Andrew Cuomo He walked into a conference room inside one of the company’s Manhattan offices wearing a suit and tie and spoke for 30 straight minutes. “We are at a critical point in the city’s history. The city goes through cycles, but this cycle is different. People are leaving,” he said at the private event, according to a source familiar with the meeting. “They are afraid.”
Officially, Cuomo will not run for mayor. Unofficially, he’s doing everything someone running for mayor would do. His allies conducted opinion polls. They contact potential employees; They are preparing the process of collecting the signatures needed to put his name on the ballot. Perhaps most important and interesting is that Cuomo did this for months Been traveling around the cityHe was speaking to Jewish groups and in black churches, from Brooklyn to the Upper East Side, testing ideas and messages that he would use to mount one of the most audacious comeback attempts in New York’s political history.
Bold because Cuomo left his last job, as a three-term governor, early and under heavy fire. Attorney General of the State of New York Letitia James chest a A 165-page report She said there have been substantiated complaints that Cuomo sexually harassed multiple women. A separate controversy was also swirling over whether Cuomo’s office doctored reports of the number of coronavirus deaths in New York and issued an order that increased the risk of the pandemic in nursing homes. Cuomo has vehemently denied all of these accusations, and has since attacked the James investigations as politically motivated, and he and several of his top aides have done their best. At least $25 million in state taxpayer dollars for aggressive and sustained defense against both controversies. But in August 2021 he resigned in disgrace.
And then almost immediately Cuomo began searching for a path to electoral redemption. In 2022, he came close to running against his replacement for governor. Cathy Hochul, Before he decided it was too early to put his daughters through the fight again, according to him One of his senior aides.
Three years later, though, the city’s current mayor, eric Adams, It opened the door to an attempted resurrection of Cuomo. Seven of the mayor’s former top aides have resigned and are under investigation. Adams himself was indicted last September, and will face a federal trial in April. Modern reconnaissance Adams appears to be one of the least favored candidates, and Cuomo could defeat him in a potential Democratic primary matchup next June.
Assuming he escapes, that is. Cuomo’s longtime spokesman, rich Azzopardi, He’s been using the word “premature” for months whenever asked if the former governor would challenge Adams, and he’s sticking to the company line now. Other New York political insiders who have spoken with Cuomo aren’t so shy: “He’s running,” one tells me emphatically. To appear on the Democratic Party primary ballot, candidates Need to collect 7,500 signatures between February 25 and April 3. There are good reasons for Cuomo to delay entering the race as long as possible, some strategic and some emotional.
Cuomo’s ideal path to the City Council would have been a special election necessitated by Adams’ resignation before March 26. According to the New York City Charterbut this window is closing quickly. So the former governor’s camp now favors Adams remaining in the race, believing that allows more time for the incumbent’s support to crumble and weakens the scrutiny that would have otherwise been reserved for Cuomo — who, in one recent poll, scored a Rejection rate 44%. Waiting to publicly announce the offer also gives Cuomo time to calibrate his offer. By now, the film relies heavily on the supposed “chaos” sweeping through the city, a notable example of which is the final horrific sacrifice of a homeless woman sitting inside a subway car. Cuomo is also trying to figure out how to walk the line between criticizing Adams personally — which would risk alienating some Black voters — and professionally, as someone who has failed as a city manager.
Cuomo allies say the other thing holding up a final decision and announcement is that he hasn’t completely given up on the idea of running for governor in 2026. Defeating Hochul, his former lieutenant governor, and reclaiming the Albany throne would bring the kind of immediate satisfaction of revenge that office doesn’t offer. Mayor of the city.
