Speaking at a Black church in Brooklyn last September, Andrew Cuomo tested the message that would quickly become the centerpiece of his campaign to be mayor of the country’s largest city. “We’re on the decline,” the former New York governor said. “Things are getting worse; quality of life is getting worse. Things are feeling out of control.” The subtext was barely that: New York City was increasingly broken and lawless, and it needed an experienced leader at the helm.
That message has resonated. Less than two months until the Democratic primary, Cuomo holds a substantial polling lead over his myriad opponents, who are struggling to break through against a front-runner whose name recognition is so superior that he’s acting as if he is running unopposed. At the same time, Cuomo has relentlessly pushed a dystopian (and quite Trumpian) vision of a city in chaos—caused by rampant crime, homelessness, an influx of immigrants, and even e-bikes—and presented himself as the lone solution, given that he has experience that his rivals can’t match.
Ever since he was elected state attorney general in 2006 and especially during his nearly decade-long stint as governor, Cuomo has cultivated an image of himself as someone uniquely adept at managing complex bureaucracies and messy politics. For Cuomo and the slavish aides who surround him, no one is better at the arm twisting—and dark arts—that are required to get anything done in a state as notoriously dysfunctional as New York. In truth, that’s a myth Cuomo himself created. He is not a cunning dealmaker, skilled manager, or inspiring leader—but he is masterful at selling himself as all of the above. As Democrats slowly mount a resistance against Trump’s second administration, there is no worse person to elevate than a shameless self-promoter with an inflated sense of his political gifts and accomplishments.
When Cuomo officially announced his campaign for governor two months ago, he implied that he deserved a spot in the pantheon of Democratic leaders of the last century. “F.D.R., John Kennedy, L.B.J., Mario Cuomo, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama taught us what it meant to have a true progressive government: It wasn’t about rhetoric, but results,” Cuomo said. “They focused on issues that mattered to people in their day-to-day lives, issues that were relevant to them, and then they actually made life better for people. And that is what Democrats must do once again.”
If that seems arrogant to you—and it should, given that the only non-president in that field is Cuomo’s father, another former governor of New York—then consider this shorter spin on the same subject from 2019. After turning his fire on state progressives, who were attempting to push through a raft of legislation after retaking the legislature, Cuomo said, “I believe I am the most progressive, or one of the most progressive leaders in the state.” Then, pushed on his recent criticism of the state’s actual progressives, Cuomo shrugged and echoed Louis XIV. “I am the left,” he said.
Running for mayor, he and his allies are fond of reminding voters of the legislation that he signed into law, presenting him as a no-nonsense leader who gets things done. It’s true that Cuomo did sign a number of bills—on gun control, same-sex marriage, and marijuana—and oversaw the completion of several infrastructure projects, including the Second Avenue subway and a replacement for the Tappan Zee Bridge, which he named after his father. But Cuomo’s stint as governor was more notable for what didn’t happen than what did.
For much of his reign, Cuomo presided over a divided government thanks to a group of renegade Democrats, the Independent Democratic Conference, who caucused with Republicans in the state Senate. Cuomo frequently used this coalition as evidence of his own political prowess—he could make divided government work, as few could!—but it was all a sham. As The New Republic reported in 2017, Cuomo himself perpetuated that divided government by supporting the creation of the IDC in 2011. His reasoning was as simple as it was malevolent: He wanted to stymie New York City Democrats, who he believed would push progressive legislation. For a new governor with presidential ambitions, that simply would not do, so he propped up what was effectively a Republican majority in the Senate that held until 2018, when the benevolent governor ordered its dissolution.
When examined closely, Cuomo’s record of competence is similarly less impressive. As Politico’s Nick Riesman wrote in a damning account of the governor’s long record of mismanagement in late April, “His team has asserted his consistent polling advantage is based on his reputation as an effective manager, but as he vies to oversee the nation’s largest school district, trash collection operation and police force, he is glossing over his mistakes and betting voters won’t remember.” Some of the infrastructure projects Cuomo presided over were far less impressive than they seem. The Mario Cuomo bridge was plagued by issues—bolts were reportedly flying off it around the same time its namesake’s son celebrated its completion.
At first blush, the completion of the Second Ave subway—a project decades in the making—was definitive proof of Cuomo’s singular prowess as a manager. But his obsession with finishing the line helped exacerbate a crisis in New York City’s subway system that led to months of brutal delays. “Shifting the MTA’s priorities and accelerating construction of the Second Avenue Subway led to a system-wide subway crisis in 2017,” wrote Philip Mark Plotch, in his book The Last Subway. Indeed, the MTA’s long-standing funding crisis was aided by Cuomo, who deliberately underfunded mass transit in the city: If anyone deserves blame for the shambolic state of city’s subways today, it is him.
Cuomo’s mayoral campaign, meanwhile, suggests that his trademark quality—arrogance—is as strong as ever. Given the cloud of corruption hanging over New York City Mayor Eric Adams, you would expect any reputable challenger to emphasize ethics and good government in their campaign. Not Andrew Cuomo. He has refused to disclose the names of the clients of his legislative consulting firm and failed to reveal to an ethics board that he holds millions in stock in a nuclear start-up.
At the same time, he has treated the Democratic primary as a coronation, refusing to debate his opponents and largely eschewing campaigning altogether in favor of glitzy events with donors. And there’s a troubling sloppiness to his campaign that belies his self-image as an effective manager and experienced politician. His housing plan was apparently written with the help of artificial intelligence. He lost out on nearly $3 million in public campaign funding because his campaign blew a deadline. And his campaign keeps coordinating with a pro-Cuomo associated super PAC, even though that’s illegal in New York City. Cuomo doesn’t care; he’s always acted as though the rules don’t apply to him.
That defiance is apparently serving him well with voters as he attempts a political comeback that would have been unimaginable several years ago. In August 2021, he resigned as governor amid several scandals, most prominently the multiple allegations of sexual harassment by women who worked with him. On the campaign trail, he has repeatedly insisted that he was punished for being a handsy Italian American from an older generation. “You see all this behavior, for a 25-year-old or younger woman with different mores and sensitivities, it’s ‘Don’t touch me’ and ‘Ciao bella is offensive’ and ‘honey’ is offensive and ‘sweetheart’ is offensive, and that is a legitimate school of thought,” he told New York magazine at the end of March. “I heard that intellectually, and I got it—but I just didn’t actually get it enough.” It’s clear that he still doesn’t get it enough.
Since Cuomo resigned from office, his handling of the Covid-19 pandemic—once thought to be one of his major accomplishments—has been exposed as a sham. It was revealed that he had ordered aides to work on a memoir celebrating his handling of the Covid-19 pandemic while they were supposed to be doing government work—like helping to fight the pandemic, which was still raging. And he was accused of covering up nursing home deaths during the pandemic. (Republicans on the House Oversight Committee recently referred Cuomo to the Department of Justice for prosecution relating to allegedly false statements he made to Congress on the subject. It’s a political move, no doubt, but the committee’s investigation was not without merit.)
And yet, despite this damning record, Cuomo is on the precipice of returning to power. This would be depressing even if Kamala Harris had triumphed over Donald Trump in November. With Trump in the White House, it’s potentially disastrous. Like the president, Cuomo is an incompetent politician, a malicious bully, and an inveterate braggart. He will cast himself as a foil to the president and a leader of his party, just as he did as governor. But we know the whole truth about him now. There’s no excuse for letting this political cretin rise again.
Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( New York City Is About to Make a Huge Mistake )
Also on site :
- NBC Catches Wrath of Fans After Canceling 5 Beloved Shows
- PHOTO COLLECTION: Romania Election Pro-EU Rally
- Michele Val Jean Reunites With ‘Beyond The Gates’ Cast and Crew in Atlanta