Can Andrew Cuomo Actually Be Stopped?

Cuomo for mayor, one month later

Big news! My novel, Glass Century, is out May 6, which is barely one month from now. Junot Diaz says it’s “a marvelous paean to NYC and a spectacularly moving novel.” He ain’t lying. Please preorder it now. And, just as important, come celebrate with me in Manhattan on May 6, my release day. There’s a nifty graphic below and soon I’ll have an RSVP link. What’s cool is that I’ll be doing it with Adelle Waldman, who wrote one of the great novels of the twenty-first century. You won’t want to miss this.

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Andrew Cuomo has been a candidate for mayor for just about one month. His polling lead is undiminished. He is somewhere at or near 40% in most surveys, leading his closest competitors by more than twenty points. His closest competition is my old friend Zohran Mamdani, which is not as surreal to me as it probably should be because I always believed he had a great amount of political ability. If I am biased for saying this, it’s also an objective truth: he is running the only “good” race right now. He has done what all classically talented politicians do: demonstrate tangible momentum. Recently, he fundraised enough to hit the $8 million spending cap for the primary, a remarkable achievement for a 33-year-old assemblyman attempting his first run for higher office. I do not know if he can actually win, but his political stock has surged. He will be a leader of the progressive and socialist left for years to come.

Cuomo has been Cuomo. It is not difficult to run a cautious, dreadnaught campaign. He is the most famous candidate. He has the deepest record. Months ago, he was the polling leader, and his only job is to keep the lead. To do that, he will, like frontrunners of all eras, play it safe. He makes public appearances when there are endorsements to be had. Today, I saw him at the headquarters of the Queens Democratic Party, where the party apparatus and their chair, Gregory Meeks, backed him. There weren’t a large number of Queens politicians on hand—most have not made up their minds in the mayoral race—but it’s obvious what Cuomo’s path to victory looks like. He can recreate a version of Eric Adams’ winning coalition from four years ago, securing the lion’s share of support from Black, Latino, and Orthodox Jewish voters. He can peel off enough liberal and moderate whites. He can rack up endorsements from labor unions, large and small, and enough politicians of consequence. Like Adams, he can rail about how the city is spiraling out of control—it isn’t, really—and promise a strong hand will right the ship.

What has helped Cuomo is the utter diminishment of Adams. Getting Donald Trump to free him was truly his last hurrah. His approval rating remains in the gutter and he’s hardly paid attention to at all. Some are wondering whether he’ll end up on the ballot for the Democratic primary. He will be a one-term mayor—that is virtually assured—and while this will be a welcome development for the many Democrats sick of him, it’s a huge break for Cuomo if Adams decides to not seriously battle on. One of Cuomo’s vulnerabilities is that most of his major campaign themes rest on problems his own government—in the view of his centrist and conservative critics, at least—actually caused. Cuomo has made attacks on e-bikes a centerpiece of his campaign, since many New Yorkers are weary of how they speed on city streets and are, more importantly, frightened of lithium ion battery fires. Cuomo signed into law the legislation that made e-bikes legal. I am personally skeptical of the narrative that partially abolishing cash bail and reforming discovery laws contributed to the pandemic era crime spike—most cities saw crime rise in this period and most of them did not change their criminal justice laws—but it’s easy to imagine a conservative Democrat railing against Cuomo for signing into law all the reforms the Democratic legislature passed in 2019. In fact, that Democrat should be Adams. But he’s slipped too much and Cuomo can glide on.

That leaves the rest of the field. Mamdani is rising, Cuomo is maintaining, and the others are puttering about in the basement. There’s time left, but it’s getting late early, as Yogi Berra once said. The two disappointments of the primary, at this point, are Brad Lander and Scott Stringer. Both have fundraised well but failed to demonstrate any obvious momentum. It’s embarrassing to both of them that Mamdani has posted higher poll numbers despite only entering politics in 2021. Stringer ran for mayor before, and Lander has held public office for fifteen years. Both have struggled to form coherent and compelling campaign messages. The last two Democratic primary winners, Bill de Blasio and Eric Adams, both accomplished this, and it’s not clear either man—one the current city comptroller, the other his predecessor—can do so with the time they have left. Each is likely hoping for a deus ex machina in a New York Times endorsement. It’s plausible, if unlikely right now. If Mamdani seems fresh, they seem tired. Each made the error of spending far too little time publicly campaigning last year. When Adams was indicted in September, neither emerged as the clear opposition.

The other top candidates, Zellnor Myrie and Adrienne Adams, haven’t taken off for different reasons. Adams, the City Council speaker, only entered the race several weeks ago and hasn’t qualified for matching funds. (She is not related to the mayor.) She is a long-shot but there’s a path to victory if she can fundraise extremely quickly and win a Times endorsement. There’s a coalition to be built for her out of middle class Black and white voters, along with those who may grow disenchanted with Cuomo, who resigned in disgrace in 2021. Had she entered the primary last year, she’d be in a much stronger position now. Can she play catch-up? Can she talk a few large unions out of backing Cuomo? We will see. For Myrie, a Brooklyn state senator, it’s been a spirited run that hasn’t registered in the polls. He’s fundraised well and attracted media attention. The central problem for him is that he’s pivoted toward the center and attempted to resemble a technocrat (think Kathryn Garcia 2021) without the CV. Myrie only has two years on Mamdani in Albany, and he’s still in his thirties. He doesn’t have executive experience. Right now, he’s in a tough spot. His colleague, Jessica Ramos, also remains in the race but she’s fundraised dreadfully. Without cash, she can’t rise to the top of the pack.

As I went to Queens to see Cuomo, the Working Families Party, a left-wing third party, announced it was supporting four candidates for mayor: Lander, Mamdani, Myrie, and (Adrienne) Adams. In this ranked-choice voting primary, in which New York can pick up to five candidates, they opted against ranking anyone, though this will offer rankings eventually. The progressive base prefers Mamdani but Lander, in theory, has wider appeal. If the WFP wants to be a serious player in New York City again, they’ll have to abandon most of their slate promotion activities and focus squarely on Cuomo. To defeat Cuomo means to spend money against Cuomo. Can the WFP and an unaffiliated anti-Cuomo PAC raise several million to fund TV ads against Cuomo? I don’t know. I will say something harsh, if true—if the WFP can’t do this, there isn’t much of a point to their existence any longer. When I was much younger, I used to tangle with the old WFP leadership over how they related to city and state politics, chastising them for being too amenable to politicians like Cuomo because the labor unions that then made up their base wanted to accommodate mayors, governors, and the like. That was when WFP was a serious local party, striking a difficult balance between the aims of progressive activists and the labor unions in leadership. In retrospect, I was overly critical of the prior leadership (Bill Lipton and Dan Cantor, reading this somewhere, are probably smirking) and not cognizant enough of what it took to be that version of WFP. It was Cuomo who successfully broke the old WFP, chasing the labor unions away, and the party was never the same. It became a glorified a super PAC and political consultancy.

Can WFP rise to the occasion today? Or will it do the easy work of indulging in national politics as a bit player? Beating Cuomo is a lot harder than sending out angry press releases about Donald Trump. Another power player who will have to reckon with Cuomo’s rise is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Ramos, several years ago, was foolish to pick a fight with AOC over her lack of engagement with local affairs, but the state senator wasn’t wrong on the substance. AOC is barnstorming with Bernie Sanders, which is nice, but a man accused of sexually harassing at least eleven women is about to live in Gracie Mansion next year. What does she think about that? How much does she care? If Ocasio-Cortez wanted to, she could send out several fundraising emails and raise enormous sums for WFP or an anti-Cuomo PAC and get them the cash they need to hit the airwaves in April. This is how frontrunners get beaten. A super PAC began the process of kneecapping Christine Quinn, the vaunted frontrunner, in the 2013 mayoral race. If Ocasio-Cortez turns her attention to Cuomo, money will flow. Whether she does more than a perfunctory endorsement in the mayoral race remains to be seen. There’s one major question left for all the Democrats: can Cuomo run out the clock? On March 30th, the answer seems yes. That might change on April 30th or May 30th. The primary is June 24th, and that’s enough time for several twists and turns. Start paying attention.