For months, Andrew M. Cuomo insisted he would be on this fall’s general election ballot for mayor of New York City, no matter what — even saying so as recently as Tuesday morning.
But after conceding the Democratic primary for mayor on Tuesday night to Zohran Mamdani, the 33-year-old democratic socialist assemblyman from Queens, Mr. Cuomo’s path forward is no longer as clear.
Mr. Cuomo told The New York Times in a phone call shortly after his concession speech that he was still considering whether to run in the general election on an independent line.
“I said he won the primary election,” Mr. Cuomo said, referring to Mr. Mamdani. “I said I wanted to look at the numbers and the ranked-choice voting to decide about what to do in the future, because I’m also on an independent line. And that’s the decision, that’s what I was saying. I want to analyze and talk to some colleagues.”
In March, after months of equivocation, Mr. Cuomo, 67, announced he would run in the Democratic primary for mayor. From the start, he cast himself as the lone adult with the requisite competence and experience to manage a city that was spiraling out of control. He pointed to his 10-plus years as governor, when he helped legalize same-sex marriage and build the new Moynihan Train Hall at Penn Station.
But Mr. Cuomo ran what was widely considered a joyless and lackluster campaign, largely limiting his appearances to Black churches, synagogues and union halls, and rarely engaging in the kind of retail politics and ground game necessary to win a heavily contested election.
Business leaders and institutional Democrats heavily supported him in the primary, but it was less clear if they would coalesce behind him in a general election or switch their loyalties to the current mayor, Eric Adams. What seemed clearer was their antipathy toward Mr. Mamdani.
“The economic stability of the city is very much at risk as employers and taxpayers digest the possibility of a mayor who says he wants to further increase taxes and move us toward policies of socialism,” said Kathryn Wylde, the leader of the Partnership for New York City, a business group. “This election is a true test of the resilience of our city.”
If Mr. Cuomo was to run in November, he would compete in a general election where there will be no ranked-choice voting, against four likely foes: Mayor Adams, who is running an ideologically similar campaign as an independent; Curtis Sliwa, the Republican founder of the Guardian Angels; the lawyer Jim Walden, who is running as an independent; and Mr. Mamdani, who will most likely be running on both the Democratic and Working Families Party lines.
New York City remains an overwhelmingly Democratic city, with registered Democrats outnumbering registered Republicans by six to one.
“Before anybody starts speculating about who’s in and what that means, you have to go to first principles, and first principles is this was a convincing win in a Democratic primary in a Democratic city,” said Jon Paul Lupo, a Democratic consultant unaffiliated with any of the mayoral campaigns. “And that the most likely outcome by far in the general election, regardless of who runs, is that Zohran will win as the Democratic nominee.”
Mr. Mamdani would be the youngest mayor in a century, and his promise to seek tax hikes on corporations and the wealthiest New Yorkers will distress business leaders, who have already spent an enormous amount of money opposing his candidacy by donating to a super PAC aligned with Mr. Cuomo’s interests.
Mr. Cuomo’s campaign to save the city from crisis was also, from the start, a clear bid for his own political redemption.
Just four years ago, Mr. Cuomo resigned from office after the attorney general of New York, Letitia James, issued a report finding he had sexually harassed 11 women, allegations he denied.
Once Mr. Mamdani began to surge, Mr. Cuomo and his allies warned New Yorkers that the assemblyman was an anti-Israel political radical and electing him was a risk that New York City could not take. Only Mr. Cuomo, they argued, had the brute force ability to lead a wayward city during the second term of President Trump.
It was a message that sought to exploit New Yorkers’ fears, without a clear positive message for the city’s future.
“The lessons from the last presidential showed us that being against something isn’t enough, you have to be for something,” said Maria Comella, a former adviser to Mr. Cuomo. “The harder path is the one that brings people with you, and that is the one that wins.”
Bill Lynch III, a Democratic strategist, called Mr. Cuomo’s defeat “a defining moment in New York politics.”
“People are hungry for leadership that feels close to them, not campaigns built around fear,” Mr. Lynch said. “This wasn’t just an upset. It was a signal that New York politics is changing.”
Mr. Mamdani is thought to have a better chance of winning the mayoralty if Mr. Cuomo remains in the race and splits the moderate and conservative Democratic vote with Mr. Adams. A recent poll indicated Mr. Adams had a better chance of winning the general election if Mr. Cuomo does not run.
But even in that scenario, it is not clear that the odds for the mayor are good. He pulled out of the Democratic primary for mayor a day after a federal judge acceded to the Trump administration’s demands to drop the federal bribery and fraud charges against him.
The judge expressed what many New Yorkers already believed, a belief that rendered Mr. Adams’s participation in the Democratic primary untenable: “Everything here smacks of a bargain,” the judge wrote. “Dismissal of the indictment in exchange for immigration policy concessions.”
Mr. Lupo concurred. “The heft and weight of the scandals will be too much for him,” he said.
Jeffery C. Mays contributed reporting.
Dana Rubinstein covers New York City politics and government for The Times.
The post Cuomo, Chastened, Will Reassess Plans to Run as an Independent appeared first on New York Times.
