Andrew Cuomo’s Plan to Win the NYC Mayor Race

Picture: Angelina Katsanis/The New York Occasions/Redux

Election day is quickly approaching, and Andrew Cuomo is shedding. However the Cuomo camp nonetheless has a long-shot plan to defeat Democrat Zohran Mamdani in November. It requires a number of issues to come back collectively: The sector should shrink, then shrink additional. Then deep-pocketed donors should make a last-minute pivot to Cuomo, who will use their cash to peel off a part of the Democratic voter base from the front-runner.

“I’m not going to blow smoke. It’s a slender path,” stated Cornell Belcher, a pollster for Barack Obama’s 2008 and 2012 campaigns who lately joined Cuomo’s marketing campaign. “However I haven’t labored for a candidate up to now decade who didn’t have a slender path to victory.”

The polls, to make certain, are dangerous, exhibiting Cuomo trailing Mamdani by a median of 19 factors. The labor unions and elected officers who endorsed the previous governor within the Democratic major have nearly solely deserted him. Cuomo is shedding the cash race, and the nationwide media has all however anointed the 33-year-old democratic socialist because the Subsequent Huge Factor.

Longtime aides and allies concede it’s a frightening problem, particularly on condition that Cuoma might be working on a third-party line in a metropolis the place nearly two-thirds of registered voters are Democrats.

It doesn’t assist that the Cuomo marketing campaign’s multipronged strategy rests on one thing taking place that retains not taking place, regardless of fixed rumors that it would. “There may be very a lot a path right here for us,” stated one Cuomo official. “However step one is that Eric Adams has to get the fuck out of this race.” However Adams, working a distant fourth, insists that he’s not dropping out and that Cuomo is at fault for suggesting he’ll.

Consequently, members of the Cuomo camp have been treating Adams cautiously, fearful not simply that he’ll assault them extra but additionally that any efforts to nudge him out will backfire. When billionaire hedge-funder and onetime Adams supporter Invoice Ackman tweeted, “It’s time for Mayor Adams to step apart,” some near Cuomo cringed, realizing the mayor could be much less more likely to go away if he felt pushed.

Adams’s exit wouldn’t have a serious affect on the polls. However, for Group Cuomo, consolidating the race from 4 candidates to 3 would unlock the second a part of the plan: resetting the political chessboard within the race’s closing weeks and getting anti-Mamdani donors to begin shelling out cash once more. “If Eric will get out, there’s going to be a gush of cash coming Andrew’s means, $20 million to $30 million in a matter of weeks,” stated one supporter of Cuomo’s.

As soon as that occurs, Cuomo’s advisers see half three taking part in out: the sidelining of Curtis Sliwa. The Republican, now working third, has been much more adamant than Adams about staying within the race. However a pattern of what might be in retailer for Sliwa got here lately, when Trump made an look on the Fox & Pals sofa and proceeded to belittle the perpetually bereted Guardian Angels founder and radio host.

“I’m a Republican, however Curtis is just not precisely prime time,” Trump stated. “He desires cats to be in Gracie Mansion. That’s the magnificent house of the mayor. It’s lovely. We don’t must have hundreds of cats there.”

Positive, Sliwa is a Republican, Trump transmitted to the MAGA devoted. However he’s additionally one thing of a weirdo — extra a personality than a mayor.

Cuomo’s individuals have been thrilled by Trump’s remarks, hoping they provide different Republicans permission to dismiss Sliwa too. One adviser to Cuomo informed me they consider as a lot as half of Sliwa’s vote — presently hovering round 15 % — could be gettable for Cuomo. Add that to the share of the Adams vote Cuomo could be more likely to obtain and it might put him inside 5 factors of Mamdani.

“I feel that is going to come back right down to a two-person race on the finish of the day, and I don’t assume individuals are going to waste their vote,” Cuomo stated when requested about the opportunity of Adams (and even Sliwa) staying within the contest. “That will be the pure decision, because it was within the major. And within the major, there have been candidates who had 14 factors, and so they wound up with three. Why? Folks see who’s viable and who’s not, and there are solely going to be two viable candidates in my view.”

Getting excessive would contain reclaiming some working-class Democratic voters who supported Cuomo within the major whereas making an attempt to dampen enthusiasm for Mamdani amongst his most fervent followers: younger voters on the left (who traditionally haven’t turned out en masse).

For his half, Mamdani is engaged in an identical, if reversed, two-step: making an attempt to maintain his left-wing base energized whereas additionally increasing his tent to incorporate Democratic moderates. In in the future, Mamdani each doubled down on his pledge to arrest Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and expressed remorse for his 2020 tweet that known as the NYPD “racist, anti-queer and a serious risk to public security.” (Social-media posts from voices on the left offended over Mamdani’s backpedaling on some progressive rhetoric have been gleefully handed round on pro-Cuomo group chats.)

Cuomo wants round 30 % of Democrats to assist him within the common. There’s a perception in his camp that the Democratic major, even on this closely Democratic metropolis, is just not reflective of the final citizens. One particular person concerned in a possible exterior spending effort on Cuomo’s behalf stated that in response to their metrics, greater than half of Democratic voters in November received’t have voted within the major and that they tilt way more reasonable than the first citizens.

“In case you slender this right down to a two-person race and also you have a look at the voters which are essentially the most fluid on all the pieces from crime to affordability to who can do the job, Cuomo has a big lead with these voters,” stated Belcher.

Present polls present that in a four-person subject, Cuomo is trailing in almost each demographic subgroup. However the marketing campaign believes he can win loyal Democratic constituencies like Black, Hispanic, and Jewish voters, who are likely to vote straight down the ticket for the Democratic nominee however could also be persuadable that Mamdani is an excessive amount of of a threat.

Many Cuomo advisers have mentioned Rudy Giuliani’s 1993 victory, when half of the town’s citizens turned out to defeat David Dinkins. “You must frighten individuals to present them a cause to go to the polls,” stated one shut Cuomo ally. “There may be only a lot there,” stated one other. “There may be public security, there’s the entire communist factor, there’s the truth that if we elect this 33-year-old, then the town goes to go to shit. It is going to be de Blasio 2.0, and who desires that?”

With Mamdani nationalizing the race, bringing in figures like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren on his behalf, the Cuomo camp thinks it will possibly do a model of the identical. “What’s a Mayor Mamdani going to imply for our efforts to take again the Home? What’s a Mayor Mamdani going to imply for Kathy Hochul’s reelection or for the 2028 race?” stated one particular person near Cuomo. The race, on this imaginative and prescient, could be a battle for the soul of the Democratic Celebration — one through which democratic socialists are preparingto mount a takeover and Cuomo, who has been dogged by his shut affiliation with Trump all through this race, manages to flip the narrative and develop into the particular person who’s going save the town from the Trumpian menace.

“They’ll should go scorched earth,” stated Adam Carlson, a pollster not concerned within the race. “It must be completely different from the first — one thing like, ‘I’m the one factor standing between New York Metropolis and a whole Trump authoritarian takeover.’ And Cuomo then turns into the ‘Don’t rock the boat’ man.”

Nonetheless, a lot of this hangs on Adams getting out of the race.

“The subsequent two weeks are crunch time,” stated Democratic operative Chris Coffey, who suggested Cuomo within the major. “As a result of in case you don’t see motion from Eric Adams and Curtis Sliwa, it simply will get more durable for Cuomo to place one thing collectively.”