Cuomo’s Coalition of Caution
The former governor's campaign is mostly about what he's not.
Andrew Cuomo isn’t really running for mayor in 2025 — not the way Zohran Mamdani is, with a full-throated call for transformation, or Eric Adams, promising to stay the course in a city nursing itself back to health.
Instead, Cuomo is running against: against Mamdani’s democratic socialism and inexperience, against Adams’ corruption scandals and stumbles. He’s wagering that Adams has definitively squandered his credibility by being buffoonish, by getting indicted and by flirting with Donald Trump — and that voters will choose a known quantity, blemishes and all, over an untested candidate proposing sweeping change.
It hasn’t been a galvanizing campaign so far. But in a four-way, first-past-the-post contest with no runoff (five-way if independent Jim Walden gains traction), someone could win with just a third of the vote. Galvanizing people may be optional.
When Mamdani won the primary, seasoned poll-readers privately called the general election a foregone conclusion. The 33-year-old assemblyman would cruise to victory, they told me. Recent polling suggests otherwise. A Slingshot Strategies survey put Mamdani at 35%, Cuomo at 25%, Adams at 11%, and Curtis Sliwa at 14%.
Even taking into account how inaccurate the polling has been so far this mayoral election year, it’s startling to see a newly minted Democratic nominee polling below majority support in a city where Democrats comprise two-thirds of registered voters. In this climate, Cuomo’s strategy crystallizes. He doesn’t need to be beloved or even necessarily deeply respected — just tolerable to enough voters who find the alternatives unsettling.
In the primary, Cuomo had a coherent, if not convincing, message: New York City is in crisis. Danger is lurking around many corners. The bad old days of insolvency could be coming for us soon. That pessimism didn’t connect with the million Democrats who turned out to vote (note that 3 million registered Democrats chose to stay home); they seemed to think the city’s fundamentals aren’t broken in the way Cuomo says they are, and far preferred Mamdani’s positive vision of more expansive city services.
Cuomo is nothing if not a political tactician. He knows his primary message was too dark and pessimistic; he also thinks he pulled too many punches against Mamdani. So in post-primary interviews, he’s simultaneously pledged to be more aggressive and more positive, and to emphasize affordability over crime. Yes, there’s tension if not outright contradiction in trying to scorch the earth with a smile.
The revised pitch to voters foregrounds competence and execution. For voters exhausted by Adams turbulence or wary of Mamdani ideology, it may suffice. Anyone who’s used the new LaGuardia Airport or Moynihan Train Hall has experienced Cuomo’s accomplishments firsthand. L train riders avoided a total shutdown while getting their tunnel repaired — a minor miracle of governance. Even taking into account the many big mistakes he made as governor from shuttering the anti-corruption Moreland Commission to failing to coordinate COVID pandemic services with the city, Cuomo’s boast that he knows how to get things done isn’t all blather.
Still, he is saying too little about what he actually plans to do as mayor. We all know detailed plans don’t win elections; if they did, Brad Lander would be well on his way to City Hall by now. That said, Cuomo must understand that “trust me, I know how to do this” is insufficient. A gubernatorial policy record doesn’t translate into a mayoral one. Mayors have significantly less power than governors in most areas, but much more power in others.
On housing, which is where Cuomo has lately tried to sharpen his contrast with Mamdani, he’s offered generalities: repealing the Urstadt Law to give more rent-regulation authority to the city, and generally unlocking supply. When pressed by Remapping Debate to get into specifics, his campaign declined. For a candidate whose main claim is that he can uniquely get under the hood of government, and one who had a lackluster record on housing during his time as governor, that omission is telling.
On crime, Cuomo’s top-line promise is to hire 5,000 new officers. Beyond that, he’s said little of consequence about how to meaningfully improve Adams’ public safety strategies. He’s said he likes the job Jessica Tisch is doing as police commissioner but hasn’t promised to keep her. In his pre-primary interview with the Daily News editorial board, I asked him to explain how he’d revise the incumbent’s current approach in this central realm of public policy. “I would be hiring more police” was the main answer I got, along with boilerplate about not being corrupt and the need to pay close attention to police-community relations. What new strategies might he employ specifically?
On education, the lack of a more ambitious agenda is especially noticeable. As governor, despite having limited authority over public schools, Cuomo liked getting into the fray on public education and styled himself as a reformer. He tried to overhaul teacher evaluations (and lost). He championed charter schools. In the midst of the COVID pandemic in 2020, he argued for a technology-based overhaul of instruction. Now running to actually lead the schools, he’s offering nothing close to a big idea. His mayoral campaign plan on education is a collection of promises seemingly cobbled together in an attempt to win United Federation of Teachers support. (The UFT didn’t endorse in the primary and went on to back Mamdani in the general election.) The Department of Education is the largest city department by far; the mayor has virtually unchecked power over the schools and how kids learn. Mamdani has said he wants to weaken mayoral control. If Cuomo wants to keep it, he should do a better job explaining how he’d use it.
Mamdani has three big policy pledges he returns to over and over again. Cuomo has a dozen or so reasonable proposals, but nothing that animates his campaign. When he does have a big idea to offer like having the city take over the subway system or capping property tax hikes just for 1-3 family homeowners, it raises as many questions as it answers.
And so, what’s emerging around Cuomo isn’t an enthusiastic base of support but a loosely aligned coalition of caution. It includes business leaders uneasy with Mamdani, moderate Democrats burned by Adams, and Republicans who know Curtis Sliwa has no chance and don’t want to throw their vote away. As uninspiring as this may sound alongside the Mamdani movement, it is worth remembering that a vote cast with misgivings counts just as much as one cast with whole-hearted enthusiasm.
The final point to make here is that governing is different than winning, especially if the majority of people casting ballots didn’t want you to be in charge. If the electorate remains fragmented and Mamdani wins, it will likely be with a weak mandate from a minority of voters to do some very specific big things. If the electorate remains fragmented and Cuomo wins, it’ll likely be with a weak mandate from a minority of voters not to be the incumbent, or the other guy.