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New York City’s mayoral race received a significant jolt earlier this month with the news that former governor Andrew Cuomo was officially challenging Mayor Eric Adams for his seat in an attempted comeback following his abrupt resignation years prior. He joins an already crowded field of state legislators — Jessica Ramos, Zellnor Myrie, and Zohran Mamdani as well as current and former comptrollers Brad Lander and Scott Stringer, among others. That number grew even more as City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams announced her bid for mayor, adding another moderate voice to the race.
I recently spoke with Dr. Christina Greer, an associate professor of political science at Fordham University, about Cuomo’s entry into the race, whether he could pull from Mayor Adams’s moderate base, and if his bid could present a new opportunity for the other challengers in the race.
There’s been this impression that Andrew Cuomo is inevitable, with him leading in the polls even before he jumped into the mayoral race. Is this just a result of coming into this with a high name ID as the former governor, or is this a true signal that this is Cuomo’s race to lose?
I think it might be his race to lose. I mean, obviously, New Yorkers appear to be very frustrated with Eric Adams and the current administration. It doesn’t appear that New Yorkers have coalesced around an opposition candidate who has been running thus far. So it’s left space for them to find him attractive because, let’s be clear, on a lot of measures, many of Eric Adams’s policies have been a success. It’s just the perception of corruption and incompetence that is plaguing his administration. So people are looking for an alternative — in a personality, in a person — but not necessarily in the policies. And that’s why people are clamoring toward an Andrew Cuomo, because it’s, in many ways, much of Eric Adams’s policies, just in different packaging.
And Cuomo is entering this race as a more moderate candidate, putting him in direct competition with Eric Adams.
I mean, it’s not great for Eric Adams. But don’t forget, we still have, most likely, a very low turnout race and a low-information race as to how ranked-choice voting works. I think the name recognition is huge for Andrew Cuomo. I think there’ll be a lot of money spent on his behalf. I think there’ll be a lot of money spent to make sure that Andrew Cuomo does not succeed. There are many people who want him to explain himself about COVID, about nursing homes, about sexual harassment. I mean, he does have some negatives in his column. But, by and large, New York isn’t a progressive city, so a moderate candidate is appealing. And, again, it’s not as though Andrew Cuomo was deviating from many of Eric Adams’s policies. He’s just presenting a different moderate alternative to Eric Adams.
Throughout his career, Cuomo has cultivated relationships in the Black community and leaned on those through his reelections as well as during this attempted comeback. Many of those same voters and leaders helped to propel Mayor Adams to victory during his first campaign. Is there a sense that Cuomo could pull Black voters from Adams, or has his appeal in this regard been overstated?
I think it’s both. Yes, in some sectors, there are people who are frustrated with Eric Adams, and they think he is squandering a real opportunity and real potential, and so that’s where Cuomo can pick up. But don’t forget, now that Adrienne Adams is in the race, and also the fact that Zellnor Myrie has been making inroads with Black communities in his various races, it’s not as binary as it may appear between Mayor Adams and Cuomo. There are other alternatives, significant ones at that.
I also think the passing of NAACP New York State Conference president Hazel Dukes is huge, because Andrew Cuomo has gone to the Black community, yes, for campaigns, but he’s also run to the Black community when he’s been in trouble. And, by and large, Hazel Dukes and many Black leaders in Harlem, in particular, have been very forgiving, and they have contextualized the complexity that is Andrew Cuomo. I think that he was possibly hoping that he would have the tacit support of Hazel Dukes or, if nothing else, if she couldn’t give it explicitly, she could help direct certain resources and support in his direction. That is no longer an option. And so, how he renegotiates some of his relationships with Black leaders, many of whom are older Black leaders who had a lot of love and admiration and respect for his father, which kind of translated to Andrew Cuomo — I think he’ll have to figure that out.
Though Adrienne Adams will likely have more of an uphill battle with her late entry, what do you think she brings to the race?
I mean, if her policies are more moderate, essentially she’s saying we have two highly flawed candidates in Eric Adams and Andrew Cuomo, and if you like some of their policies, I’m presenting similar policy prescriptions, just without the baggage. Without the harassment, without the bullying, the list goes on and on. In her sort of campaign speech, it’s like, I’m a mother and a wife and just a girl from Queens, and, essentially, I like to do my job, build coalitions, and have no drama. And there are a lot of New Yorkers who just want that. They just want people to go to work. I don’t want to hear about you at the club. I don’t want to hear about you touching women. I don’t want to hear about you bullying people. I don’t want to hear about corruption and a few million dollars missing here from a book deal or you’re surrounding yourself with friends that are taking bribes, allegedly. Like, I just want someone to do their job. We already have enough chaos at the federal level, and I think that will be appealing to a lot of New Yorkers since there is so much instability at the federal level. They want as much stability in the city as possible.
But if she, Cuomo, and Mayor Adams are all pulling from the same base of moderate voters, can she outrank those bigger names?
We still have four months, right? And it’s New York politics, so a lot can change in four months. This is depending on if she can raise money, if she can get signatures to actually be on the stage. As of now, Jessica Ramos does not have the money to be on the stage. So we don’t have any women who would be on the stage, presumably. And we also have three men who would be on the stage in Stringer, Adams, and Cuomo, who have all had sexual-misconduct allegations lobbied against them.
For the few people who are paying attention in the voting-eligible population that does decide to participate on June 24, if they’re tuning into debates and Adrienne Adams is the only woman on the stage, there are ways that she can frame policy issues from a gendered perspective, which we’ve seen effectively done. There are ways that she could frame their accusations in a way that sort of signals not just, you know, the Me Too movement, but just the level of distraction that some of these gentlemen could bring to the office. And, again, the shadow of Donald Trump is hanging over this election. So it’s not just who could get resources from an erratic president. It’s who could stay focused in a time where New York needs a mayor to be as focused as possible.
The field for this race was already crowded before Cuomo and Speaker Adams joined, largely featuring less-well-known state legislators and city officials. How do these new challengers potentially change the calculations for them, especially considering how unpredictable ranked-choice elections can be?
If anything, I think it just inspires them to stay in the race and double down. I mean, if you’ve got eight-to-one matching funds, you never know what can happen in a New York City election. We had the looming court cases of Eric Adams that, thus far, have gone away, but not permanently. We do know that Andrew Cuomo had a bit of a bump, obviously, coming in, but we don’t know what groups are going to organize against him, whether it’s COVID, whether it’s nursing homes, whether it’s money, whether it’s Me Too, right? There are a lot of moving parts. Even though I think of the Venn diagram of, say, Scott Stringer and Brad Lander overlapping quite a bit in a low-turnout, low-information election, why not stay in? If not for this year, who knows what it could do four years from now?
You’re seeing different candidates trying to make their mark, especially with Cuomo jumping in. Myrie has a website calling out the governor over Trump. Mamdani has had a really strong social-media presence. Could Cuomo’s entry actually be an opportunity for some of these other candidates?
I mean, you have sort of two different villains now to talk about, right? We’ve been talking about Eric Adams. We’ve been talking about the questions of: Is he able to lead? Is he focused? All of those issues we’ve been talking about for quite some time. This can galvanize some of the lesser-known candidates to actually have a new foil to talk about some of their own policy issues.
Now that Andrew Cuomo is in, he’s also going to have to answer some hard questions. It’s one thing when it’s speculation. But they’re already questions of: Does he really live in New York? Does he know New York? He’s going to get questions about the minutiae of New York. I don’t think there’s anybody who knows Albany better than Andrew Cuomo, but I’m not sold that he knows New York City. And so, with the shadow of Donald Trump behind this election, it’s who can get the most for New York City. Is it going to be a brash, bullying tactic? Is it going to be, you know, you get more with honey as opposed to vinegar? But we don’t know. I mean, obviously, Eric Adams, Andrew Cuomo, and Donald Trump have all known each other for a very, very long time and have worked together in various capacities. So there are a lot of moving parts, active moving parts, that are still unknown, and we’ll sort of see how they play out in the next four months.
We’ve seen this push from some groups advocating for voters to not rank both Cuomo and Mayor Adams on their ballots and focus on more progressive challengers like Lander, Stringer, or Mamdani. Last time, we saw Kathryn Garcia and Andrew Yang form an alliance in the race. Could we see a similar move this time around, especially considering Speaker Adams and Cuomo joining the race?
I’m curious. I’m not sold that that’s a winning strategy. I mean, obviously, it wasn’t a winning strategy. Neither one became mayor. But I do wonder if maybe we won’t see a tag team like we saw with Garcia and Yang, but more of “anyone but Adams and Cuomo.” So I’m curious if that will sort of catch hold. It doesn’t matter how you rank Brad or Zellnor or Zohran or Adrienne or Scott, it’s just whatever you do, don’t put the sort of two Queens boys on their ballot. And again, as I keep saying, it’s the shadow of Donald Trump hovering over this election. And it will be interesting to see if Eric Adams and Andrew Cuomo sort of get linked to this kind of, the three Queens boys. You know, Trump, Cuomo, Adams “can’t play in the sandbox well with others,” “a lot of potential to do good, but they choose not to.” There are a lot of conversations that could link the three in their quasi-similar personality styles at times. It’ll be interesting to see if that’s a strategy that some candidates go for or if it’s something else.
