Cuomo doesn't blame himself for losing NYC mayoral primary. Others do.

Boston Globe

16 hours ago

He made no further public appearances that day last month, even with primary day weeks away.
Cuomo, who dominated New York for a decade as governor, entered the crowded field of Democrats back in March with the force of a steamroller and a commanding lead in the polls. He wore down the Democratic establishment until it lined up behind him, strong-armed unions, and seeded a record-shattering super political action committee that would eventually spend $25 million.
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But even some of his allies said that up close, the campaign sometimes looked more like a listing ship, steered by an aging candidate who never really seemed to want to be there and showed little interest in reacquainting himself with the city he hoped to lead.
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New Yorkers took note. And on Tuesday, a campaign that Cuomo, 67, had hoped would deliver retribution four years after his humiliating resignation as governor ended in another thumping rebuke instead. Voters preferred Zohran Mamdani, a 33-year-old state lawmaker whom Cuomo dismissed as woefully unqualified, by a comfortable margin.
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Mamdani, a democratic socialist whose relentless focus on affordability and infectious campaign presence electrified younger voters especially, certainly deserves a great deal of credit for his victory. But a dozen allies and even some of Cuomo's own campaign advisers agreed in interviews that if he was looking to assess blame for a loss that could end his political career, he needed to look at himself.
'It was a creaky 1970s political machine versus a generational talent,' said Howard Glaser, a former Cuomo lieutenant who has since fallen out with Cuomo. 'He just couldn't see it.'
'He tried to force redemption on an unreceptive public,' Glaser added.
The assessment now hangs over Cuomo as he deliberates whether to renew his campaign in the fall against Mamdani on a third-party ballot line. Some wealthy New Yorker,s alarmed by Mamdani's left-wing views, are urging Cuomo to keep running.
But many of his allies said there would be no real point in carrying on if Cuomo treated the general election like the primary. People who worked on his campaign, who insisted on anonymity for fear of retribution, used words like 'entitled,' 'arrogant,' and 'aloof' to describe the former governor's attitude. Another called the campaign 'astonishingly incompetent.'
Cuomo and his spokesperson disputed that his campaign choices — good, bad, or otherwise — would have changed the outcome.
Spokesperson Rich Azzopardi said that the campaign met its turnout goals in key districts and voting groups, particularly among Black and older voters who had a yearslong connection with the former governor. The problem, he said, was that Mamdani 'ran a campaign that managed to expand the electorate in such a way that no turnout model or poll was able to capture, while the rest of the field collapsed.'
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In an interview, Cuomo dismissed the complaints of allies or advisers who said he should have shown up more around the city.
'None of these things explain the election outcome,' he said. 'They are either untrue or petty incidents that are of no consequence.'
The contrast on the campaign trail between Cuomo and all the other candidates was stark.
Under the rationale of protecting his polling lead, Cuomo skipped candidate forums and dodged the press as his rivals threw themselves into the city's maw with dizzying schedules. The former governor, who was born in Queens but lived most of his adult life in Albany and Westchester County, traveled in his Charger with an advance team putting out a buffer to prevent unwanted encounters with New Yorkers.
Cuomo hired a platoon of consultants, but still leaned heavily on his longtime confidante, Melissa DeRosa, who had never run a city race. Mamdani built an enthusiastic volunteer army to spread his message; Cuomo largely outsourced his get-out-the-vote operation to labor unions and $25-an-hour canvassers. And in the end, Cuomo's message to an electorate hungry for change boiled down to: trust me, I've done this before.
Some allies said it all contributed to an unhelpful image.
'All of us have a blind spot,' said former Governor David Paterson, who endorsed Cuomo. 'His blind spot is that he doesn't really connect particularly well with, just, people.'
For a time, it seemed Cuomo's return to power was a certainty. He began plotting a path back almost as soon as he resigned in August 2021 after sexual harassment allegations. He spent tens of millions of dollars in taxpayer funds fighting to clear his name in court, as he hungrily waited for an opening for public office.
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It arrived when Mayor Eric Adams was indicted on federal corruption charges and then persuaded the Trump administration to drop them. Cuomo, a master backroom dealmaker, exploited the opening deftly, nudging the mayor out of the primary while convincing business leaders, labor bosses, and other Democrats that they should back him — if not out of excitement than out of a sense of inevitability.
'I feel like people misunderstood my $250,000 for Cuomo for real enthusiasm,' said Mark Gorton, an investor who gave $250,000 to a pro-Cuomo super PAC. 'It was basically, 'Oh, looks like Cuomo is coming back. We don't want to be shut out. Let's try and get on his good side.''
At the time, polls showed Mamdani in second place, trailing by 20 points or more. Cuomo's allies openly pined for a two-man showdown. They figured Mamdani's socialist views and harsh criticism of Israel would act as a ceiling on his support.
It turned out to be a fundamental miscalculation. In a race where a large majority of voters said the city was headed in the wrong direction and where many Democrats were looking for a change, Cuomo struggled.