New Yorkers See a City in Crisis. Are They Ready for a Cuomo Comeback?

Former governor is the early mayoral front-runner, but there are reasons to doubt he will stay on top

On the 15th floor of a skyscraper in the Financial District on a recent evening, six candidates for New York mayor tried to make the case that any of them would be preferable to the scandal-tarred behemoths not in attendance.

Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani, a bearded 33-year-old in a slim gray suit, said that Mayor Eric Adams and former Gov. Andrew Cuomo had much to answer for. The city’s problems, he argued, were “all the result of decisions that have been made by two disgraced New York executives, both of whom are not here tonight,” Mamdani said. “We can do better.”

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo resigned in August 2021, a week after a state report found he had sexually harassed several women, which he denied. Photo: Office of the Governor of New York

Cuomo, who was re-elected governor twice and led the state through the Covid pandemic before resigning in the midst of allegations of sexual misconduct in 2021, entered the race March 1, hoping for a political comeback. In a video announcing his run, he said he was compelled to enter because of the “crisis” facing the city, which he ascribed to “the lack of intelligent action by many of our political leaders.” Insiders view his bid as a shot at rehabilitation after he left office in disgrace and possibly even as the groundwork for a presidential run in 2028.

Preliminary polls show Cuomo to be the front-runner, and he is behaving like one, avoiding the many cattle-call candidate forums and engaging with the public only under tightly controlled circumstances. He is racking up endorsements from influential unions and power brokers. This week, he reported raising $1.5 million in the first two weeks of the campaign, outpacing the rest of the field.

Yet there are reasons to doubt that the early front-runner will stay on top. Even in the polls he dominates, Cuomo is getting only about a third of the vote, and he is polarizing, with nearly half of voters viewing him negatively. In previous mayoral races, the early favorite has tended to collapse under scrutiny as a late-engaging electorate turns on the seemingly inevitable candidate, allowing a lesser-known opponent to emerge. It was this dynamic that produced Adams four years ago, in a late surge against the businessman Andrew Yang. Adams’s predecessor, Bill de Blasio, pulled ahead of the onetime leader Christine Quinn in the race’s final weeks.

Well-placed observers expect the status quo to change this time as well. “Everybody says, ‘Oh, Cuomo’s going to win.’ He looks that way today, but there’s a long time till June,” said a veteran Democratic consultant, Hank Sheinkopf. “He’s running as the stability agent who knows how to be a manager, and three months out, those arguments are working. But polls in March for a June election are about as good as a shearling coat in Manhattan in July.”

On paper, New Yorkers would seem to have a wealth of well-qualified options. The field includes not one but two elected city comptrollers—one current, one former—as well as four current or former state legislators and the City Council speaker. Together, they command the plurality of the vote in some polls, yet individually none gets more than 10%. In nearly two dozen candidate forums, they have struggled to distinguish themselves from one another on the finer points of policy, with the possible exception of Mamdani, a proud democratic socialist who has captivated the young and leftist. The dynamic reminds some Democrats of the crowded Republican primary that led to President Trump’s nomination in 2016. 

Mayoral candidate Michael Blake, a former member of the State Assembly, criticized Cuomo for not showing remorse for his alleged sexual misconduct or for Covid deaths that Blake attributed to Cuomo’s pandemic decisions. “It’s time to turn the page,” Blake said. 

Cuomo denies wrongdoing for his handling of Covid, including his administration’s early 2020 directive sending infected patients back to nursing homes and a subsequent alleged coverup. The moves led to state and federal investigations; a Justice Department inspector general later found that the first Trump administration targeted Cuomo for political reasons. Cuomo also denies the sexual-misconduct allegations detailed in a state attorney general’s report that led to his resignation. His spokesman Rich Azzopardi said in a statement that other candidates were trying to rewrite history and attack Cuomo’s record “because they don’t have ones of their own to talk about.”

Adams insists he is running for another term but hasn’t named a campaign manager. A former policeman elected on a promise of law and order, Adams was unpopular even before he was indicted on corruption charges and sought a controversial pardon from President Trump. A poll earlier this month put his approval rating at just 20%, with 56% believing he should resign. In polls of the mayoral race, his support sits at around 10%, a remarkable abandonment of an incumbent officeholder. An Adams spokesman declined to comment.

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Stringer emerged from his tour bus a few minutes later, holding a “welcome” gift of a dozen bagels he planned to leave with Cuomo’s doorman. “I just think it’s time for Andrew Cuomo, who is the self-described front-runner, to come down from the mountain and start engaging us in debate,” he said. “He has to account for the things that he didn’t do while he was the governor of New York state.” The tour proceeded to visit a hospital, a subway stop and a public school, as Stringer argued that Cuomo hadn’t attended to the city’s healthcare, transit and education needs.

The race is playing out against a backdrop of deep dissatisfaction with the condition of the city. One recent poll found three-quarters of New York Democrats agreeing with Cuomo’s “crisis” diagnosis, driven by concerns about crime and the cost of living. The city has been strained in recent years by an influx of migrants, which Adams had aggressively pushed the Biden administration to address. While the city remains a Democratic bastion, November’s election saw Trump dramatically improve his performance, particularly among outer-borough working-class voters. 

In the backroom of a Brooklyn bar recently, the mayoral candidate Zellnor Myrie was doing his best to pitch himself as the answer to voters’ concerns. A Brooklyn native from working-class immigrant roots, Myrie now holds the state Senate seat that once belonged to Adams. 

A group of about 30 progressives sipped IPAs as Myrie held forth on transit policy and other issues. At the mention of Cuomo, the room erupted in boos. “Some people think we need a certain type of personality to get things done, and it demonstrably hasn’t worked,” he said.