Andrew Cuomo Is Ready for His Comeback: This isn’t the first time Cuomo has come back from the political dead. After serving as the Department of Housing and Urban Development secretary under Bill Clinton, Cuomo ran for governor of New York in 2002, faring so poorly that he dropped out before the primary. He retooled himself, ran successfully for state attorney general four years later and then elbowed rival Democrats aside to become governor when Eliot Spitzer resigned in disgrace.
After Cuomo’s own resignation as governor in 2021, in the face of multiple sexual harassment allegations and other complaints, his career looked like it was over. Cuomo dreamed of being president but he had nowhere to go. He’d been driven out by members of his own party. Despite his many legislative successes, he was despised by New York’s many progressives.
And yet, Lazarus-like, Cuomo is now the clear favorite to win the election this year as mayor of New York City. He has a huge lead in polls over a large field in the Democratic primary, leading state Rep. Zohran Mamdani, his top opponent, by more than 20 points. Cuomo is a “giant among the less tall,” says Doug Muzzio, a Baruch College political scientist.
The primary is next month, meaning Cuomo’s challengers are running out of time to make the case against him — or for themselves. “They don’t have the name recognition,” Muzzio says. “They don’t have the money that Cuomo does. Particularly, they don’t have the time to make up the distance."
Even Cuomo’s enemies recognize that he has always been a political shark, capable of navigating murky waters to get stuff done. A take-charge mayor is welcome in New York, given the many difficulties and scandals involving incumbent Mayor Eric Adams, who is now running as an independent. Cuomo is mostly running on a standard Democratic platform — more housing, better schools — with an edge of malice toward progressives whom he mocks for talking about “defunding” the police.
Cuomo’s status as the clear front-runner may have been sealed this week by news that the Justice Department is investigating him, looking into allegations that he lied to Congress about his handling of COVID-19. Given the fact that the Justice Department dropped corruption charges against Adams in exchange for his support for Trump administration policies, it appears that the administration is willing to go to extraordinary lengths to interfere with this particular election.
Cuomo has certainly framed the issue this way. He almost immediately began airing an ad that said, “If Donald Trump doesn’t want Andrew Cuomo to be mayor, you do.”
That’s probably right. The same polls that show Cuomo leading the race find that overwhelming majorities of New Yorkers want a mayor who will confront President Donald Trump. And if there’s one thing everyone can agree Cuomo is good at, it’s being confrontational.
“Among certain people who know him better than most, they say he’s a bastard, but at least he’s our bastard,” Muzzio says, “only they use a more colorful term.”
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The American system is set up to favor the main parties, however. Candidates who run as independents — including Adams — find that most people don’t want to “waste” their votes and run the risk that someone from the party they hate more might win.
Still, there appears to be market demand for alternatives. In several states right now, there are efforts to build new parties. Last month in Wisconsin, former GOP state Sen. Dale Schultz and former Democratic Dane County Sheriff Dave Mahoney announced that they have formed the United Wisconsin Party. “Instead of working together around Wisconsin values and traditions which have made the state such a great place to call home, too many elected officials have become mired in a morass of divisions that erode trust and make it nearly impossible to tackle the issues that matter most to the people of Wisconsin,” they write.
Recognizing the difficulty of winning elections as a minor party, they make it clear they want to be a fusion party — one that will support nominees of the major parties who share United Wisconsin values. They hope to demonstrate that Democrats or Republicans who come closer to their stances at the political center can bank additional votes.
One of the places that allows fusion voting, in fact, is in New York. Candidates might be nominated, for example, by both the Democratic Party and the Working Families Party; people can then vote for them using either line on the ballot with either choice counting toward the candidate’s total. But fusion voting is not legal in most places. United Wisconsin has joined a lawsuit aiming to revive it in that state. In New Jersey, an appellate court in February upheld that state’s ban on fusion voting. A challenge in Kansas is pending.
Even assuming fusion voting becomes legal in more places, it will take a while for the idea to gain traction. But giving voters more choices is crucial, argues Lee Drutman, a political scientist at New America. Many of today’s political problems stem from the fact that most voters feel they can only choose between the lesser of two evils. “If there are only two teams, anything that criticizes your team helps the opposing team,” he wrote in his Substack newsletter. “And you must always remember: the opposing team is bad. Very bad! Far worse than your team, whatever the faults of your team.”
Florida attorney John Morgan also recently used the metaphor of politics as a team sport. The personal injury lawyer — he’s probably looking down from a billboard near you, wherever you may live — was a longtime donor to the Florida Democratic Party. Since that party is almost moribund, Morgan has been teasing a run for governor next year. But he says there’s no chance as an independent, because people like to feel that they’re part of a team.
He wants to set up a new team for those who are disenchanted with the Democrats and Republicans. Marketing genius that he is, Morgan has announced that after Memorial Day he’ll hold a contest for the new party’s name, with a cash prize.
“Morgan ran a similar contest four years ago when he asked people to come up with a jingle for his law firm and got bombarded with submissions,” the Orlando Sentinel reports. “The winner worked at a bar in Altamonte Springs and got $100,000."
