Which Andrew Cuomo Will New York Metropolis Voters Keep in mind?
Picture: Kent Nishimura/Getty Photographs
By shouldering his method into the mayoral major, Andrew Cuomo is betting that what New York voters need at Metropolis Corridor is deep authorities expertise, competent execution, and a mayor prepared and prepared to do battle with the Trump White Home. His entry assessments the political axiom that elections are concerning the future slightly than the previous.
“I believe it modifications every thing and nothing on the similar time,” Laura Tamman, a professor of political science at Tempo College, advised me. “All the people who’re at present operating have assumed he’ll get within the race; a few of them have taken him on instantly already. However on the similar time, I believe he’s going to carry a spotlight and an power to the race that we haven’t seen but, as a result of New Yorkers know who he’s, and so they’re going to reply to his candidacy.”
Cuomo’s practically 12 years as governor — to not point out 4 years as HUD Secretary and 4 as state lawyer normal — permit him to precisely declare to have much more expertise than any of his rivals. However that additionally saddles Cuomo with greater than a decade’s price of funds decisions and half-forgotten tasks, insurance policies, political fights, and private conduct that his opponents are already attacking.
“He spent years treating New York Metropolis like his private punching bag,” mentioned candidate for mayor Scott Stringer, the ex-comptroller, on social media. “Slashing MTA funding and wrecking the subway whereas funneling cash to upstate ski resorts, and making an attempt to chop billions in funding for public college youngsters and Medicaid for metropolis residents.”
Upstate ski resorts? Exterior of chambers of commerce within the Catskills and Lake George, solely a handful of presidency insiders keep in mind that 5 years in the past, Cuomo championed tax breaks for upstate lodges that put in renewable energy-powered lifts, snowmaking tools, and different equipment. However a much more critical chapter of Cuomo’s historical past is the barrage of sexual-misconduct and hostile-workplace accusations that pressured him from workplace in 2021, and have been backed up by findings from State lawyer Normal Letitia James and the Justice Division below President Biden.
Inside hours of Cuomo’s video asserting his candidacy, the Working Households Get together launched a video, “Ladies Deserve Higher,” that options well-known girls activists reciting misconduct allegations and calling Cuomo “a bully and an abuser.” These voices aren’t more likely to go away. Ditto for individuals who criticize Cuomo’s dealing with of insurance policies and data relating to nursing dwelling deaths on the peak of COVID and the $5 million advance he bought for a e-book concerning the disaster which will have violated moral guidelines by together with work accomplished by public staff.
On the flip facet of the coin, Cuomo’s sizable lead over his rivals in current polls is predicated partly on a report of accomplishments, together with these memorable every day briefings throughout the COVID disaster, the profitable combat to legalize same-sex marriage in 2014, and the completion of long-stalled public works tasks, together with the Moynihan Prepare Corridor at Penn Station, the growth of the Second Avenue Subway, the rebuilding of an expanded Kosciusko Bridge (town’s first new bridge in 55 years) and the creation of a brand new terminal at LaGuardia Airport.
Cuomo is betting {that a} essential mass of voters will keep in mind and reward his good deeds. “Once I put on my wedding ceremony ring and put it on each morning, the thought goes by way of my head that I wouldn’t be capable of put on it have been it not for Andrew Cuomo,” political guide Jon Reinish advised me. “Not simply individuals in New York, however for thousands and thousands of individuals throughout the nation, that reminiscence goes to return again, and it’s a extremely massive deal.”
Cuomo’s candidacy places a highlight on the central query of each municipal election yr in New York: what are the primary issues within the metropolis that almost all urgently want fixing? For the final half century, every new mayor has been employed to repair a selected disaster that was prompted, ignored or bequeathed by his predecessor.
Right here’s how the shorthand, admittedly oversimplified, model of historical past goes: Ed Koch beat a crowded subject in 1977 by promising funds austerity within the wake of town’s near-bankruptcy; David Dinkins unseated Koch in 1989 by proposing a peaceful, much less divisive method to neighborhood relations within the wake of high-profile circumstances just like the Central Park 5 debacle; and Rudy Giuliani beat Dinkins in 1993 by vowing to crack down on crime after New York hit an all-time excessive of greater than 2,000 homicides in a single yr.
Mike Bloomberg, elected mayor lower than 90 days after the 9/11 terrorist assault, received when town wanted a businesslike method to reviving the native economic system and rebuilding Decrease Manhattan; left-leaning activist Invoice de Blasio’s 2013 marketing campaign was primarily based on the argument that Bloomberg had constructed a affluent metropolis however uncared for the wants of working households. And ex-cop Eric Adams was elected when town’s emergence from COVID was accompanied by a spike in violent crime that he vowed to reverse.
Cuomo’s concept is that the primary municipal disaster this election yr is that Adams — stricken by large high-level turnover and resignations — has turned out to be an ineffective chief who is just too compromised as a felony defendant to show the independence and forcefulness required to cope with President Trump.
The ex-governor has a case to make, but it surely received’t be simple.
“Each chief govt could have some accomplishments together with Cuomo,” Sal Albanese, a former metropolis councilman who made his personal run for mayor in 1997, advised me on social media, describing Cuomo as “a political mechanic with a ton of political baggage.” I’m undecided Cuomo himself would dispute that description. A picture involves thoughts of the ex-governor carrying a weathered, battered valise stuffed with a protracted checklist of allies, enemies, and hard selections, slowly ascending the staircase into Metropolis Corridor.
