Fresh chatter that former Gov. Andrew Cuomo will soon jump into the 2025 Democratic mayoral primary sparked a volley of rebukes from some of the race’s already declared candidates.
Left-leaning City Comptroller Brad Lander and socialist Assembly Member Zohran Mamdani (D-Queens) wasted no time on Nov. 26 in blasting Cuomo for reportedly continuing to circle around next year’s mayor’s race without officially jumping in. Their broadsides against Cuomo were sparked by a Tuesday Jewish Insider report citing three annonymous sources who indicated Cuomo will imminently launch his bid for mayor.
Lander, in a scathing statement, charged that Cuomo has not lived in the city for much of his adult life. Cuomo has often called himself a “Queens boy,” having grown up in South Jamaica and attended Archbishop Molloy High School in Briarwood. In later years, however, he lived in the Westchester County suburbs.
“Andrew Cuomo can’t even manage his own launch for mayor, let alone a city he left 30 years ago,” Lander said. “The last thing New Yorkers need right now is another agent of corruption and chaos.”
Cuomo’s long-time spokesperson, Rich Azzopardi, would neither confirm nor deny the outlet’s reporting in a statement, instead saying it is “all premature.”
At the same time, he pointed to a list of Cuomo’s purported successes as governor, including the construction of three Second Avenue Subway stations on Manhattan’s Upper East Side and a new terminal at LaGuardia Airport.
The renewed rumors about Cuomo’s political future come as more and more contenders have announced their bids for mayor in the wake of Mayor Eric Adams’ federal indictment on corruption charges in late September.
Lander also took aim at the former governor’s alleged cover up of nursing home deaths during the COVID-19 pandemic, his referral to the Justice Department by a Republican House panel for allegedly lying to them about his role in the incident and the sexual misconduct allegations that led to his resignation in 2021.
“Andrew Cuomo’s nursing home negligence, constant criminal probes, personal enrichment scandals, coverups, sexual assault allegations, federal perjury drama, interference with anti-corruption commissions, ignoring public health guidelines, misuse of government staff, and an inner circle convicted of public corruption, makes for quite a campaign platform,” he said.
Cuomo fiercely denies the allegations of sexual misconduct, of which there are nearly a dozen. He also denies wrongdoing around nursing home deaths during COVID.
Mamdani, in a Tuesday video interview, contended that Cuomo has delayed officially joining the race to put off actually having to answer for his record as the state’s top executive — a position he held for over a decade.
“Andrew Cuomo knows that the longer he is in this race the more difficulat it is for him,” Mamdani charged. “That’s why he has yet to announce his candidacey, because he doesn’t want to expose himself to four, five, six months of an actual inspection of his record. He wants to simply cost on the reputation that he used public dollars to burnish. A reputation he was more interested in than saving New Yorkers’ lives at the height of COVID.”
Other candidates including former city Comptroller Scott Stringer have also not been shy about going on the attack against Cuomo. His campaign released a memo last month enumerating Cuomo’s potential liabilities — notably not including the sexual misconduct allegations.
Stringer has been hit with his own sexual misconduct accusations, which derailed his 2021 bid for mayor.
While Cuomo has been floating the possibility of running for mayor for nearly a year, as he looks to make a political comeback, those close to him have always emphasized that he would not run in a contest that still includes Adams. But it is unclear if Cuomo has changed his thinking in the wake of Adams’ federal indictment.
