Zellnor Myrie is talking with me in an Upper West Side coffee shop on a Saturday afternoon when something he says stops a passing customer dead in her tracks. “Did you say Andrew Cuomo is running for mayor?” she asks.
“Yes,” Myrie says. “Officially as of a few hours ago.” It’s difficult to read her facial expression. But Myrie doesn’t wait for clarification. “I’m running for mayor as well!” he says, smiling and standing up to shake the woman’s hand. “I’m Zellnor Myrie. I hope to earn your support.”
Several minutes later, the same woman passes by, returning to her table. “What’s your name again?” she asks. Myrie repeats it, slower this time. “I’m a state senator. I represent central Brooklyn now,” he says earnestly. “But I would love to earn your number one ranking.” She wishes Myrie good luck yet still seems focused on digesting the Cuomo news. “I would probably not be that interested in voting for him,” she says, tentatively but not definitively, of the former governor. “I get a lot of emails from Brad Lander, but I don’t really know anything about him.”
That scene, unfolding in about the amount of time it takes to foam a latte, pretty well summarizes the state of the race for mayor of New York City. There is Cuomo, whom everyone knows and about whom there is no shortage of polarizing opinions, and there is everyone else. Currently, there are eight declared non-Cuomo Democratic candidates in the June primary field, with at least one more contender likely to soon join the fray: Adrienne Adams, the Speaker of the City Council, who has been encouraged to jump in by New York State attorney general Letitia James, one of Cuomo’s main antagonists. “Hate is a powerful motivator,” a James insider says.
Most of the Not Cuomos are barely known outside of their own families. The major exception is the incumbent mayor, Eric Adams, but his first term has been so hobbled by investigations that his reelection campaign is on life support. Everyone else has been desperately trying to raise their own profile. Now they need to introduce themselves while at the same time punching holes in Cuomo’s candidacy.
Myrie, smartly, got a head start on this maneuver. Last month, as President Donald Trump unfurled plans that could cut tens of millions of dollars in federal aid to the city and deport thousands of immigrants living in New York, Myrie repeatedly called out Cuomo’s conspicuous silence. Now, with Cuomo entering as the front-runner in early polls, Myrie sees ample openings for attack.
“There is a Wizard of Oz effect with Andrew Cuomo,” Myrie tells me. “I want to remind people that he cut funding for our schools during COVID. I want to remind people he cut rental assistance and we saw a spike in homelessness. The MTA was cut! He hurt the city because he didn’t like the last mayor, [Bill de Blasio]. That is not the leadership that we need in this moment.”
Cuomo, of course, has rebuttals to all those points, usually based in having needed to make difficult budgetary choices. But Myrie, the 38-year-old son of Costa Rican immigrants, proudly calls himself a nerd, and he is skilled at citing details to back up his case. His campaign leans heavily into policy and operational competence. New York voters often claim that those are the strengths they want in a mayor. Yet the good government geeks rarely win City Hall; the victors are more often strong personalities who fit the mood of the moment.
Fortunately for Cuomo’s opponents, he provides what would appear to be multiple alternative targets besides his policy record, due to the way he exited the governor’s office in 2021: under a barrage of sexual harassment allegations (which he has vehemently denied) and criticism that he both misrepresented COVID death statistics (which he has disputed) and profited from a book glorifying how he handled the pandemic.
“His job approval starts off higher than his favorability,” one Cuomo operative turned adversary says. “So it’s not enough to try to convince people he’s a jerk. You have to connect it to his job and talk about sexual harassment as corruption and an abuse of power.”
One group, New Yorkers for Better Government, has already launched a digital ad on that theme. There’s also Women Against Cuomo. But a second Cuomo operative turned adversary (it’s a big club) doesn’t believe character issues will prove to be the ex-governor’s greatest electoral weakness. “All that stuff is baked in,” he says. “It’s going to be something else, but I don’t know what yet.” That’s one reason Cuomo’s opponents are now push-polling voters, looking for the most productive opening: I got a call on Sunday asking whether calling him a “bully” or “scandal-plagued” changed my view.
Perhaps the variety of attacks chips away at Cuomo’s lead. Yet the size of the current field could work in his favor, diffusing campaign money, union endorsements, and media attention, and making it more difficult for any one or two opponents to gain traction. Ana Maria Archila, a codirector of the progressive Working Families Party, tells me she doesn’t believe it is necessary for the field to coalesce, at least this soon, behind any particular anti-Cuomos, because the math of ranked-choice voting will do that job in June.
The theory makes some sense; the actual campaign reality is harder to envision, with Cuomo positioning himself as the experienced centrist against a group of radical left-wing amateurs. That’s why some of the more establishment members of the Stop Cuomo movement are dismayed by the buzz around Zohran Mamdani, a state assemblyman from Queens. Mamdani has created a deft social media presence; he’s also a democratic socialist. “He’s a problem for our side,” a mainstream operative says. “He can’t win because he’s so far left, but he’s really clever at getting attention.”
The polls are unlikely to shift much until about six weeks from primary day, when the candidates launch the bulk of their paid advertising and voters focus their attention. Meanwhile, Myrie is working diligently on raising money and building name recognition: After we’re done, he will sit down with a high school newspaper reporter.
“My father wanted me to have a first name that would sound good on television, because he thought I was going to be a professional football player,” Myrie says with a laugh. “I am grateful still that I was given a unique name.” With Cuomo sucking up most of the media oxygen, Myrie and the other contenders are going to need every asset they can muster.
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