Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced Saturday he will run for mayor of New York against Eric Adams in this summer’s Democratic primary election, a dramatic bid for a political comeback that stands to drastically reshape the race less than four months before city residents head to the polls.
Cuomo made the announcement in a video posted to social media.
Even before his long-awaited campaign announcement, polling has consistently projected Cuomo as the front-runner in June’s mayoral primary, with many surveys showing him beating the embattled Adams and his other challengers by double digits. Cuomo has netted especially solid polling support from Black outer-borough voters, a constituency that was key to Adams’ 2021 election.
But despite some good polling marks, the polarizing Cuomo remains deeply unpopular with some electorates in the city, especially left-leaning Democrats.
Should he emerge victorious, however, taking over as mayor would mark a dramatic turning point in Cuomo’s political story.
He resigned as governor in 2021 after being accused of sexually harassing 13 women, allegations the U.S. Department of Justice’s civil rights division corroborated in a bombshell settlement last year. Cuomo has denied ever committing misconduct, but said upon resigning that he wanted to “deeply apologize” for making “people feel uncomfortable.”
Cuomo has also for years faced withering criticism over his decision to understate the number of New Yorkers who died from COVID-19 in nursing homes in the state after he enacted a policy in early 2020 prohibiting such facilities from denying entry for residents diagnosed with the deadly virus.
At 67, Cuomo — whose resume includes serving as governor for 10 years and state attorney general for four years — would be the oldest person ever elected to a first New York City mayoral term. In the months leading up to Saturday’s announcement, he has laid the ground for a mayoral bid, visiting Black churches, meeting with powerful union leaders, recruiting campaign staffers and changing his voter registration to an apartment in Midtown.
Supporters hope the ex-governor can find success as a moderate with a tough-guy reputation, big name recognition and an ability to bring stability to city government amid Adams’ federal corruption indictment and Trump’s threats to the city. His success may hinge on winning over the same outer-borough working-class Black communities that carried Adams to the mayoralty.
The ex-governor is leading in most polls, capturing 33% of the vote in a February survey by Emerson College Polling/PIX11/The Hill, in which Adams trailed him with 10% support. In many polls, Adams has netted low support as he continues to face indictment, record low approval ratings, flagging fundraising and resignations in the upper ranks of his administration amid concerns about his ability to lead.
However, several polls have shown Cuomo also netting high unfavorability ratings, a wrinkle experts say could bode poorly for him should there be large turnout among certain electorates in June’s primary.
Even before jumping into the race, Cuomo collected an endorsement from Rep. Ritchie Torres, who is eyeing a run for governor next year, and several of his associates have launched super PACs that plan to spend millions of dollars on boosting his candidacy with ads and other outreach efforts.
Cuomo has also been a target of much preemptive criticism, given his pre-campaign launch front-runner status. That includes being tarred in an ad campaign by United for a Brighter Tomorrow, a group that has blasted him for his COVID record and past political blunders.
The mayoral field is crowded with Adams challengers who have also for months piled on with Cuomo criticisms, including City Comptroller Brad Lander, former Comptroller Scott Stringer, Queens Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani, former Bronx Assemblyman Michael Blake and state Sens. Zellnor Myrie of Brooklyn and Jessica Ramos of Queens.
Council Speaker Adrienne Adams is seriously considering a run, too, filing paperwork this week to open a fundraising account for a potential mayoral campaign.
Like the mayor and Cuomo, the speaker’s political base is centered around outer-borough, moderate Black voters, and her entry into the race could scramble the ex-governor’s path to victory. The speaker has been urged to run by State Attorney General Letitia James, Cuomo’s longtime nemesis who led the investigation into the sexual misconduct allegations against him that drove him to resign as governor.
Cuomo, who is known to be risk-averse, held out on publicly declaring a run until after petitioning was underway. As reported by the Daily News, he spent this past week privately preparing close friends and family for the tumult that’d inevitably arise from a mayoral run.
The window for collecting signatures to get candidates on the ballot began this past Tuesday and ends April 3, meaning Cuomo’s team will need to quickly get a petitioning operation up and running. The primary election is set for June 24.
Amid his preparations for a run, Cuomo has been conspicuously silent on Mayor Adams’ legal dilemmas. The two men are politically aligned and have been close over the years, including sitting down for multiple hours-long dinners in early 2022, shortly after Adams became mayor and just months after the governor resigned amid sexual harassment claims.
The mayor has seen an avalanche of criticism and calls to resign or be removed from office over his corruption indictment and the Trump Department of Justice’s move to drop the case with the understanding it should help him assist in President Trump’s effort to target undocumented immigrants in New York for deportations. With concerns that the effort to dismiss his case was an abuse of power that means the mayor is beholden to the Trump administration, several prosecutors as well as four senior officials in Adams’ administration resigned from their posts in recent weeks.
The mayor has said he is running for reelection, but he has not established much campaign infrastructure.
“The playoff starts, you know, once petitions are actually completed,” Adams said when asked this past Monday about a potential challenge from Cuomo. “You know, there’s a lot of time till June.”
