What New York Voters Said: “Not Andrew Cuomo.” What Andrew Cuomo Heard: “Stay on the Ballot.”
Despite suffering a stunning second-place finish to Zohran Mamdani this week in the Democratic primary, Andrew Cuomo has not dropped out of the race to become New York City’s next mayor. As of Friday morning, he had not taken his name off the ballot for November, and according to multiple outlets, he does not plan to. But he is apparently yet to decide whether or not to launch an actual, full-scale campaign—and allies close to the former governor say he’ll need to light a fire under his own ass if he has any hope of making a comeback.
Speaking to CBS News on the prospect of running in the general as an independent—an option he preserved after jumping into the primary last spring—Cuomo said “We’re going to be looking at the numbers that come in from the primary, and then we have to look at the landscape in the general election, which is a totally different landscape. There are issues that came up—the issue of affordability, which the assemblyman spoke to with offering a lot of free services—and is that feasible? Is that realistic? Can that be done? So, basically, looking at the landscape in the general election, as it develops, and we’ll take it one step at a time.” While the unofficial primary results released after the polls closed on Tuesday gave Mamdani 43.5% of the vote to Cuomo’s 36.4%, the official numbers will not be announced until next week, after all votes, including mail-ins, are counted.
A new poll released this week showed Mamdani winning the general election versus current, disgraced mayor Eric Adams who, yes, is still running—and said Thursday that the choice between him and Mamdani is “a choice between a candidate with a blue collar” and one with a “silver spoon,” and “A choice between dirty fingernails and manicured nails.” But the same poll showed Mamdani and Cuomo in a tie should the ex-governor choose to go for it (in that scenario, Adams is projected to get just 13% of the vote, with Republican Curtis Sliwa capturing 7% and Jim Walden netting 0%).
Cuomo allies and donors, who poured millions into his primary bid, do not appear overly enthused about him giving it another go in the general election. Cuomo donor Jeff Gural, chairman emeritus of real estate firm Newmark Group, told Bloomberg: “We have two choices, which is to support Mamdani and try to get on his good side, or try to see if we can resurrect Eric.” According to The New York Times, many Cuomo allies believe “there would be no real point in carrying on if Mr. Cuomo treated the general election like the primary,” which one person described as “astonishingly incompetent.”
In an interview with the Times, Cuomo said making more appearances around the city, as many have said he should have, would not have changed the outcome of the election. During a sit-down with the Times in early June, the former governor said he regretted resigning in 2021 following claims of sexual harassment, adding: “At the time, I thought that I would be a distraction to government functionality, that they would all be involved in impeachment proceedings, blah, blah, blah. Looking back, what has really been done in the past four years anyway, right?” Cuomo, who has denied the allegations against him, apologized at the time for making his accusers “feel uncomfortable,” and in an historic address to the people of New York said, of touching people’s faces, “I do it with everyone. Black and white, young and old, straight and LGBTQ, powerful people, friends, strangers, people who I meet on the street.”
In a new 1,500-word post on X following Tuesday’s loss, hedge fund billionaire Bill Ackman—who donated $500,000 to a Cuomo super PAC—called for a new, not-Cuomo candidate to take on Mamdani in November, writing that Cuomo “sat back and did not run a real campaign, relying on name recognition, early favorable polling and keeping a low profile to make it through.”
Rich Azzopardi, a spokesman for Cuomo, told Vanity Fair: “We are incredibly proud of the campaign we ran and the broad coalition that we built, including nearly every labor union, our elected endorsers, and everyday working class New Yorkers who supported our vision to get the city back on track. Our turnout model targeted key districts and constituencies and we met those turnout goals — and got more votes than Eric Adams did four years ago. However, 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. As the governor said, the city is in crisis and these are serious times—we’ll be looking at the final numbers and weighing our options on next steps.”
