Brooklyn’s Cobble Hill played host on Sunday to one of the strangest sights so far in the 2025 NYC Mayor’s Race: A bipartisan slate of mayoral candidates standing together with mourning families to oppose campaign frontrunner and former Gov. Andrew Cuomo over his handling of COVID-19 in nursing homes.
Seven Democratic candidates for mayor — City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, City Comptroller Brad Lander, Queens Assembly Member Zohran Mamdani, Brooklyn state Sen. Zellnor Myrie, former New York State Representative Michael Blake, Queens state Sen. Jessica Ramos and former City Comptroller Scott Stringer — joined Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa in denouncing Cuomo for actions taken while he was governor five years ago during the deadly peak of COVID-19 that they say allowed the deadly virus to rampage through nursing homes across the Empire State.
The main issue is an order from Cuomo’s state Health Department in the deadly spring of 2020 which permitted COVID-positive patients to be readmitted into nursing homes. Cuomo and his campaign have maintained there is no evidence to suggest the move caused any more deaths and that the order was exploited by Cuomo’s rivals for political purposes.
Still, critics believe the maneuver contributed to the 15,000 nursing home deaths tied to the virus in New York in the first two years of the outbreak.
“Would any other issue bring us all together with the differences that we have? No,” Sliwa said. “If you are going to forgive this man who has the blood on his hands of 15,000, if not more, every time you shake Andrew Cuomo’s hand and you forgive him and you endorse him for mayor, wipe the blood of the dead off his hand.”
Sliwa made these remarks surrounded not only by his own adversaries but by the family members of those who lost their loved ones during the crisis. Outside of 128 Amity St., the Arbeeny family erected a monument to the seniors who perished during COVID-19 due to what many believe was the then governor’s nursing home order.
The memorial consisted of a hearse adorned with flowers, a cardboard wall filled with the faces of those who have lost their lives, and even a casket representing the death. This could be found standing outside the home of 89-year-old Norman Arbeeny who perished just two weeks after being released from Cobble Hill Health Center from COVID-19, something the Cuomo admin charges they had nothing to do with
Five years on, as Cuomo looks to make a political comeback, the family say they have not forgotten what they lost during the pandemic — and that they believe the former governor owes them an apology.
“I would like to say that Governor Cuomo team reached out to our lawyers over a month ago, trying to broker a meeting with our family and our advocacy at his law firm. We respectfully declined because we don’t think that we should be meeting in a law office. So, we invited him to our father’s house, as we did five years ago when he was a governor, as we did four years ago, three years ago, two years ago, and one year ago. He’s been invited to our father’s house for five years,” Peter Arbeeny, son of Norman Arbeeny said. “You need to face us and apologize. If you’re going to lead, you have to lead for all of us.”
Still battling with the weight of their monumental loss, family after family at Sunday’s gathering shared their horror stories as they gripped the photos of their loved ones and even small urns containing their ashes. Some even wept as they recalled the last moments of their parents and grandparents, including City Council Speaker Adams, who lost her father during the pandemic.
“This is not politics for me; this is personal for me,” Adams shared. “We decided to take Dad to North Shore Hospital, and that was the last time that I looked into his beautiful eyes because they would not allow my sister and I to go into the hospital. He was admitted at the door at the outside of the parking lot in a wheelchair on March 26, 2020 and I remember looking at him and taking his hand and saying, ‘Don’t worry about it, daddy, we’re going to be back and we’re going to see you soon.’ And he looked up at me as if to say, ‘Don’t leave me.’”
Lander also stressed the continued heartbreak for families as they hold memorials for those lost during the pandemic but added that Cuomo has yet to apologize to these families for his nursing home orders.
“This is not about partisan politics, but it is about accountability. And it is not too much to ask Andrew Cuomo to meet with families,” Lander said.
A spokesperson from Cuomo’s campaign, however, stated that the losses felt over the pandemic have been politically weaponized.
“More than 2 million Americans died as a result of the COVID pandemic, and our hearts break for the families of every person who lost a loved one –but unfortunately, as the DOJ IG confirmed, that pain has been weaponized and politicized for purely electoral purposes for years. Being Mayor of the greatest City in the world is a tremendous undertaking that requires experience, a proven record of accomplishment and management capacity – traits none of these extreme MAGA or fringe DSA mayoral candidates have,” Cuomo spokesperson Rich Azzopardi said in a statement.
The statement went on to underscore that there has been no empirical evidence to showcase that the nursing home admission caused additional deaths.
