Andrew Cuomo’s Left Hook

When Andrew Cuomo stepped down as governor of New York back in the summer of 2021, it capped one of the most remarkable political implosions in recent memory. Just one year earlier, Cuomo had been hyped as the future of the Democratic Party after his rise to national prominence during the initial months of the COVID-19 crisis. With a vacuum of leadership in Washington — where the president was downplaying the virus and offering unsolicited and potentially dangerous medical advice — the mere appearance of competence by Cuomo during his daily pandemic briefings was enough to catapult him to political stardom. Two months into the pandemic, he was being described as the “most popular politician in the country” and floated by some Democrats as a potential replacement for Joe Biden as the party’s presidential candidate. He was, as one publication put it, “America’s Governor.”

Less than two years later, that was all a distant memory. When Cuomo inked a $5 million book deal at the height of his popularity in August of 2020 — an unprecedented sum for a governor — the walls of scandal were already beginning to close in. Cuomo’s attempt to cover up data on COVID-19 deaths in nursing homes after his administration ordered them to accept COVID-19 patients from New York’s hospitals had undermined his reputation as a competent and trustworthy leader. Then came a litany of credible sexual harassment allegations from more than a dozen women. His resignation in August of 2021 seemed to mark the end to his public career after more than a decade at the center of New York politics.

But Cuomo never saw it that way. Within months, the political animal who had first entered politics as his father’s campaign manager and political enforcer began expressing regret about his decision and blaming “cancel culture” for forcing him out of office and “overturn[ing] an election.” He then soon started diligently plotting his political comeback, not unlike his fellow Queens native Donald Trump, whose own reelection last year proved that disgrace can be more of a detour than a dead end.

Trump’s surprising strength in New York in November surely didn’t go unnoticed by the state’s former governor, who after years of waiting for the right moment to launch his own political comeback announced his candidacy for New York City mayor in March. It was thanks to “blue states” that Trump became just the second Republican to win the popular vote in over three decades — and he did especially well in New York state. In the five boroughs, Trump gained more votes than he did in either California or New Jersey, many of them coming from working-class minority neighborhoods in the Bronx and Queens. The Republican candidate surpassed 30% of the vote in his home city — up from 17% in 2016; the Democrats, meanwhile, had their worst performance there since 1988.

By launching a high-profile bid for mayor, Cuomo has jumped head first into a debate that has swirled inside the Democratic Party since the election. Indeed, the former governor has deliberately linked his campaign to the party’s broader electoral struggles, presenting his brand of “moderate” and “pragmatic” politics as the solution to the party’s recent troubles in New York and across the country. The crux of the problem, Cuomo has said, is that the Democratic Party stopped living “in the real world” and let ideology and “rhetoric” guide it rather than pragmatic principles. As always, Cuomo’s critique is directed exclusively at the party’s left, which he frequently clashed with throughout his time as governor. For Cuomo, the Democratic Party’s problems begin and end with an alleged hijacking by its “extreme wing.”

To blame the “left” for the Democratic Party’s electoral struggles is like blaming the smoke alarm you ignored for letting your house burn down. Kamala Harris did not run as a progressive or even a liberal Democrat, but as a centrist who sought the approval of both Silicon Valley and Wall Street. While initially supporting modestly “populist” proposals like cracking down on “price gouging,” by Election Day Harris had moved substantially to the right, eschewing populism in favor of what the New York Times described as a “Wall Street-approved economic pitch.” The Harris campaign was much closer in style and substance to Cuomo than Sen. Bernie Sanders or Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. (Both of whom the former governor recently assailed as extremists.)

New York Democrats on the left, meanwhile, have begun the hard work of seeking to understand the causes of working-class disillusion. Shortly after the election, New York State assembly member Zohran Mamdani, who had recently announced his own candidacy for mayor, visited two neighborhoods in the Bronx and Queens that had shifted dramatically toward the GOP. In a video that went viral, the representative from Queens spoke to Trump-voting residents who uniformly pointed to the economy and rising costs for everything from rent to food to public transportation as the main factor in their decision. “The swing,” replied one person, “is because people want lower prices. They probably believe that Trump will give them that.”

Since the election, Trump has done nothing to lower prices or make life more affordable in America. Instead, he has pushed tariff policies that will almost certainly raise prices in the months ahead. This has led a growing majority of Americans to say Trump has made the economy worse, providing a clear opening for Democrats on the affordability question and the economy. Yet Democrats have predictably struggled to turn the president’s blunders to their advantage.

One notable exception has been Mamdani, whose insurgent campaign has emerged as a potential model for Democrats seeking to reclaim economic populism from the right. The 33-year-old assembly member has maintained a focused and disciplined message that is centered on reducing the cost of living and improving conditions for working-class New Yorkers. He has put forward a platform built around a few core populist proposals, such as universal child care, free bus service and city-owned grocery stores — all paid for by increased taxes on corporations and millionaires. This approach seems to be winning him supporters. Once a relatively obscure figure, Mamdani is now polling second in the crowded mayoral primary and in March became the first candidate to hit the fundraising cap for the city’s fund-matching program after raising funds from 18,000 small donors. The candidate’s prospects have been further boosted by thousands of volunteers who have already knocked on 300,000 doors almost two months out from the election.

Mamdani’s approach toward re-engaging working-class voters mirrors the populist strategy championed by Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez, who stirred grassroots enthusiasm on their recent “Fighting Oligarchy” tour. The left’s strategy is clear: expose the GOP’s ties to the billionaire class and counter its “pro-worker” posturing with genuine economic populism.

True to form, Cuomo has advanced a very different vision for winning back disaffected Democrats. Working from the assumption that voters have simply become more conservative, he believes Democrats should try to outflank Republicans on the right. Instead of pushing back on right-wing talking points, why not simply parrot those talking points? And instead of taking a hard look at the Democratic Party’s own special interest and big donor problem, why not simply blame the “lunatic left”?

Cuomo has always been more comfortable attacking the left than in standing up to special interests or wealthy donors. He has also displayed a great willingness to work with the right if it helps undermine his progressive opponents. As governor, for example, he notoriously encouraged conservative Democrats in the state senate to caucus with Republicans in order to obstruct progressive policies. That enabled him to consistently prioritize the interests of the state’s wealthiest residents over working-class New Yorkers. Indeed, for years the governor blocked all efforts to close gaps in the budget by raising taxes on millionaires and corporations, insisting that any tax increases on the rich would lead to a mass exodus of one-percenters from the state (newsflash: it hasn’t). Instead of raising taxes on the wealthy, Cuomo slashed funding for rental assistance programs (leading to a surge homelessness), underfunded public transportation and pushed for cuts in health care, education and other programs that benefited the state’s lower-income residents (including Medicaid).

Cuomo likes to boast about his role in reducing the state’s corporate tax to its lowest level in 50 years, and has promised to increase the threshold of the city’s “Mansion Tax” from $1 million to $2.5 million. As always, the state’s most affluent residents remain his top priority.

This is ultimately what Cuomo means when he talks about standing up to left-wing “extremists.” In a recent interview, he blasted progressives for their “anti-corporate” and “anti-capitalist” politics, singling out Ocasio-Cortez for her role in blocking Amazon from establishing its second headquarters in Long Island City back in 2019 (which he once described as the “greatest tragedy” of his political career.) These comments illuminate the party’s real divide, not between left and center, or even progressives versus moderates, but between populist Democrats and corporate Democrats.

It is no surprise, then, that big donors have flocked to Cuomo’s mayoral campaign. As of last month, a pro-Cuomo Super PAC had already raised more than $6 million from prominent billionaires like the Trump-supporting hedge fund manager Bill Ackman, along with a who’s who of real estate developers and Wall Street investors (many of them Republicans).

In the end, big money and name recognition — along with a left that can never seem to coalesce around one strong candidate — may be enough to lift Cuomo’s once-dead political career from the grave. He will also benefit from his undeserved reputation as a uniquely competent and tough politician who can stand up to Donald Trump. In his endorsement of Cuomo in March, Rep. Gregory Meeks described the former governor as “the best person to stand up to that guy at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.” As we have seen, Cuomo was neither very competent nor very interested in standing up to the right when he was governor. As mayor, he would once again prioritize the interests of big donors and direct most of his ire at the progressives in his own party.

Mamdani’s rising campaign shows that there is an alternative — that Democrats can stand up to Republicans while also forging their own populist path forward.