 21 Crain’s candidate forum, Ramos lamented that the sexual harassment allegations that drove Cuomo from the governorship had not meaningfully shaped the mayoral race.
“We often sit here and rattle off all the sins of the former governor. It’s rather easy to do, there’s a lot to say, and somehow it has yet to stick,” Ramos said at the event. “I wish I could live in a world where sexual harassment against women actually changed the minds of voters, and yet many people insist that because we have a jerk in the White House, we need one at City Hall.”
Ramos told the Times that she plans to stay in the June 24 Democratic primary race. Other candidates seeking to topple Cuomo are likely to endorse one another in hopes of harnessing the city’s ranked-choice voting system, but Ramos beat them to the punch by throwing her support behind the front-runner.
Ramos has also sparred at times with fellow progressives. During Wednesday’s mayoral debate, she directed little criticism at Cuomo and instead turned her attention to surging socialist Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani, suggesting the social media-savvy lawmaker had little experience.
“I regret not running for mayor in 2021,” Ramos said in response to a moderator’s question. “I thought I needed more experience, but turns out you just needed to make good videos.”
And in 2022, Ramos generated news by publicly criticizing Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, whose district overlaps with Ramos’s. In a series of social media posts, Ramos accused Ocasio-Cortez of being “barely ever present in the community,” leading some of Ramos’s colleagues to publicly side with the congresswoman.
Ocasio-Cortez endorsed Mamdani and four other mayoral candidates in a ranked-choice slate this week, but omitted Ramos from her list.
Despite some high hopes when she first entered the mayor’s race in September, Ramos’s campaign has struggled to gain traction. She has raised just $282,000, well below most of her rivals, and failed to qualify for matching funds.
