The caller was a well-known local TV news reporter. She asked where she should send her contribution for Andrew Cuomo’s mayoral campaign. I had to explain I wasn’t the Steve Cohen organizing Cuomo’s super PAC, nor was I the owner of the Mets. She hung up quickly, but the call reinforced my perception that the polls are correct: this is Cuomo’s race to lose.
Last week I spent an hour listening to Cuomo speak to a group of about 35 people crowded into a friend’s living room. His message was simple: the city’s challenges are significant, but we’ve seen them before. What we need to meet them is a capable, experienced manager.
Cuomo is nothing if not a proven manager. He cited refurbishing LaGuardia Airport, building the new Tappan Zee Bridge across the Hudson — at $4 billion the biggest infrastructure project in the United States — and the Second Avenue Subway. (Though he didn’t mention that the 1.8 miles of excavation, shoring, track, and stations cost approximately $2.5 billion per mile, 8 to 12 times more than similar subway projects in Italy, Istanbul, Sweden, Paris, Berlin and Spain.)
The second part of his message also resonated: that virtually every other candidate for mayor — with the exception of Eric Adams — is an out-of-touch, off-the-deep-end progressive. “Irrational” is a word he kept repeating, and it stuck. (He wouldn’t predict whether Adams would remain in the race, but said if he did, he and Adams would probably split the moderate vote. And with rank-choice voting, it is hard to predict how things would shake out).
Cuomo could see — as anyone in the room could — that both prongs of his message were resonating. But I was surprised by three things. Perhaps I shouldn’t have been, but first I was surprised by how charismatic he was: he is a political pro. His undisguised Queens tough-guy swagger, self-confidence, and use of self-deprecating humor won over the crowd.
The second surprise was that he never said a word about the elephant in the room: the extensive sexual harassment allegations against him. And yet it appeared that not one of the 25 women in the room gave a damn. Which raises the question: if the alleged transgressions were indeed so insignificant, what did Cuomo do to alienate so many of his Albany colleagues that they ran him out of town on the proverbial rail?
Cuomo’s third (non) surprise was his willingness to reinvent history. When I asked him what he now thought of the bail reform laws that he signed — and that have resulted in a revolving door of dangerous, recidivist offenders set free — he gave a lengthy, rambling answer.
He talked about how he was in favor of giving state judges the same discretion that federal judges have long enjoyed: the power to impose bail based on a defendant’s danger to the community, and not just on ensuring that the defendant will show up for trial. Cuomo’s word salad suggested that the Legislature “insisted” on the more restrictive approach, so he signed a bad bill.
Cuomo is aggressively trying to distance himself from the progressives, joked that “moderate” was a dirty word in his home, and that he still sees himself as an old-fashioned liberal. With the exception of Adams who, if he runs, will undoubtedly try to position himself as a moderate, criticism of Cuomo’s record will be from the left.
That would leave a void where voices from the center should be coming from. (Curtis Sliwa, the presumptive Republican nominee, is hard to take seriously). Which begs the question: why is the media ignoring Jim Walden’s independent candidacy?
Full disclosure: I recently contributed $250 to Walden’s campaign; as I have to both Republicans and Democrats in years past. I did so in part because I am co-counsel with Walden’s law firm on a number of cases. But more importantly, I want to hear a perspective that is being ignored by what remains of the local news media. Crain’s New York Business has refused to include Walden in their mayoral forum and Brian Lehrer is inviting only Democrats onto his radio program.
An independent without a billion dollars to buy name recognition has a tough battle ahead. But I’m hoping the media does not buy into the canard that whoever is on the Democratic line will win the general election. New Yorkers need better candidates and to hear from them.
Cohen is an attorney at Pollock Cohen. He was on Ronald Reagan’s 1980 campaign staff and co-chaired a literacy task force for Hillary Clinton.
