# Andrew Cuomo enters race for New York mayor as frontrunner – but trailing baggage

The ex-state governor, who quit amid sexual harassment allegations, sees an opportunity as Eric Adams struggles

Abraham Rios, a 76-year-old army veteran and retiree, regularly meets friends at a coffee shop around the corner from his home in Brooklyn, and that is about all he does, he says.

The Puerto Rican native who served in the Vietnam war is satisfied with the money he gets from social security and enjoys life, but he would like to see more police in his Clinton Hill neighborhood, where he has lived since 1964.

Rios thinks , who on 1 March entered the New York City mayoral race in an attempt to resurrect a seemingly dead political career, can make that happen.

“,” Rios said of Cuomo, who resigned as  governor in 2021 after facing sexual harassment allegations, which he denied. “He made his mistakes, like all of us have,” but “the governor built bridges. He helped the poor. He helped everybody.”

Cuomo’s long history in New York politics and name recognition has helped him storm to a lead in a candidate field featuring an incumbent –  – whom many see as corrupt, and a large number of lesser-known candidates who are struggling to get much traction.

The scandal that brought Cuomo down and his controversial handling of the Covid-19 pandemic probably won’t have a significant impact on his chances of winning, New York political analysts say, but some voters don’t like what they viewed as his heavy-handed approach as governor and don’t think he is progressive enough.

“The judging of the mayor is going to be determined not on incidents in their past but who we feel has got the best chance of leading the city when things that are not predictable happen,” like the pandemic and the September 11 terrorist attacks, said Mitchell Moss, New York University professor of urban policy and planning. “He is the only candidate” with experience “at the federal level, the state level and who understands how to make the tough decisions.”

The Democratic mayoral primary, which will probably determine who wins the general election in the blue city, is scheduled for 24 June. The city will again use a  in which voters pick their preferred candidates from one to five, though they do not need to select more than one. If someone captures more than half the votes, they win; if not, the candidate with the fewest first-round votes is eliminated, and their supporters’ votes go to their second choice. That process continues until one candidate has a majority of the votes.

Cuomo, who for months was rumored to be considering running, had a wide lead in  , with about a third of voters in two surveys saying he was their favorite candidate among nine Democrats, while the runner-up in each only received 10%.

Other candidates include Adams, who faced a federal indictment until the US justice department dropped the charges against him, it appears, in exchange for his help implementing Donald Trump’s immigration policy; the current and former city comptrollers, Brad Lander and Scott Stringer; the New York state assembly member Zohran Mamdani; and the state senator Jessica Ramos, among others.

In announcing his candidacy, Cuomo said the city was in crisis.

“You feel it when you walk down the street and try not to make eye contact with a mentally ill homeless person or when the anxiety rises up in your chest as you’re walking down into the subway,” Cuomo said in . “These conditions exist not as an act of God, but rather as an act of our political leaders, or, more precisely, the lack of intelligent action by many of our political leaders.”





Demonstrators, including Lindsey Boylan, second from right, a former aide who accused Andrew Cuomo of an unwanted kiss, stand outside a fundraiser on Tuesday. Photograph: Richard Drew/AP

As governor, Cuomo allegedly  those who disagreed with him. While that made it hard for him to  when he faced calls to resign, it also contributed to the perception that he is a strong leader, said Doug Muzzio, a retired political science professor who worked at Baruch College.

Meanwhile, “the incumbent is seen to be a weak person who is in the pocket of a president who the voters despise”, Muzzio said.

Cuomo can also point to his infrastructure accomplishments, Moss said, which include rebuilding a bridge that connects , an overhaul of  and construction of the .

Kim Grover, a graphic designer who lives in the East Village, said she was concerned about the allegations that Cuomo  11 women and that his  how many people died in nursing homes during the pandemic.

Still, Grover thinks Cuomo  to Trump during the pandemic – and in doing so, to many, . She now worries about maintaining New Yorkers’ civil rights and  policy, which keeps local law enforcement from cooperating with federal immigration officers, something Trump and .

“In terms of his excellent delivery and communication skills, my first thought would be that  would be a good person to stand his ground against President Trump,” said Grover, 67, who has not decided whom she will support.

Gabe Russell, a petitioner for a Democrat in the comptroller race – whom he declined to name – did not like Cuomo even before the Covid and sexual harassment scandals, and Cuomo is not on his list of five candidates. His top two choices are Mamdani and Lander.

Cuomo “was  with the real estate lobby … and that is always a bad sign”, said Russell, 33, who wants the government to use  to prevent gerrymandering. “New York is one of the bluest states. We should have been doing far more lefty stuff than we ever do.”

Russell also thinks Cuomo could lose support, citing the 2021 mayoral election, when  was the frontrunner and then fell to fourth place.

Elena Siyanko, a longtime leader of arts organizations who moved to New York in 1996, said the city was once a “generative place in terms of culture, where artists could afford to live” but had become a place “for hi-tech and financial services”.

An East Village resident, Siyanko blames Cuomo for the safety issues he now decries because of how he cut funding for social services. For example, to address a budget shortfall, he discontinued $65m in annual payments for a , while also  on the state’s wealthiest residents.

“He is in this neoliberal camp of removing any safety net and economic support from public life,” said Siyanko, 53, who immigrated from Kyiv, Ukraine, and is undecided in the mayoral race. “We just need to try to get to a corruption-free candidate in this chapter of our life in New York City.”
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