Andrew Cuomo is setting up a comeback try for NYC mayor

(CNN) — At the end of September, former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo quietly switched his voter registration address to an apartment on East 54th Street in Manhattan. It marked the first time he’d lived in New York City – officially – in decades.

By December, he was ramping up conversations with local political officials and a select group of influential community leaders, hinting at plans to run for mayor in the June primary.

What if, Cuomo mused, Eric Adams – who currently holds the job but is now facing an April trial date on federal corruption charges – resigned or opted out of running for reelection?

He’s been telling donors and other influential political figures that if he gets in, he’s going to win, and they’ve got to get behind him.

Elected governor three times before resigning in 2021 amid sexual harassment allegations and fierce criticism over his handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, Cuomo is now privately describing his long-rumored and labored-over run for mayor as a near certainty, according to conversations with more than a dozen people in his orbit, with whom he has spoken recently but are not authorized to publicly discuss the deliberations. He is also lining up campaign aides and pollsters, in part with the help of a former top adviser who beat him out the door of the governor’s mansion more than three years ago after deciding she could no longer defend him against the flood of sexual misconduct accusations that ultimately forced him out of office.

But he wouldn’t be the first Cuomo who put together an expected candidacy that never actually took off.

Talk of a Cuomo comeback dates back, quite literally, to the day he resigned three-and-a-half years ago, with supporters and opponents alike either convinced or anxious, or both, that a revival bid was “imminent.” He eyed another run for governor, which would have meant taking on successor Kathy Hochul, the former lieutenant governor he always kept at arm’s length and who, in 2022, emerged as a politically weakened winner of a closer-than-expected gubernatorial election.

The possibility of trying to oust her in 2026 is, as the February filing period for mayoral candidates approaches, one of the last things holding Cuomo back from jumping into the citywide stew. His ambitions were also fueled, in part, by his success in fending off lawsuits related to his alleged misconduct, which he denied before and after resigning, and a recent inspector general report suggesting then-President Donald Trump’s Justice Department, in 2020, sought to undermine him in the press.

But it was not until Adams’ indictment last September that – as Cuomo himself might say – a new reality emerged. The mayor’s approval ratings are at historic lows and, barring a stunning about-face by federal prosecutors, he is slated to spend a large chunk of the primary campaign in a Lower Manhattan courtroom, while the sense spreads that street crime is even more out of control than it was when Adams won in 2021, promising he’d fix it.

A Cuomo spokesperson, Rich Azzopardi, chalked up anyone who has walked away from conversations with the former governor thinking that he’s definitely running to “a matter of perception.”

Asked to explain those conversations, Azzopardi said, “A lot of people have come to him saying the city is in crisis and it needs to be fixed, and they think he’s the guy to do it because of his track record.”

“He just hasn’t decided yet. It’s purely personal, it’s whether or not he wants to commit the time and the energy. He was 24-7 as governor. It’s a major commitment. It’s something he and his family are talking about,” Azzopardi added.

He then texted a lengthy prepared statement touting the former governor’s record on issues that helped New Yorkers and brought money into infrastructure projects and noted Cuomo “will always be a Queens boy who loves New York, is deeply concerned about its direction, and will always help any way he can.”

The Adams and Trump factors

A defiant Adams on Thursday in his annual “state of the city” speech again insisted he has no plans to step down – then described a city better off for his leadership.

“Don’t listen to the noise, don’t listen to the rhetoric,” Adams said. “New York City, the state of our city is strong.”

But another Queens native is also shaping the race: President-elect Trump. The two have not spoken, but Cuomo has carefully observed his trajectory. People who have spoken with Cuomo say he thinks voters could be convinced to welcome him back, too — in the character of a tough guy who can set things right in a city wobbling with unease over public safety, an affordability crisis and post-pandemic trauma.

Some around Cuomo think New Yorkers will also be looking for a tough guy to take on Trump, with aides floating the prospect of mass deportations targeted at Democratic cities.

Adams’ legal team is led by attorney Alex Spiro, who also counts Elon Musk as a client, and is already deep into a public relations campaign against federal prosecutors, whom he claims – without evidence – moved against him in retaliation for his criticism of President Joe Biden’s border policy. (More than 200,000 migrants have arrived in the city since early 2022, causing a budget crunch and spiking social tensions.)

Adams has further endangered his political standing with city Democrats by cozying up to Trump. The mayor’s allegations that he’s been targeted by a politicized Biden Justice Department rhyme with Trump’s own complaints about the handful of cases launched against him before he was reelected. Trump has expressed sympathy and support for Adams, who met with the president-elect’s incoming “border czar” in December to discuss how the city could potentially work with the administration on its mass deportation plan.

For all the frustrations with migrants among city residents and the notably large shifts toward Trump across the city in November’s election, many New York political insiders believe that particularly in a Democratic primary, voters will want at least a somewhat oppositional force.

According to those who have spoken with him and his circle, Cuomo figures that even with large parts of the city shifting toward Trump – or away from Democrats – during the 2024 general election, he could win over affluent White liberals who want a pugilist in office to square up with Trump (and try to keep their taxes down) to supplement his base.

His critics are skeptical.

“The best person to defeat a corrupt New York mayor can’t be a corrupt New York governor,” Rebecca Katz, a New York-based Democratic consultant who helped run actress Cynthia Nixon’s 2018 primary challenge to Cuomo, told CNN.

It is also unclear where Cuomo would break from Trump on the issues most likely to dominate the coming campaign. The president-elect, though still personally unpopular in New York, has pushed for a crackdown on crime and is planning a mass deportation program that many advocates expect will focus on undocumented immigrants in big cities.

Already, the primary is much more crowded than tends to be the case for an incumbent mayor. But Cuomo is much better known than any of the other candidates in the race, and he’s been milking that in corners where he wants to build support, with appearances at Black churches and reiterating staunch support for Israel. He has millions of dollars in a leftover campaign account that he would be expected to direct into a supportive independent expenditure effort.

Earlier this week, the mayor himself juiced speculation about Cuomo’s plans by taking direct aim at the former governor’s record in a rare – at least since he was indicted and his administration began to unravel – wide-ranging interview with Politico.

“People who are running – they’re going to have to take claim for the stuff that they did when they were holding office,” Adams said.

Adams raised the nearly six-year-old decision to reform bail laws, which took root among progressive state lawmakers toward the end of Cuomo’s time in office.

And Adams isn’t the only one raring to go. After months of trial balloons and rumors, the candidates who would be Cuomo’s rivals are already dug in, trying to remind voters of other controversies beyond the best-known scandals.

“If and when Cuomo pops his head back up, (voters) will consider his mishandling of COVID-19, the nursing home scandal, and the congressional investigation into his conduct,” former Comptroller Scott Stringer’s campaign wrote in a memo late last year. “They also remember how he nearly destroyed the (public transit system), leaving the lifeblood of our city, our subway system, in shambles for hypothetical votes upstate.”

Hoping to stand out amid a crowded field and ranked choice voting

A Cuomo mayoral campaign would be naturally divisive. In what will be only the second mayoral election to conducted under ranked-choice voting rules – a process that even some of the city’s shrewdest operatives confess remains an election day wild card – that might help him.

He warred with the former mayor, Bill de Blasio, during the seven years they ran the state and city, respectively, clashing over everything from public transit funding and housing to the fate of a wounded deer and the utility of a midday nap.

Asked about his thoughts on Cuomo’s possibly running for his old job, de Blasio texted CNN, “Well, that’s a good question… I haven’t really determined if/how/when to share my thoughts…”

As he tightened his grip on state government, Cuomo became deeply unpopular with many liberals in New York City, where the progressive Working Families Party lined up as his most bitter opponents – only to see their coalition split, with major labor unions leaving, over the WFP’s attempts to unseat him.

Still, Cuomo is despised by many on the left, personally and politically, and even by Democrats beyond that who want a new start.

“If a city has ever been crying out for new leadership, it’s New York at this moment – and Cuomo is the antithesis of new leadership,” said one Democratic strategist who knows the former governor.

Without the power of being in office to flex against political enemies, strategists believe he will not be as much of a threat. They think his campaign might flare up early but then collapse, much like businessman and former presidential candidate Andrew Yang’s did four years ago.

Still, with Adams and nearly all of his inner circle swallowed up in legal troubles and ethical scandals, and the city on edge over a post-Covid rise in crime, the mayoral contest has become more a more appealing proposition.

In a further wrinkle, Cuomo and Adams – if they were to both run – would be competing for many of the same primary voters. Adams’s base largely overlaps with the neighborhoods and constituencies that consistently turned out in force for Cuomo during his three successful gubernatorial campaigns.

Concerns over how that bloc – comprised of Black working class voters and other ethnic outer-borough cohorts – would breakdown with both men on the ballot had, sources familiar with Cuomo’s thinking told CNN, been a potential roadblock to his entering the race.

The conventional wisdom among Democratic strategists, until the last week, had been that Cuomo would not seek to challenge Adams in primary, preferring the mayor step down and, by law, trigger a nonpartisan special election.

“There were some who said, ‘step down,’” Adams crowed during his state of the city speech. “I said, ‘No, I’m gonna step up.’”

All of this has left many of the city’s power brokers holding off supporting anyone, at least for now.

In an interview last fall, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries – who remains very involved in city politics and eventually backed Adams in 2021 – told CNN that he believes Adams is entitled to the presumption of innocence and the right to go to trial.

But Jeffries demurred when asked if he’d be ready to support Adams for reelection.

“We’ll cross that bridge,” he said, “when we get to it.”

CNN’s Gloria Pazmino contributed to this report.

This headline has been updated.

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