The former governor of New York, Democrat Andrew Cuomo, who resigned in a #MeToo scandal in 2021, announced his candidacy for mayor of New York City over the weekend. The move was not a surprise—Cuomo has been leading in polls over the current Democratic Mayor, Eric Adams, as well as several “progressive” Democratic contenders, for some time. The Democratic primary will be held in June and the general election in November.
Cuomo is a veteran right-wing Democratic Party politician. He was the campaign manager in the 1982 election campaign of his father, New York Governor Mario Cuomo. The younger Cuomo went on to posts as assistant secretary of the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) from 1993 to 1997 and as HUD secretary from 1997 to 2001 in the Clinton administration, attorney general of New York state from 2006 to 2010, followed by three successful gubernatorial campaigns in 2010, 2014 and 2018.
His tenure as a governor was a disaster for the working class in New York and nationally, exemplified by the role he played at the outset of the COVID pandemic in the state in February 2020, when New York City became an epicenter of the disease, and the virus spread from there to much of the rest of the United States.
Cuomo at the time became a national figure through carefully scripted daily press conferences on the state of the pandemic, for which he was lauded in the media as an alternative to Trump, then in his first presidential term. Cuomo’s policies, however, despite having a “scientific” gloss, differed very little from Trump’s.
After the massive infusion of wealth to the oligarchy under the CARES Act and the Federal Reserve’s quantitative easing later in March 2020, Cuomo, along with the rest of the political establishment, began to enforce the reopening of business and public institutions, first with the construction industry and then with schools, by means of lies, threats and bullying.
He announced in August that schools, main vectors of viral transmission, should begin to reopen if positivity testing rates were under 5 percent. Schools systematically under-tested educators and students. Fellow Democrat Bill de Blasio, then New York City’s mayor, who also embraced this deadly program, reopened schools the next month, and this policy was continued by Cuomo’s successor Kathy Hochul.
Cuomo’s administration played a noxious role during the first year of the pandemic not only by its “malign neglect” but especially when it directed many hospitalized elderly people who were positive for COVID-19 to move into nursing homes. The Cuomo administration then ensured that the total number of those who died of the disease was falsified. Perhaps 9,000 elderly and 552 mentally disabled people died directly because of the policy.
Altogether up to 60,000 people died of the disease in New York while Cuomo was in office.
Cuomo was forced to resign in August 2021 after 11 women, most of them in his administration, came forward with charges of sexual harassment. The effort to push Cuomo out with a sex scandal and keep the central political issues, particularly over his handling of the pandemic, out of the public eye, became the consensus policy of his fellow Democrats. President Joe Biden called for his resignation in August 2021. The New York Times also played a key role in driving him out of office, enthusiastically pursuing a rotten #MeToo campaign, as it has with a variety of public figures since 2017.
Cuomo has sought to rehabilitate himself in the last few years, taking New York Attorney General Letitia James, the New York State Ethics Commission and one of his accusers to court. Many observers have felt it was only a matter of time before he directly entered the degraded environment of bourgeois politics again, to which he is so suited.
No doubt he is seeking to leverage the crisis of Eric Adams’s administration to his advantage. Adams was indicted by federal prosecutors last year on corruption charges. He has negotiated a quid pro quo deal with the Trump administration, in which the the Justice Department has sought to have the charges dropped in exchange for the mayor’s full and enthusiastic implementation of Trump’s dictatorial policies in New York City.
This has found most open expression in Adams’s embrace of the assault on immigrant workers, who constitute a significant portion of the city’s population. Adams, who has sought for months to deprive asylum seekers in the city of necessities such as shelter, has already sought to implement Trump’s plans in opposition to the city’s sanctuary laws.
The exchange of favors became so blatant that prosecutors associated with the case not only refused to sign the request for dismissal, but also resigned their offices.
While the Department of Justice was finally able to find an official who was willing to make the request to the court, Adams’ already flagging popularity has plummeted, and calls have been issued from within Democratic Party circles for his resignation, although Governor Hochul has refused to exercise her powers under the state constitution to remove him. In an unusual action, the judge presiding over the case has delayed dismissal of the charges, which is normally done when the prosecutors request it.
Cuomo is a thoroughly right-wing politician. On his campaign website, while making empty promises to alleviate problems in education, such as large class sizes in the public schools and chronic student absenteeism, or suggesting minor reforms to deal with the severe shortage of affordable housing in the city, he has proposed police-state measures similar to those favored by Adams.
His proposals include increasing the New York Police Department (NYPD) presence on the subways, “better infrastructure” to stop impoverished fare-beaters from using the transit system, and stepping up action against ”antisemitism”--against student and faculty protests at universities against the genocide in Gaza. He also calls for increasing the size of the NYPD and reviving a “broken windows” policing program, which supports police surveillance of working-class communities.
Cuomo’s campaign issued a document on the crisis of “affordability” in the city which copies various points from the so-called progressive candidates: proposing to have free bus lines and implement universal pre-K for three-year-olds, a program that Adams has consistently cut in the last few annual budgets.
The former governor has no more intention of addressing the social crisis in New York City than the other Democratic candidates. Last month, the Robin Hood Foundation issued a report that showed that the poverty rate in the city had risen from 23 to 24 percent and that the poverty rate among children was fully 25 percent
Cuomo’s real base is in the ruling class of billionaires and real estate magnates, as well as the trade union bureaucracy. His appeal to these layers is that he will keep a lid on the growing social crisis in New York City.
On Sunday he spoke before the New York City District Council of Carpenters, which had already endorsed him even before he officially announced his candidacy.
The union bused in members to a rally, apparently without telling them what it was for, and Cuomo repeated a series of right-wing nostrums, including attacks on his “progressive” rivals for attempting to defund the police. He specifically took aim at the “these democratic socialist candidates that released a wave of antisemitism throughout our city,” likely referring to Zohran Mamdani, the candidate endorsed by the New York City Democratic Socialists of America, for being so bold as to call for a cease-fire in Gaza.
It is significant that Cuomo has had little criticism of the new administration of fascist President Donald Trump. On March 1, he announced, “I will work with anyone, including President Trump, to get the resources New York City needs.” In other words, Cuomo will help to implement Trump’s policies in New York City. And what Trump wants is dictatorship on the campuses, ICE raids on immigrant workers and their families, and a police regime fit to crack down on the mass resistance that is already being sparked by economic hardship and the fascist policies of the Trump administration itself.