NEW YORK — Andrew Cuomo’s political career is ending where it began — with a failed mayoral race.
Nearly 50 years ago, Cuomo served as an informal adviser to his father’s unsuccessful City Hall bid. Decades later, he is once again on the losing side. While 1977 was only the start of Mario Cuomo’s storied political life that included three terms in the governor’s mansion, his son’s arc — and a New York political era — is closing.
“The politics that made New York what it is today is musty, and if there’s one thing that you feel when you’re on the streets of New York is that young people feel like their time has come,” said Howard Glaser, a former Cuomo adviser. “There’s a lot of Andrew fatigue.”
The moderate ex-governor, 67, was trounced Tuesday night by 34-year-old Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist who is seen as a generational political talent — poised to remake New York’s power structure in the years to come. It’s a political hierarchy Cuomo himself unquestionably dominated for a generation — through what critics have long maintained was a mix of fear and bullying.
His attempted comeback — launched less than four years after he resigned in disgrace following sexual harassment findings that he continues to deny — was rejected by Democratic primary voters in June and by the broader electorate on Tuesday. In both efforts, he portrayed New York City as a gloomy hellscape overrun by crime and racial division. He stoked voter fears that the election of the far-left, anti-Israel Mamdani would exacerbate antisemitism across the city. And Cuomo insisted that only he had the managerial expertise to lead Gotham’s sprawling bureaucracy, police force and public education system.
It was a message that might have played well in the Ed Koch, David Dinkins or Rudy Giuliani eras — when the Big Apple was ripped apart by racial strife and pervasive fear over crime stoked by the crack cocaine epidemic. That message, which worked to great effect in the 20th century, was shunned by voters Tuesday.
Cuomo’s campaign maintains he built an unusual coalition — supporters that included Republicans, moderate Democrats concerned with the leftward lurch of the party and prominent New York City political figures like billionaire former Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
“This needs to be a city for everyone and the fact that nearly half of New Yorkers from across the spectrum united against what the democratic nominee in an overwhelmingly democratic city campaigned on shouldn’t be overlooked,” said Cuomo spokesperson Rich Azzopardi.
A last-minute endorsement from President Donald Trump was not enough to overcome Mamdani’s massive electoral expansion after his intense focus on affordability in an expensive city. Surging turnout handed Cuomo more than 854,000 votes — enough to have won the general election four years ago. Yet the former governor drew a more personal — and competitive — distinction when conceding the race: He received a slightly higher share of the vote than his father’s failed mayoral bid 48 years ago.
Measuring success against a famous father was not lost on those who know Cuomo well.
“What happened here is very much a cautionary tale,” former Mayor Bill de Blasio said. “A guy of extraordinary promise — the talent, the energy, were unmistakable. He appeared to have had most of his father’s progressive impulses. What we’ve seen here is 30 years of decline. The extraordinary capacity could have been put to such positive use. But a kind of bunker mentality started to develop early and it grew and grew and grew. It affected his personal life.”
Cuomo engaged in a years-long feud with de Blasio, a left-leaning mayor who worked for the ex-governor during his years as Bill Clinton’s housing secretary. He would come to see Cuomo as being obsessed with surpassing his father Mario’s career.
“He had no conception of organic friendship as opposed to transactionality,” de Blasio said. “It was like something happened in his soul because the only thing he could conceptionalize was political power and gaining the next office and somehow, in my view, surpassing his father in his own mind. That was a horrible trap.”
It’s a sour election result for Cuomo, who racked up consequential accomplishments in Albany. For two and a half terms, he muscled through landmark legislation, like the legalization of same-sex marriage. He steered ambitious infrastructure projects to completion — a new bridge crossing the Hudson River named for his father, a grand train hall and the completion of the Second Avenue subway. His early Covid leadership turned him into a global celebrity.
Those successes papered over a darker side well known to people in New York politics.
Cuomo’s bullying and vengeful reputation was honed over years of heaping scorn on staffers, journalists and fellow politicians. He is a self-acknowledged control freak, so meticulous in planning events that air conditioning would be turned up in rooms past the point of comfort to prevent him from appearing sweaty on camera. And what initially appeared to be a career triumph — acclaimed leadership through a devastating global pandemic — precipitated his undoing.
His comeback attempt appeared confined to a different time.
“Cuomo’s almost run kind of “The Last Hurrah,” former Trump strategist Steve Bannon told POLITICO Magazine. “He’s run this kind of campaign that, oh, he’s got the endorsement of The New York Times, he’s got the endorsement of the New York Post, and he’s raised $40 million, he’s up on TV, he’s got all the police unions, and all the unions in town and all the union bosses. It didn’t matter.”
Cuomo’s political career was launched in 1977, advising his father’s mayoral campaign — a contest that became an epic battle against Koch. Much like the 2025 campaign against Mamdani, the elder Cuomo lost a Democratic primary, ran on an independent ballot line and came up short again in the general election. For years, Koch, a closeted gay man who died in 2013, alleged that the future governor was behind the infamous — and contentious — “vote for Cuomo, not the homo” flyer. Cuomo has denied having launched the attack, and physical evidence proving the posters existed is under dispute. Mario Cuomo expressed mortification by efforts to dig up evidence that Koch was gay.
Yet the perception that Andrew Cuomo was a win-at-all-costs politician stuck — and solidified during the final weeks of the campaign.
A half-century later, the younger Cuomo and his allies attacked an opponent in deeply personal terms. He appeared to agree with a conservative-leaning radio host that Mamdani, who will be the first Muslim mayor, would have cheered the Sept. 11 attacks. An anti-Mamdani TV ad backed by a pro-Cuomo super PAC included an image of the burning towers. And his campaign posted — and later deleted — an AI-created video of Mamdani eating rice with his hands and portraying his supporters as a Black pimp, a domestic abuser and shoplifter in a kaffiyeh.
Cuomo’s campaign pointed to his visits to mosques, Black churches and the effort to cultivate South Asian voters uncomfortable with Mamdani’s unclear views on sex work. Running as an underdog for the first time in 23 years, Cuomo’s supporters believe he was competing against a generally hostile New York City media and managed to win over non-Democratic voters in a hyper-partisan era after he was soundly beaten in the June primary.
“We’re proud of the campaign Andrew Cuomo ran in the general, getting a record 42 percent on an independent ballot line buried on the ballot when the press and the insiders wrote us off,” Azzopardi, the Cuomo spokesperson, said. “We worked hard, left everything on the field and in an age of extreme politicalization put together a coalition of Democrats, Republicans and independents that included everyone from Assemblymember Latrice Walker to Mike Bloomberg and Rep. Tom Suozzi to Councilwoman Inna Vernikov.”
Yet the final weeks painted a picture of a candidate who appeared ill-suited for a campaign in a rapidly changing city.
“You could literally see him confused how this 33-year-old at the time was talking about being a proud Muslim and that’s not antisemitism,” said Christina Greer, a Fordham University professor and an ethnic politics expert. “I mean, welcome to 2025. This is time and time again Andrew Cuomo returning to a New York City that he doesn’t understand.”
Though a failure, the 1977 race was a formative experience for father and son. Mario Cuomo was elected governor for three terms — becoming a leading liberal voice for the Democratic Party as the country moved to the right during the Reagan years. The elder Cuomo never ran for the White House and declined to get on an idling plane ready to whisk him to New Hampshire for the presidential primary.
There’s no plane waiting for Andrew Cuomo.
He was thrust onto the national stage in the early days of the pandemic, winning an Emmy for his televised Covid briefings that became appointment viewing for Americans stuck at home. His reputation as an effective leader quickly unraveled as scrutiny persisted over his nursing home policies that required long-term care facilities to take Covid-positive patients — a stipulation that was blamed for 15,000 deaths. Then he was accused of sexual harassment — a cascade of allegations that were corroborated by Attorney General Letitia James’ office in a bombshell report that ultimately led to his resignation.
Cuomo in all instances has denied any wrongdoing.
That insistence — never acknowledging significant failings — continued through his attempted return to power. Throughout the mayoral campaign, he insisted the scandals were induced by his political opponents — far left foes and Republican critics. Five district attorneys declined to bring charges in some of the sexual harassment cases, with some declaring their was not enough evidence to justify a criminal complaint. House Republicans referred Cuomo for criminal charges, accusing him of lying during his testimony to a panel probing his Covid response.
“I don’t think he ever figured out why he was doing this and what mattered to him,” said state Sen. Liz Krueger, an influential Democrat. “Just being in the fight and ultimately accomplishing more than his father did was his driving agenda. When he had to resign in scandal, what kept him up every night afterwards was, ‘How do I get back? How do I show them they were wrong? How do I go farther than dad?’”
Whether Cuomo mounts yet another attempted comeback will remain an open question. His disastrous 2002 gubernatorial campaign led to four years in the wilderness and then a return to power as the state’s powerful attorney general. This time, with voters less forgiving and apparently willing to turn the page on the Cuomo political name, a resurrection appears unlikely.
“We have toppled a political dynasty,” Mamdani said when declaring victory. “I wish Andrew Cuomo only the best in private life.”
