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What A Surprise (NOT)! Cuomo To Remain In Race For NYC Mayor. Thinks He Will Do Better In General. [1]
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Date: 2025-06-27
In what should come as NO SURPRISE to anyone, Andrew Cuomo is not removing his name from the ballot for the NYC Mayor’s race this fall.
Andrew Cuomo will not drop out of the New York City mayoral race by the Friday deadline to remove himself from the general election ballot, sources tell CNN. That leaves in place contingency plans he had established before the Democratic primary to challenge Zohran Mamdani and incumbent Mayor Eric Adams in November. The former New York governor, who quickly conceded the Democratic primary race on Tuesday night to Mamdani, has not fully committed to running an active campaign through the summer and fall. But Cuomo will keep the place he already secured on the “Fight & Deliver” ballot line for the November election, three sources say. Cuomo is calculating that the full city’s electorate would be significantly different from Democratic primary voters who were energized by Mamdani’s focus on affordability and his campaign’s online videos. His camp also believes Mamdani and his policy ideas, from a rent freeze to city-operated grocery stores, will receive increased scrutiny now that Mamdani is positioned to secure a Democratic primary win once ranked-choice votes are allocated next week.
The arrogant prick never ceases to pass on an opportunity to be a prick. One of the reasons why NYC Democratic voters didn’t fall over in a dead faint or throw roses at Cuomo’s feet when he first announced to run for mayor is that it’s not a great secret that Cuomo wants to use the NYC mayor’s office as a platform for higher office. In other words, Cuomo needs a gig to keep his name circulating to run for the U.S. Senate or president.
Anyone think he would do a great job as mayor, or maybe he’d be too busy stumping in say New Hampshire for 2028?
And the Democratic political establishment along with all those wealthy Wall Street donors are desperate to keep Mamdani from becoming mayor. I’ve seen this movie before. This is the stunt that Joe Lieberman pulled in 2006 after he lost the Democratic Primary for U.S. Senate in CT. All the Senate Democrats campaigned for him as a supposed “independent.” He won the general, and remained a petty, vindictive bastard who made Obama and Senate Democrats pay for what CT Democratic primary voters did to him.
We don’t have the public option as part of the ACA thanks to the now deceased Joe Lieberman. It was what Lieberman vowed to kill if it remained as part of the ACA. Remember all the Senate Republican banned to together to filibuster the ACA. And Senate Democrats removed the public option to pass a more conservative health insurance reform bill.
And Andrew Cuomo is EXACTLY like Joe Lieberman. A CENTRIST! NOT A MODERATE! A CORPORATE SHILL WITH A DEMOCRATIC LABEL!
And Sharon Jones of the New Yorker Magazine does an even deeper dive down memory lane to remind all of us of how bad Andrew Cuomo was and still is.
Zohran Mamdani has vanquished a demon. I am being somewhat literal. You do not have to believe in a supernatural definition of evil to feel, as I do, that there is something devilish about politicians such as Andrew Cuomo. Nothing about his time in public office suggests that he has ever felt empathy. When COVID struck, his capacity for self-interest allowed him to put on a show of pragmatism. He could deliver a televised briefing in credible style, and as Republicans spun out, grasping at conspiracies, his apparent respect for the tenets of science earned him a reputation that was always greater than his actual performance. Lingua Franca sold a “Cuomosexual” sweatshirt for hundreds of dollars. On Etsy, I saw mugs that said, “Shhh, I’m watching Cuomo.” Donald Trump was in power. The bar for competence had fallen so low that it plunged into hell, where Cuomo, snakelike, crawled over it. For Cuomo, the virus was a magnificent opportunity. The shock of COVID briefly eclipsed his cynicism and its consequences for the people of New York. He was a centrist star with an enviable national profile. Hardly anyone seemed to remember — or care — that he first ran for governor on a pledge to break organized labor or that he’d once opposed attempts to raise the city’s minimum wage and raise taxes on the rich. His active involvement with the Independent Democratic Conference, which was composed of Democratic lawmakers who caucused with Republicans in Albany, had faded from view along with its sins. Before the IDC dissolved in 2018, it blocked major liberal priorities like the codification of Roe v. Wade, all with Cuomo’s help. The Cuomosexual could and did ignore a lot, but her idol was unable to hide his true nature for long. In December 2020, sexual-harassment allegations hit the press, earning him the eventual condemnation of state and national Democrats. He resigned less than a year later, after Attorney General Letitia James released a 168-page report that substantiated the women’s claims. The report found that he cupped a state employee’s breast, rubbed the back of a female state trooper, and told another young woman that he was “lonely and wanted to be touched.” (Cuomo has denied all wrongdoing.) By then, we’d learned that he had covered up thousands of nursing-home deaths at the height of the pandemic. The following months and years only damaged him further, or so it initially seemed. He abused state resources to fulfill a lucrative book deal with Penguin Random House. He sued the women who accused of him of sexual harassment, which cost taxpayers millions, and his attorneys demanded their gynecological records and therapy notes. Then he decided to inflict his presence on New York City again, and centrist Democrats lined up to support him.
And she points out the blatant hypocrisy of all those establishment Democrats like Senator Kirsten Gillenbrand who led the charge to kick Senator Al Franken out of the U.S. Senate. Gillenbrand also called for Cuomo to resign as governor. BUT SHE ENDORSED CUOMO FOR MAYOR OF NYC A FEW YEARS LATER!
And here is a list of other former critics of Cuomo while governor who switched and wanted him to be mayor.
It’s a nauseating list and an indictment of the intellectual and moral bankruptcy of the Democratic establishment.
Andrew Cuomo and those in Democratic establishment who support him are perfect examples of why many voters have turned their backs on the Democratic Party.
Why am I going on so much about Cuomo? It’s because he is the poster boy for how we ended up with the likes of Trump and his fellow fascists. Centrists like Cuomo walked hand in hand with conservative Republicans to create the greatest income inequality we have seen in generations. And while conservative Republicans were creating another Guilded Age for their billionaire buddies, these same actors were using racism and bigotry to deflect and cover for their policies.
Conservative Republicans will tell you, “You’re life is hard? It’s because “those people” are stealing your money or taking your job!” Economic decline for many doesn’t create racism, but it sure as hell acts as an accelerant for hatred of those different from yourself.
And no, it’s not all Cuomo’s fault. Centrists like Lieberman and Bill Clinton helped deregulate the banks. They also passed provisions that protected big accounting firms from being sued by shareholders when a CEO or corporate board were cooking the books, like with ENRON. Clinton was and still is a big believer in free trade, which is now pissed on by MAGA followers and progressives alike. Senator Harry Reid led the charge to make it easier for big companies to declare bankruptcy, but the little guy who owes the credit card companies had to pay up big with “bankruptcy reform.”
Oh, and centrism came up with the 1994 Crime Bill which ended up locking up lots of young black men. Nothing like throwing a bunch of colored men under the bus. It was only years later that Clinton said, “Oops!”
When Andrew Cuomo came along, he was still riding that centrist wave that others in the Democratic Party had adopted as mantra.
And like some damn zombie, centrism will not die. It will kill everyone else in the room with it though. Think about the political wipeouts we have had these many decades. We had the 1994 and 2010 midterms. Both occured under centrist Democratic presidents. Democrats took a beating at all levels of government, and it allowed the Republicans to gerrymander many of the congressional districts. Hell, it allowed them to do the same at the state level too.
If centrism was so damn popular, why are Democrats fighting for our political lives?
What helps those assholes out is the corrupt campaign finance system and the fact that Democrats never adapted their campaign strategies to reach out to voters using social media. Despite all that money, we still have no bothered to build up a communication system to combat the disinformation systems (Fox, Facebook, Twitter, right wing podcasters...etc) built by the likes of Murdoch, Zuckerberg, and now Elon Musk.
Progressives and even moderates are not able to get their messages out, unless they get inventive and hustle for voters where they are at. It’s easy for the likes of Cuomo to spend millions of dollars on ads that lie because Bloomberg and other economic elites will gladly pay for the advertising. In fact, it’s what Cuomo is counting on for the general election.
And Cuomo is supposed to be the voice of the downtrodden NYC voter? He has real plans to deal with the cost of living in NYC? What are they? We won’t know because Cuomo will be too busy attacking Mamdani’s ideas.
Sorry folks for the long diatribe, but I’ve had it with Democratic establishment. And it’s made me extremely grumpy.
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