Andrew Cuomo Should Be Nervous

New Movements vs. Old Institutions

Jun 10, 2025

With two weeks until the Democratic Primary, the race to be the next Mayor of New York City is heating up, boiling down to former Governor Andrew Cuomo and Queens assemblyman Zohran Mamdani.

Last night, two internal polls were released to POLITICO. The first, courtesy of Cuomo’s campaign, showed the frontrunner still leading the surging Mamdani by twelve percent in the final round of ranked-choice-voting. The second, from the pro-Mamdani PAC, “New Yorkers for Lower Costs,” showed the insurgent cutting Cuomo’s lead to two-percent in the final round.

Spin zone or not, the race is tightening.

Nonetheless, the intense reaction from Andrew Cuomo’s allies caught my eye. Immediately, there was a concerted effort to discredit the Data for Progress poll, which showed Mamdani on the verge of a historic upset. Their behavior came across as flailing, desperate, and insecure — particularly for a campaign that has, thus far, led the race from wire-to-wire. Here are some examples:

Staten Island was not polled (yes it was, the sample [n=27] was too small for a borough banner). POLITICO is “shilling” for the Working Families Party (if anything, they were nice to also publish Cuomo’s internal, which lacked any crosstabs whatsoever). White voters were 43% of the sample (Cuomo’s own internal had white voters as 41% percent of their sample). Data For Progress has a “C” rating (they were the most accurate pollster in the 2021 Mayoral race). They’re illegally coordinating with a Super PAC (from the campaign that has been, repeatedly, fined by Campaign Finance Board for doing exactly that).

It sure seemed like Cuomo’s camp was preoccupied with spinning the political class, when they’re on the verge of losing the working-class.

This dynamic, a consistent preoccupation with all the things that don’t really matter — more so than any single poll — remains one of the symptoms as to why the race for Mayor, with two weeks remaining, has become so close.

For decades, the road to political power in New York was paved with Andrew Cuomo’s enemies.

2025 appeared to be no different. Cuomo would dethrone New York City’s second Black Mayor, an indicted Eric Adams, the same way he pushed aside New York’s first Black Governor, the scandal-scarred David Patterson. Brad Lander, an inoffensive left-liberal, was a redux of Zephyr Teachout and Cynthia Nixon, popular with the NGO’s and Editorial Boards, but anonymous in the outer boroughs. Scott Stringer was the new Mark Green, a weakened has-been at the end of his career. Adrienne Adams, had she announced months earlier, could have been the race’s Carl McCall, once the choice of the Black establishment who delivered a young (and arrogant) Cuomo the biggest defeat of his career. Jessica Ramos, a consistent and dogged Cuomo critic for the entirety of her career, was the latest to bend the knee to the former Governor. At the press conference announcing her endorsement, Cuomo seemed happier than at any other point of the campaign; of course, he had just brutally humiliated one of his longstanding enemies.

The Game Is The Game.

For months, Cuomo was coasting, to put it mildly. He made weekly visits to senior centers and Black churches, held almost no public events, only attended a handful of forums (where candidates spoke one-at-a-time, rather than side-by-side), and gave very few interviews. His team pushed (suspect) polls to the press, furthering a narrative of inevitability. The organized opposition remained fractured, if not paralyzed. The Working Families Party, in addition to the other anti-Cuomo outfits, were being exponentially outspent on the airwaves by the Cuomo-aligned Super PAC, “Fix The City,” which has raised more than ten million dollars. More and more elected officials fell in line, as did many of the city’s largest labor unions. Cuomo and company did as they always had, bullied and wore down their ineffective opposition. Ross Barkan’s thesis: “Andrew Cuomo Isn’t Strong; His Opponents Are Weak,” summed it up rather well.

All, except for one: Zohran Mamdani.

Mamdani’s steady climb has been organic, the product of a compelling economic populist message that has become ubiquitous to voters under-45, swept up by viral videos and a voter contact operation with little modern precedent. There were a myriad of themes Mamdani could have put at the forefront of his campaign, but he astutely chose costs-of-living. Now, affordability — not “crime” — has become the race’s #1 issue. Undoubtedly, Zohran Mamdani is winning The Narrative War.

The class consciousness of Bernie Sanders.

The communicative prowess of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

The progressive executorship of Michelle Wu.

Cuomo’s allies have struggled to define him. Radical. Antisemite. Neophyte. Nepo Baby. Nothing they’ve thrown at the thirty-three year old has stuck. Cuomo’s orbit does not understand Mamdani or his widespread appeal, nor do they care to learn. They view the democratic socialist, and his ilk, as irrelevant rabble rousers in Albany; nothing more than performative “no” votes on the state budget. In doing so — failing to look beyond the confines of the political, journalist, and lobbyist class in which they are so comfortably enmeshed — they have made a (perhaps fatal) mistake. “The Socialists Are At The Gate,” is not an affirmative message, especially when the five boroughs are being crushed by rising housing and childcare costs. Most New Yorkers do not crave a return to the status quo, one neatly embodied by Andrew Cuomo, a career politician in every sense of the word.

It was easy to brush off Zohran Mamdani when he was polling at ten-percent, with two-thirds of the electorate having no clue who he was. Those who did — college-educated Millennials living in Brooklyn — were everything wrong with the Democratic Party; transplants that were too progressive, too woke, too out-of-touch. Only real New Yorkers vote for Andrew Cuomo.

No longer can they say Mamdani is the candidate of the professional class; not when the democratic socialist is winning Asian voters by more than twenty-percent, only down ten percent with Latinos, or polling forty-percent in the Bronx.

We’re not in Albany anymore.

Normally, I’d run-down all the reasons why Cuomo should be favored; and for good reason, given most of the fundamentals have been on the frontrunner’s side since January.

But here’s why Andrew Cuomo should concerned:

The most fervent anti-Trump energy coincides with Cuomo’s weakest demographics.

In 2018, voter participation spiked across every one of the five boroughs. In 2021, turnout increased in Manhattan, Queens, and Brooklyn, but decreased in the Bronx and Staten Island. As the Democratic Party realigns with respect to education, civically-engaged white collar neighborhoods in Manhattan, Brownstone Brooklyn and Western Queens have increased their share of the electorate, at the expense of working-class communities in the Bronx, Eastern Queens, and Southern Brooklyn. The first Democratic Primary in the wake of Trump 2.0 threatens to further skew New York City’s electorate — already balanced on a knife’s edge between the affluent urban core and the middle-class outer boroughs — towards the former.

Were Andrew Cuomo, significantly weakened from his Trump 1.0 apex, to face a voter turnout surge in Brownstone Brooklyn and Manhattan’s West Side (absent a comparable bump to his outer borough base), the former Governor would be in a somewhat precarious position. The race will likely come down to Manhattan, in many respects the epicenter of elite media opinion and The Resistance. According to yesterday’s Data for Progress poll, the borough is split down the middle (50-50).

Whomever can most effectively harness the anti-Trump zeitgeist, casting themselves as not only the candidate best equipped to counter the President, but shepherd the city through the rollercoaster next three years — will be well positioned to prevail on June 24th.

There are a finite number of Cuomo voters in the Democratic Party.

Realistically, Andrew Cuomo will not be expanding the electorate.

Everyday, he loses a little ground. Whereas Zohran Mamdani not only grows his support with every name recognition bump (+43 favorability), the thirty-three year old is working diligently to expand the Primary electorate: courting new registrants, recent arrivals, and disillusioned Democrats.

The Early Voting electorate favors Mamdani, while the Election Day electorate leans towards Cuomo. Indeed, the longer it takes for Cuomo’s voters to reach the ballot box, the more time there is to change their minds.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

Will Cuomo replicate Adams’ working-class turnout?

This cycle, Cuomo has consistently polled best with Black voters, particularly Generation-X and Baby Boomers. He receives warm-welcomes at Baptist churches across Central Brooklyn and Southeast Queens. In head-to-head simulations against Mamdani, Cuomo leads by fifty-percent amongst the Black electorate.

My question is whether Andrew Cuomo — of suburban Westchester and tony Sutton Place — can inspire Black seniors to come out to the polls, en masse, at comparable levels to that of Eric Adams four years ago? Anything less, and Cuomo’s already shrinking margin-for-error slips into The Danger Zone.

On the precipice of the greatest choke job in the history of New York City politics — I’d worry far less about what Jeff Coltin tweets, and much more about voter turnout in Canarsie.

Who, exactly, is pressing the flesh in these neighborhoods? Because I see scant evidence that Andrew Cuomo has been (and no, a church visit or two on Sunday will not be enough). The former Governor is relying heavily on local networks (clergy, tenant association presidents, labor unions), the genre of institutional politics that Cuomo mastered over the past two decades.

In the days of Mario Cuomo, the Democratic Party had real organizations. Precinct captains went from “block-to-block whipping votes, inserted themselves into neighborhood struggles, and ensured their local clubs were packed with volunteers.” Residents wanted to belong to a kind of civic life, and the machines fulfilled that modest wish. Today, “these organizations carry on as phantoms, as after-images of a different age.” In the vacuum of neighborhood, business interests have filled the void, ensuring Andrew Cuomo’s coffers are filled with large checks from the Real Estate lobby and Pro-Israel groups. Who needs volunteers when you have ten million dollars?

In contrast, Zohran Mamdani has tapped into something far greater than himself. Undoubtedly, the thirty-thousand volunteers flock to the democratic socialist because they believe in him and his message. However, they return — day-after-day, week-after-week — to climb those fifth floor walk ups and talk to strangers, because of a sense of belonging, one that has not existed in local politics, at this scale, in a long time. Cuomo has little use for any of that; so long as he can run out the clock and regain his rightful position atop the throne. There is no movement here, just the resuscitation of one man’s career.

For months, Cuomo wanted to face Mamdani one-on-one.

With two weeks until Primary Day, the former Governor has the scenario he always desired.

Be careful what you wish for.