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He lost the primary by a stunning 12-point blowout, but as strange as it sounds, the ball is again back in Andrew Cuomo’s court.
Is he going to run a serious campaign in the general election, or is he ending his political career with a humiliating defeat?
That’s the key question for him, but it’s also vital for the November election.
Cuomo’s answer is crucial because the Democrats’ full-blown socialist nominee, Zohran Mamdani, is a heavy favorite to win.
If he does and is able to implement even half of his radical agenda, New York will never be the same.
It’s teetering under the flawed leadership of Mayor Adams, but Mamdani is a human wrecking ball whose City Hall would make these troubled days look like a Golden Age.
His policies would destroy Gotham’s economy and shred the fragile social fabric.
Nepo baby disaster
His plan to freeze rents on 1 million privately owned apartments would turn the housing crisis into an unfixable disaster.
What private developer is going to build apartments if it means losing money on the whims of a nepo-baby mayor who never held a job in the private sector?
And if government becomes the major builder, look to the perpetually troubled Housing Authority projects for a vision of the hellscape future.
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Mamdani’s racist plan to tax white-owned property higher than others and his support for antisemitic policies are beyond the pale.
On top of his backing for the BDS movement, his refusal to condemn the odious phrase “globalize the intifada” offers tacit support for violence against Jews in Israel and around the world.
He’s also a 33-year-old elitist who joined the “defund the police” mob and has talked about dismantling the jail system.
Next to him, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is a throw-away-the-key champion of law and order.
New York has never had a mayor so far out of the mainstream.
The closest was Bill de Blasio, and Mayor Putz was the worst leader the city had in 50 years.
Which brings us back to Cuomo.
The November ballot essentially comes down to a four-person race.
In addition to Mamdani on the Dem line, Cuomo and Eric Adams hold independent lines, and Curtis Sliwa is the GOP nominee.
Cuomo I believe, is the only one with a realistic chance of defeating Mamdani.
Yes, yes, I know that’s a hard sell in the immediate aftermath of the thumping the former governor suffered last week.
Mamdani beat him by 7 points on the straight vote counting, and the final margin grew to 12 points when the ranked-choice votes were tabulated.
Full of regrets
The difference reflected the cross-endorsement arrangements Mamdani made with like-minded lefties that enabled him to pick up much of their support when they were eliminated.
But the key was the record turnout of 100,000 new voters from ages 18 to 30, who went overwhelmingly for the Queens lawmaker.
Polls didn’t pick up the surge until the very end, with Cuomo consistently a dominant front-runner since March.
One result was that Cuomo was too cautious, acting like an incumbent playing not to lose instead of playing to win.
His Rose Garden strategy of skipping candidate forums and granting few interviews reflected what the polls were saying: that his lead was safe.
It wasn’t and I’m told he’s now full of regrets and admits he ran a terrible race.
He acknowledged as much in a brief statement to me late Tuesday, in which he said the “buck stops with me” and that “I should have focused on a simpler affordability message even in these complex times.”
After saying that “Effective social media is paramount,” he added, “We’re going through the data, but there’s no question a fall campaign needs to be a different effort informed by the lessons of this one.”
His points reflect the fact that his ads, including those of his well-funded PAC, were good enough in a vacuum, but never countered his opponent’s appeal to new voters.
In addition, Cuomo was saddled with his own disgraceful exit from Albany four years ago over sexual harassment allegations.
He also carries the baggage of his fatal Health Department order requiring nursing homes to take COVID patients, and he never owned and apologized for either, apparently assuming they were too far in the past to matter.
He’s wrong, and to run in the fall, he must express honest regret to voters.
Poll optimism
Still, there is already one poll looking ahead that is giving his team some optimism.
It was conducted in the first two days after the primary, but got little attention.
It deserves more.
The Cuomo-aligned Honan Strategy Group found that, going into the general, Cuomo and Mamdani are essentially tied at 39%, with Adams at 13% and Sliwa at 7%.
The survey considered two major scenarios: First, if Cuomo didn’t actively campaign, Mamdani would have a lead of 15 points over Adams.
Second, if Adams effectively decided to drop out, Cuomo would lead Mamdani by four points.
In part that’s because Cuomo did well among black voters, and would do even better absent Adams.
One important finding was this sentence from the pollsters: “We examined voter sentiment towards the leading candidates among General Election voters, and found that only Andrew Cuomo has a positive favorability rating of 56% to 43% unfavorable.”
They found “Mamdani is more negative than positive, at 48% unfavorable to 40% favorable.”
Remember, these results were obtained in the aftermath of Mamdani’s victory.
Another key takeaway is that 66% of likely fall voters have an unfavorable opinion of Adams, with only 23% favorable.
Two-thirds disapprove of his job performance, and “75% agree with the statement that Eric Adams is corrupt and should not run for reelection.”
Those findings suggest Adams has almost no chance of winning.
The numbers haven’t escaped the Cuomo camp, which also believes Sliwa cannot win.
Party infighting
Part of their confidence in a potential comeback is that Cuomo, although elected four times as a Democrat — once for attorney general and three times as governor — has long had a tense relationship with the party’s progressive wing that dominates primaries.
Clearly, that wing has grown dramatically in the city, but his team believes the mix of general election voters would be more moderate and more receptive to his ideas.
They also believe the fear over a Mamdani mayoralty, even among top Dem officials, works in his favor.
One part of his agenda that could be important is Cuomo’s plan to hire 5,000 more police officers and keep the popular and successful Jessica Tisch as commissioner of the NYPD.
The contrast with Mamdani’s anti-police rhetoric and “defund” record deserves more attention than it got during the primary.
My prediction is that Cuomo, after licking his wounds and sounding out key donors and supporters, will throw himself into the November race.
At this point, foolish pride is the only thing he has left to lose.