Inside Andrew Cuomo’s Flat, Flailing Comeback Bid

NEW YORK — Andrew Cuomo was a cable TV candidate in a TikTok world.

He launched a doomed bid for New York City mayor with a 17-minute announcement video — giving little heed to decaying attention spans and signaling a retro approach befitting a politician who entered politics a half-century ago.

Cuomo was considered the frontrunner throughout his 17-week campaign: He quickly raised a ton of cash, as did a super PAC backing him. He flooded the airwaves with ads, relied on establishment endorsements and leaned into his distinguished political name to turn out voters.

But at a time when Democrats are demanding change, Cuomo's effort relied on a dated strategy as he attempted to rehabilitate himself — without expressing any contrition — from the sexual harassment and Covid scandals that led to his downfall.

He ran on a management message better suited for a general election against embattled Mayor Eric Adams than a more ideological Democratic primary opponent. And that primary electorate passed him over for a dynamic 33-year-old socialist, Zohran Mamdani, who focused on affordability and made compelling social media videos.

The former governor’s staid plan completely failed against the inexperienced state lawmaker, who was unknown to most New York voters at the start of the year.

Cuomo evinced little optimism, scowling as he portrayed New York City as a scary, dangerous hellscape, while a smiling Mamdani orated hopefully about a better future. Cuomo scolded him for having a thin resume — an accurate critique — but didn’t offer much vision of his own.

He also lacked a feel for the five boroughs he short-shrifted as governor: He largely avoided the city’s creaky mass transit system most New Yorkers use regularly, instead zooming around in a sleek black Dodge Charger. It was an unusual transportation choice in a Democratic race where the health of the subways and buses are a quadrennial issue. He mixed up the order of a local breakfast staple, dubbing it a “bacon, cheese and egg.” And he relied on an inner circle based almost anywhere else — Westchester County and Albany, for instance — and only registered to vote in the city in 2024 after decades living elsewhere in New York.

In sum, Cuomo ran like an aging rocker on a final tour playing his greatest hits — touting infrastructure projects on his watch like a renovated LaGuardia Airport — while Mamdani was promising to make the wealthy city a cheaper place to live. Rather than address voters’ financial concerns in a deeply expensive city, the former governor ran as a virtual incumbent in a political atmosphere hostile to almost anyone in power.

“This definitely felt like a 2025 fully optimized campaign versus a 1988 campaign,” Democratic strategist Trip Yang said. “Cuomo looked like he was campaigning in black and white. Andrew Cuomo was never that formidable because this wasn’t Andrew Cuomo in his prime.”

Cuomo spokesperson Rich Azzopardi defended the campaign’s approach and breadth of support the ex-governor received.

"We are incredibly proud of the campaign we ran and the broad coalition that we built, including nearly every labor union, our elected endorsers, and everyday working class New Yorkers who supported our vision to get the city back on track,” he said.

Cuomo’s campaign was fueled by a cadre of long-time advisers, including his top strategist — Melissa DeRosa — who was not paid, obscuring her role on public campaign finance records. Few had ever worked on a citywide campaign. His campaign in May denied to POLITICO that DeRosa was working for the ex-governor despite her prominent role during internal meetings, according to two people with direct knowledge of the campaign’s inner workings.

His team struggled with the city’s geography, scheduling back-to-back events in locations with only a few miles difference, but hours apart in driving due to New York’s notorious congestion, according to two people.

He skipped public forums and rarely spoke with reporters. When he did embrace new media, it was on podcasts with a national reach. He was kept away from many voters and, as the race began to tighten in the final weeks, cloistered from some of his own campaign advisers. When advice was given, Cuomo would often ignore it, one person said.

In the aftermath of his shattering loss, Cuomo’s team began assessing and ascribing blame. Five people close to the campaign — granted anonymity to freely discuss what they believe went wrong — pointed to an anemic get-out-the-vote effort, even after data indicated Mamdani was surging with hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers who voted early.

Cuomo’s field operation relied heavily on labor unions working alongside an allied super PAC.

One of the five people described being outside a housing complex in an area Cuomo was expecting to perform well in, only to discover few people and no plan. Nearby, Mamdani’s crew had pitched a tent staffed with about 10 volunteers.

“They needed bodies and they needed a real operation,” the person said. “If you’re leaning solely on name recognition, then the campaign is a turnout campaign of people who know who you are and are willing to vote for you. You can’t just assume they’re coming out, especially in 100 degrees.”

“Yes, Zohran won, but Cuomo also lost,” the person added. “He played a really bad game.”

Cuomo’s paid canvassers, phone-banking and texting operation was competing against Mamdani’s motivated army of volunteers who were fanning out across the city to knock on doors and encourage young people to vote for the first time. By the time the ex-governor’s team began to discuss a get-out-the-vote operation, it was a month too late, according to a different person of the five with direct knowledge of the campaign.

“Our turnout model targeted key districts and constituencies and we met those turnout goals — and got more votes than Eric Adams did four years ago,” Azzopardi said. “However, Mamdani ran a campaign that managed to expand the electorate in such a way that no turnout model or poll was able to capture, while the rest of the field collapsed. As the governor said, the city is in crisis and these are serious times — we’ll be looking at the final numbers and weighing our options on next steps."

The former governor conceded Tuesday night to Mamdani after the first round of the city’s ranked-choice voting system showed him seven points behind the Queens assemblymember. Cuomo is yet to state whether he will continue on to the general election with an independent ballot line.

Donors and supporters, though, are ready to cut him loose. Bill Ackman, the wealthy hedge fund executive and Donald Trump supporter who donated to a Cuomo super PAC, wrote on X he wants another candidate to take on Mamdani and derided the ex-governor’s bid.

“He relied on a strategy that kept him away from the voters and the public that he needed to turnout,” said state Working Families Party Co-Director Jasmine Gripper. “He over relied on money and TV and mail. What he didn’t do with all that money was actually convey a vision for New York City. He didn’t convey what he would do as mayor and failed to capture the hearts and minds of voters.”

The former governor launched his bid after months of laying the groundwork with New York power brokers in labor, business and government. His team insisted victory in the June primary would be inevitable against weak and largely unknown rivals. Reluctant endorsements poured in as public polls — some paid for by his supporters — showed him dominating the race.

Cuomo appeared to campaign for a job he didn’t really want.

“His heart wasn’t fully in it,” one of the five people familiar with the campaign said.

Cuomo cast New York City — which he moved to a year before announcing his bid — as adrift, pointing to voters' persistent concerns over crime and rudderlessness under Mayor Eric Adams. Cuomo could not overcome the highly negative view many voters held of him, a hangover from the controversies that drove him from office four years ago. His attempted comeback was staged less than four years after a bombshell state attorney general report determined he sexually harassed 11 women.

His campaign assumed voters still held him in high regard for his handling of Covid, when the then-governor became a national political star for his televised briefings, despite the related controversies. He is reportedly under federal investigation after House Republicans said he lied during testimony to a Covid subcommittee.

In all cases, Cuomo has denied any wrongdoing even though his legal issues — two sexual harassment lawsuits filed by two women against him and the reported Covid probe — would follow him to City Hall.

Cuomo’s doom-and-gloom portrayal of the city he wanted to lead tried to tap into what he assumed to be deep anxiety over the direction of the city and New Yorkers’ concerns with crime. Over the private objections of some people on his campaign, the former governor spent considerable time on the trail hammering Mamdani’s anti-Israel positions, which include support for the boycott, divest and sanction movement.

It was a miscalculation.

Mamdani’s bid hinged on the widespread affordability concerns — especially for young voters — in a city where monthly rent is increasingly out of reach.

Cuomo pitched himself as a capable and experienced manager in stark contrast to Mamdani. He leveraged Mamdani’s anti-Israel rhetoric and support for the BDS movement. And Cuomo insisted he was the only Democrat in the race with the perspicacity to take on President Donald Trump in his hometown of deep blue New York City.

As Mamdani closed the gap with Cuomo, some of the former governor’s advisers encouraged him to talk less about Israel — an issue that has divided the Democratic Party.

The message that Mamdani is an anti-Israel neophyte was hammered repeatedly by a Cuomo-allied super PAC that raised a record $25 million in New York City elections, with the help of $8.3 million from former Mayor Mike Bloomberg, an old adversary. The group also received donations from Trump allies like Ackman and the online delivery service DoorDash.

Cuomo’s post-Albany wilderness years included speaking at churches and synagogues. He launched a short-lived podcast and remained in touch with politically influential figures in New York’s circumscribed political world.

But he never seemed to stop pining for a comeback.

Cuomo’s campaign for mayor, if successful, was an opportunity to rewrite a legacy that began with helping his father Mario Cuomo’s failed mayoral campaign in a storied 1977 election. If Cuomo forgoes the general election, a six-decade career in politics would end where it started.

“He didn’t really run a campaign. He hasn’t been a non-incumbent for decades,” said Monica Klein, who worked on the rival campaign of Zellnor Myrie, who finished in low single digits. “He’s not used to being scrappy. In office, he used all that pomp and circumstance to give him an air of authority and importance. I just don’t think he works without it.”