Mayor Eric Adams’ decision to drop his bid for reelection opens a narrow path for Andrew Cuomo to win City Hall — and stave off an utterly disastrous Zohran Mamdani mayoralty. But to do that, the ex-gov needs to get far out of his comfort zone.
He’s been getting just 25% of voters’ support in the RealClear Politics poll average for good reason: He’s got a troubling record — and isn’t particularly likeable.
To win in November, he has to win over most of Adams’ backers and some of Republican Curtis Sliwa’s, too.
A new-and-improved Cuomo, one truly committed to standing up to the wacky left, might have a chance. What would he have to do?
He can start by showing some heretofore uncharacteristic warmth: Shed the bully image and the self-righteous, unapologetic tones.
Be nice. Be respectful. Be humble. Be honest.
Stop blaming the other guy and “politics.”
Then, lay out some firm policy positions, and detail specifically what he’ll do to see them through.
He should admit the mistakes he made as governor.
When he met with The Post’s editorial board in March, he claimed he was helpless to stop the Legislature’s uber-lefties, who (per Cuomo) rammed through disastrous legislation, like bail reform, the climate lunacy, congestion pricing, the war on landlords, all against his will.
In reality, he himself called for bail reform in his 2018 State of the State Address, and offered his own bill to raise the age to try perps as adults.
If he wants to claim his aim was to see reform done right, he owes the voters some account of how that gambit went wrong — which starts with an admission that it did.
Then give the voters some sense of how he’ll deal with the fallout when he’ll seemingly have less leverage against state lawmakers as mayor than he did as gov, and face a City Council that’s at least as far left as the Legislature.
He actually can brag about some past successes: He stood up heroically for the city’s charter schools when then-new Mayor Bill de Blasio tried to gut them, for example, got a solid statewide property-tax-limit law passed — and upended Albany business-as-usual to erase huge budget gaps when he took over as gov.
He was at his best, that is, when he rejected lefty shibboleths and the “more government is always the answer” crowd — and at his worst when he tried to “cleverly” outmaneuver the opposition.
His campaign website has some detailed plans on his core issue of public safety, but even that could stand some bolstering with, for example, frank discussion of how he’s going to fund the 5,000 new cops he means to hire.
On housing: Will he double down on Adams’ “City of Yes” successes? How exactly is he going to improve quality in NYCHA developments?
Tell us where he wants to pick up Adams’ ball and run with it, where the city needs to face facts and dump failed programs and approaches — heck, he could do worse than to explain what’s wrong with key Mamdani proposals and why doing the opposite makes more sense.
Adams and Sliwa voters will respond to his vows to shut down open-air drug and prostitution markets — which seem to be the only “free markets” Mamdani wants to prosper: Get granular on these plans, and on the disaster the socialist will deliver on those fronts.
At heart, Andrew Cuomo really is a common-sense Italian kid from Queens — but he needs to open that heart, and triple down on the common sense, rather than play the cold technocrat who just knows better than the new kid.
Stop trying to play it safe and show bread-and-butter New Yorkers you’re still one of them, and determined to give them a City Hall that runs for them the way they know it should.
