The municipal union representing more than 25,000 security officers and other staff in public schools and hospitals, City University campuses, and city Housing Authority complexes is endorsing former Gov. Andrew Cuomo for mayor.
The endorsement of Teamsters Local 237, the largest Teamsters local anywhere, is a major coup for Cuomo, who announced his bid for City Hall on Saturday after months of speculation. The union’s nod is the first endorsement of any municipal union in the mayoral race.
Local 237 president Gregory Floyd said that the disgraced former governor — who resigned in 2021 amid a sexual harassment scandal — is best positioned to lead the city in the face of the legal troubles swirling around Mayor Eric Adams. The union endorsed Scott Stringer in 2021.
“He was our first choice,” Floyd said of Cuomo, in remarks to THE CITY. “Why? Because we know he can get things done.” He pointed to the former governor’s role in securing funding for school safety and his commitment to public works projects, including the Jacob R. Javits Center (which employs Local 237 members), Moynihan Train Station, and expanding the Second Avenue Subway.
“He built all that,” he added. “He got those things started and he finished it.”
Of his faith in Adams’ capacity to lead, Floyd responded: “No. I didn’t in 2021, and I don’t now.”
The union made it official at a packed Local 237 union hall rally on Thursday, where former Bronx Borough President Rubén Díaz Jr. also endorsed Cuomo for mayor in the presence of about 50 rank-and-file union members, many of them Black and Latina women.
In remarks delivered in Spanish, Díaz urged “all of us Latinos, we have to support Andrew Cuomo.”
It’s a critical base of support for the former governor, who drove himself to the union’s 14th Street headquarters in a Dodge sports car. Cuomo previously secured the endorsement of the Carpenters’ union, who hosted his March 1 campaign launch.
In his remarks to union members, Cuomo elevated his record as a builder and presented himself as a candidate who would be tough on crime. Not mentioning his past as the secretary of the U.S. Housing and Urban Development under President Bill Clinton, he told the room stacked with NYCHA employees that more public housing is urgently needed.
Against the backdrop of photos of union members marching in the Puerto Rican Day Parade, Díaz touted Cuomo’s record with The Bronx’s Latino communities and Puerto Ricans in particular — noting he shipped supplies and Con Edison workers to aid the humanitarian crisis that unfolded on the island after Hurricane Maria in 2017.
Cuomo told reporters after the event that it was “the experience of a lifetime.”
Rank-and-file union members who spoke to THE CITY after the event said they were “all in” for Cuomo.
Woodside Houses worker Stacie Gardner came to her local Teamsters hall on in Manhattan to watch mayoral candidate Andrew Cuomo speak, March 6, 2025. Credit: Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY
Roslyn Reed, a caretaker at the NYCHA Butler Houses, said that New York’s Paid Family Leave program was a “game changer” for her family. “I have a child with autism, so actually being an employee of New York Housing Authority, it gave me the opportunity to have those benefits where I can take a day off without jeopardizing my position at work and still get paid.”
She and Crystal Walker-Stetson, also a NYCHA employee, had some withering remarks about the current mayor.
Said Walker-Stetson, “I’m just waiting for Adams to leave.”
“New York City is hurting, people are hurting,” said Reed. “And Adams is at parties, doing the Electric Slide.”
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