Andrew Cuomo for Mayor? Bill de Blasio Has Thoughts, None of Them Good.
In a candid interview, former Mayor Bill de Blasio strenuously argued that former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo should not be elected to lead New York City: “He is a vindictive person,” Mr. de Blasio said
For months, Bill de Blasio has watched quietly as his old nemesis, former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, attempts to stage a comeback by running for mayor of New York City.
But with Mr. Cuomo leading in the polls as the June 24 primary nears, Mr. de Blasio — whose own mayoralty was frequently undermined by Mr. Cuomo — has decided to end his silence.
In a searing interview, Mr. de Blasio said Mr. Cuomo hurt the city as governor, compared him to President Trump and said he was not the proven, competent manager he claims to be.
Mr. de Blasio said Mr. Cuomo lacked the temperament, honesty and integrity needed to effectively run the nation’s largest city.
“He is a vindictive person,” Mr. de Blasio said. “He’s a bully. He’s obsessed with revenge.”
Mr. de Blasio, a Democrat who served as mayor from 2014 through 2021, argued that Mr. Cuomo, who moved to New York City last year, is an outsider who does not understand the city and its needs.
“I had endless conversations with him about what was going on in New York City,” he said of Mr. Cuomo, who was governor for almost Mr. de Blasio’s entire mayoralty before resigning in disgrace.
“I often felt like he was talking about a place he didn’t know,” Mr. de Blasio said. “I think his understanding of New York City is a bit stuck in the 1980s and ’90s. I don’t think he feels the affordability crisis.”
Rich Azzopardi, a spokesman for Mr. Cuomo, said that Mr. de Blasio’s tenure as mayor had been defined by “feckless leadership,” and that he had no standing to criticize Mr. Cuomo.
“Homelessness skyrocketed, the police were defunded, demoralized and turned their backs to him, and nothing was managed because he was more focused on going to the Park Slope Y in the middle of the workday,” Mr. Azzopardi said.
“New Yorkers know Andrew Cuomo has the management experience and the real record of results to fix what’s broken after 12 long years and get the city back on the right track,” he added.
Mr. de Blasio said he did not plan to make an endorsement in the mayor’s race. But he praised several candidates, including Zohran Mamdani, a state assemblyman, and Brad Lander, the city comptroller. The two candidates, the leading progressives in the race, cross-endorsed each other on Friday.
Mr. de Blasio also said he respected Adrienne Adams, the City Council speaker, and Zellnor Myrie, a state senator.
“You’ve got very capable public servants who are actually New Yorkers, in the sense that they’ve been living in their neighborhoods, serving their neighborhoods,” he said. “Not someone who just came back after 30 years and really doesn’t understand us.”
The public feud between Mr. Cuomo and Mr. de Blasio consumed New York politics for years. They warred over the subway, public housing, schools, taxing millionaires, the pandemic, snowstormsand even euthanizing a deer.
Almost exactly 10 years ago, Mr. de Blasio assailed Mr. Cuomo in an interview in The New York Times after becoming fed up over the state of their relationship. Mr. de Blasio argued that Mr. Cuomo had not changed.
“What I said a decade ago is still true,” he said.
He said that he tried to work with Mr. Cuomo as mayor. “I tried respect. I tried compromise,” he said. “And what I found was he didn’t keep his word, he didn’t tell the truth, and he put his political interests ahead of New York City’s needs.”
“I wish it had never come to that, and honestly it was not a fun process,” he added. “It would have been a joy to work with a normal governor who wanted to work together and cooperate.”
Mr. de Blasio said that among Mr. Cuomo’s past lies, the most painful were “about the nursing homes and the seniors who were lost” in the early days of the Covid pandemic.
Top aides to Mr. Cuomo had pushed to conceal in a report the number of Covid-related deaths in state nursing homes, The New York Times reported in 2021. When he appeared before Congress to answer questions about the topic, Mr. Cuomo initially said that he had not reviewed the report. He later said that he did not “recall” viewing it.
Emails and testimony from other witnesses first reported by The Times last year show that Mr. Cuomo was involved in drafting the report. The Justice Department is now investigating the matter.
Mr. de Blasio said Mr. Cuomo’s difficulty being forthright reminded him of President Trump, and said that both men had a “propensity to lie.”
“He’s too much like Trump to depend on him to fight Trump,” Mr. de Blasio said. “He and Trump have a long relationship. They are very similar people. Their default position is only to blame others for their problems and to put their political needs ahead of the people they serve.”
He suggested that Mr. Trump and Mr. Cuomo, two sons of Queens, may have had complicated relationships with their “hard-charging fathers” that contributed to their “inability to express regret and an inability to have empathy.”
Mr. Azzopardi said Mr. de Blasio was ignoring Mr. Cuomo’s achievements, including raising the minimum wage and making tuition free for some families at SUNY and CUNY schools.
Mr. Cuomo has often criticized Mr. de Blasio on the campaign trail, arguing that the city has not been managed well since Michael R. Bloomberg, Mr. de Blasio’s predecessor, left office. Mr. Bloomberg, one of the world’s richest men, recently endorsed Mr. Cuomo and is expected to contribute to a super PAC supporting his mayoral bid, fearing that a left-leaning rival could win.
Mr. Bloomberg cited Mr. Cuomo’s strengths as a leader and manager, and his track record of seeing through meaningful capital projects like the overhaul of LaGuardia Airport.
But Mr. de Blasio said that the need to solve the affordability crisis overrode any other imperative for the city’s next mayor.
“This election is not about infrastructure,” he said. “As nice as it is to have an improved LaGuardia Airport, that doesn’t help the average working New Yorker. LaGuardia is great for business travelers and tourists.”
Mr. de Blasio has mostly avoided commenting on the race, though asked by a reporter in April about Mr. Cuomo, he said: “I don’t think he should be mayor, there you go.”
But on Thursday, during the final Democratic debate before the primary, he posted running commentary on social media, cheering on Mr. Mamdani and Mr. Lander and denigrating Mr. Cuomo.
Mr. de Blasio is the first to admit that he made mistakes as mayor, leaving office with his approval rating in the gutter. But after the tumult of Mayor Eric Adams’s first term, Mr. de Blasio’s tenure has undergone a kinder reassessment.
Mr. Mamdani said in a recent interview with The Times that he believed Mr. de Blasio had been the best mayor in his lifetime, citing Mr. de Blasio’s creation of universal prekindergarten as a difference-maker in people’s lives.
Mr. de Blasio believes he would have been able to accomplish far more as mayor if someone else had been governor. He said he had a much easier time working with Gov. Kathy Hochul after Mr. Cuomo resigned in 2021 over a sexual harassment scandal.
“There were no games,” Mr. de Blasio said. “If we came to an agreement, it stood for something. It wasn’t an effort to undermine or score political points or assign blame. It was actual, serious, mature government.”
He said Mr. Cuomo’s heavy-handed leadership style was typified by his treatment of Andy Byford, the well-regarded head of New York City Transit, who resigned two years into his tenure after several run-ins with Mr. Cuomo.
The episode reminded Mr. de Blasio of former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani firing William J. Bratton, his police commissioner, because he was receiving more credit than the mayor for reducing crime.
“That was too much for Giuliani’s ego, so he fired the greatest police leader we ever had,” he said. “Equally, Andy Byford was doing extraordinary work, and Cuomo was trying to undermine him at every turn.”
Mr. de Blasio has his own personal examples. When he called for a “shelter in place” as coronavirus cases began to rise sharply in March 2020, similar to an order that had been issued in the Bay Area, Mr. Cuomo dismissed the idea as too drastic. Several days later, Mr. Cuomo announced a similar plan.
But some health experts and elected officials expressed dismay that Mr. Cuomo did not act sooner, possibly allowing the virus to spread.
“I thought Cuomo’s response was political and small and nasty,” Mr. de Blasio said, adding: “You can look at different studies, but I don’t have a question that there were very dire consequences to that delay.”
Mr. Azzopardi challenged Mr. de Blasio’s assertion. “Let’s remember what happened,” he said. “De Blasio went on live TV, screamed about shelter in place, but had no plan to implement it.”
In interviews, some voters have said that Mr. Cuomo appears to have learned from his political fall from grace and has had a change of heart. Mr. de Blasio disagrees.
“I see no evidence of a change of heart,” he said. “This is an old dog who doesn’t learn new tricks. He is set in his ways. It’s all about him.”
Emma G. Fitzsimmons is the City Hall bureau chief for The Times, covering Mayor Eric Adams and his administration.
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