Zohran Mamdani Ended the Politics of Andrew Cuomo

Andrew Cuomo arrives on the Ziegfeld Ballroom for his election night time occasion after being defeated by Zohran Mamdani.
Picture: Christian Monterros/Bloomberg/Getty Photographs

A sure type of politics died with Andrew Cuomo’s political profession on Tuesday night time.

He was, at his peak, the consummate Machiavellian macher. For him, it was at all times higher to be feared than beloved. Throughout his 11 years as governor, he wielded the equipment of the federal government to unsettle and punish his rivals like few within the historical past of New York, and he was recognized, above all, as an government who was by no means to be crossed. He was a bruiser, a bully, and as a mayoral candidate he hoped to export that cutthroat model to the streets of New York Metropolis. Courting voters was an afterthought. He would intimidate sufficient of the outdated energy gamers within the shadows, accumulate his chits, and rumble to victory.

As a substitute, he was throttled twice by Zohran Mamdani. Cuomo discovered himself, for the primary time in lots of many years, bereft of energy — the kind that used to make any Democrat within the state quake and the median voter respect the pressure he dropped at bear on the federal government. On Tuesday, New Yorkers soundly rejected him within the highest-turnout election of the century.

It will need to have been a surreal stretch for Cuomo, if he ever took the time to replicate on his newest, and sure final, political journey. He was elected governor of New York in Barack Obama’s first time period and was in workplace when Joe Biden drove Donald Trump from the White Home. Even when Cuomo resigned in shame, following a wave of sexual-harassment allegations, he solely appeared useless for thus lengthy — there was a comeback alternative within the mayoral race only a few years off. Eric Adams was drowning in scandal. New Yorkers remembered Cuomo fondly sufficient from his days delivering televised addresses in the course of the pandemic. The Me Too fervor appeared to have subsided, too. Early polls confirmed Cuomo effectively forward of the sector, and he started systematically bringing the Institution to heel.

Quickly, most of the main Democratic politicians, labor unions, and billionaire donors had been backing him, if not proudly than not less than firmly. They didn’t wish to be on the incorrect facet of the notoriously vindictive politician whose victory appeared inevitable. What he needed from the workplace itself was by no means completely clear — he hadn’t lived within the 5 boroughs in many years and infrequently spoke of them with nice disdain — however what was apparent sufficient was that profitable Metropolis Corridor was mainly about redemption. His political obituary must be rewritten. As a substitute of the governor who fell from grace, he’d be the mayor who discovered his manner again to the political mountaintop.

Now that Cuomo has misplaced to Mamdani, a state assemblyman, once more, it’s exhausting to see how he’ll ever maintain workplace once more. There are solely so many comeback probabilities out there to any politician. He’s nearly 70 and never extremely popular. As an impartial candidate straining to defeat Mamdani, he wracked up help largely from those that didn’t need a younger Muslim socialist to be mayor. Affirmative votes for Cuomo had been more durable to seek out.

When he was the front-runner heading into the Democratic main in June, Cuomo ducked the media and infrequently appeared onstage together with his many rivals. He hardly spoke to any voters on the road. As soon as defeated, he partially recalibrated. He visited extra senior facilities and, for the primary time, appeared at mosques, whilst he fanned the flames of Islamophobia by laughing at a talk-show host’s remark about Mamdani celebrating one other 9/11. He granted extra interviews with mainstream reporters in addition to podcasters and influencers. To win over Republicans, he traveled ceaselessly to Staten Island. He didn’t insult Donald Trump and even collaborated with him in a failed quest to Curtis Sliwa, the indefatigable Republican contender, to go away the race (Eric Adams did drop out). After denying that Trump had endorsed him on 60 Minutes, Cuomo admitted on Election Day that the president may very well be “very useful” to him.

Ultimately, Trump wasn’t. The MAGA motion, past Staten Island and sure slices of Brooklyn and Queens, is deeply resented within the metropolis, and voters largely didn’t need a retread Democrat cozying as much as a person flooding their metropolis with ICE brokers and, doubtlessly, Nationwide Guard troops.

To beat Mamdani, Cuomo needed to maintain onto the Democrats who backed him within the main and twine in Republicans and independents. He did, certainly, discover contemporary GOP help, chopping into Sliwa’s base, and he was in a position to make himself the viable various to Mamdani. What he couldn’t do was discover a plurality of the vote. He was too scandal-scarred to return to energy. However what may need damage him simply as a lot was his seeming resentment of the town he hoped to manipulate. There was no pleasure in his marketing campaign and no sense he actually needed to get to know a metropolis that had undergone sweeping transformation since he was a baby of the Nineteen Fifties rising up in Hollis, Queens.

Mamdani was alien to him as a result of Cuomo had sequestered himself within the suburbs or in Albany and brought little curiosity within the multicultural immigrant metropolis that had grown in his time away. He questioned, at one level, Mamdani’s twin citizenship and repeatedly referenced, as if had been a slur, that he had grown up in Uganda. However even when Mamdani got here from nice privilege, like Cuomo himself with a governor father, the mayor-elect’s story was relatable to the various hundreds of New Yorkers who had been born elsewhere and solely not too long ago turned residents.

In the end, they noticed themselves in Mamdani. And in Cuomo, who had the bearing of an historic ward boss lastly weary of his city prices, they didn’t see a lot in any respect.