Mayor Eric Adams sharpened his criticism of ex-Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Monday, assailing his mayoral rival for his reluctance to speak to the media and his handling of the Covid-19 pandemic.
The mayor, asked on Monday about his own paltry fundraising and bare-bones re-election campaign, suggested that reporters should be more focused on the ex-governor, who is leading the polls for the June Democratic primary but has mostly avoided unscripted interactions with the press or public.
“He’s in this bubble — you can’t even get near him,” Adams said during his weekly City Hall press conference. “The governor who’s supposed to be the front-runner in this race is having this controlled environment.”
The incumbent Adams is vying for re-election with dismal approval ratings and a widespread perception that he has become indebted to President Donald Trump. But the mayor’s approach toward Cuomo has been closely watched and somewhat muted, given that the two men share a centrist image and an electoral base of Black voters outside of Manhattan.
In recent days, the mayor has inched toward more direct criticism of Cuomo, and continued that trend on Monday with a broadside against the former governor.
“When I look at some of my Black and brown endorsers of the former governor, they need to look at what I was saying back then about how … the [Covid] response was unfair to the diverse Black and brown communities,” Adams said, speaking days after a group of Black Queens lawmakers threw their support behind Cuomo.
Adams’ unusually direct criticism of Cuomo’s pandemic record came after a reporter asked about a Sunday memorial for nursing home residents who died during the pandemic. Other mayoral candidates attended the event, during which the residents’ families blamed Cuomo for his 2020 policy that ordered nursing homes to admit people who had tested positive for Covid.
“He incorrectly handled the nursing home issues,” Adams said. The mayor proceeded to knock Cuomo over early disparities in vaccination rates between white neighborhoods and communities of color, and said he recalled seeing hospital nurses who were forced to use garbage bags as face masks because they lacked personal protective equipment.
“Some say, ‘Well, he’s a great manager,’” Adams said. “Well, you should have managed that crisis well.”
Cuomo spokesman Rich Azzopardi said in a statement: “New Yorkers are smart: they know the mayor is a desperate man who is an Agent of Trump, and desperate men will do or say anything.”
Azzopardi noted that Cuomo pushed to increase vaccination rates in communities of color, and that PPE shortages were a nationwide problem during the early pandemic months.
Cuomo’s nursing home policies are a continued source of controversy. A 2021 report by Attorney General Letitia James found that Cuomo’s administration systematically undercounted the number of Covid-related nursing home deaths, and subsequent revelations that Cuomo aides had rewritten a Health Department report in order to downplay the effect of his directive.
Azzopardi countered that the 2020 directive was consistent with nursing-home admission rules issued in a dozen other states, and noted that multiple prosecutors have closed investigations into the policy after finding no wrongdoing.
The nine other leading candidates for mayor have all sought to weaken Cuomo’s double-digit polling lead by reminding voters of his Covid controversies and the sexual harassment allegations that drove him from office — claims Cuomo denies. They have hammered Cuomo on other aspects of his record, including a history of funding cuts to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and his ongoing use of taxpayer money to go after the women who accused him of sexual misconduct.
