Andrew Cuomo for mayor? Of New York City?
Yes, that sounds implausible, not least because the job is currently occupied. But Eric Adams is suddenly contending with an FBI investigation that has quickly escalated in seriousness. First, the home of the mayor’s chief campaign fundraiser was searched. Then, agents approached the mayor himself on a Manhattan street, seizing two cell phones and an iPad, which the FBI later returned. Adams and the campaign fundraiser have not been charged with anything, and the mayor has said repeatedly that he has done nothing wrong and is cooperating with any law enforcement inquiries.
None of this has stopped the speculation game from whirring into full speed: If Adams departs, who’s next in line to be mayor? Most of the names circulating have low profiles with the city’s voting public: Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, Comptroller Brad Lander, and State Senator Jessica Ramos. But lurking and watching is Cuomo, the former governor who resigned in August 2021 under the very dark cloud of a report from the state attorney general, Letitia James, that she said corroborated sexual harassment allegations against Cuomo by 11 women, with accusations ranging from his having groped one aide to his having initiated creepy conversations about dating habits with another. Cuomo denied those allegations at the time and has been aggressively trying to refute them ever since.
He has also been calculating a comeback. Last year he considered challenging his successor, Kathy Hochul, in the governor’s race. Now sources in Cuomo’s orbit say members of the city’s real estate and labor union classes are urging Cuomo to mount a run for City Hall if Adams is pushed out by legal troubles. Cuomo isn’t saying yes. But he isn’t saying no, either. The way everyone describes Cuomo’s reaction: He’s listening.
Publicly, he’s been throwing cold water on the idea. Sort of. “I don’t deal in hypotheticals,” Cuomo said Tuesday when asked about a possible run during a glitchy remote interview on Good Day New York. “Mayor Adams is going to be the mayor…. I think we should stand behind the mayor unless they give us a reason to say otherwise.” His spokesman, Rich Azzopardi, tells me, “The future is the future and he gets these questions often, which I think are fueled by the fact that many people are facing a crisis in confidence in government at many levels and now view the circumstances in which he left office as the political railroading it was.”
Just in case the future arrives sooner rather than later, Cuomo’s allies are already honing a rationale for a run: that the former governor’s obsession with control and details is even better suited for managing a sprawling city government than it was for navigating Albany. That his name recognition, experience, and $7 million in leftover campaign funds (as of July) would make Cuomo the instant front-runner. And they believe that the biggest selling point, at least to a segment of the city’s business establishment, would be that Cuomo, who is currently registered to vote in Westchester County, would save the city from being governed by a radical lefty—though no business leaders were willing to say any of that on the record. One major developer, Larry Silverstein, whose company owns multiple World Trade Center buildings, among other properties, says he has not spoken with Cuomo since the resignation and that he “definitely did not suggest to anyone that [Cuomo] might be a good mayor.”
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