How Did New York City Get Here?

T oday’s Democratic Party primary will most likely decide who will be the next mayor of New York City. If polls are correct, it is a two-person race between former governor Andrew Cuomo and State Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani. The race has been getting tighter in recent weeks. The city’s arcane ranked-choice voting rules add a layer of unpredictability to the results. Cuomo appears to be the favorite to win, leading many to wonder how a man who resigned as governor under a cloud of scandal fewer than four years ago now finds himself favored to become the next mayor of New York.

Cuomo has positioned himself slightly to the right of Mamdani, a self-styled Democratic Socialist from Queens and ally of Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez. The 33-year-old Mamdani is pro-Palestinian, pro–defund the police, supports rent freezes, and favors expanding city services and raising taxes. The prospect of a Mamdani mayoralty is so grim that even the New York Times editorial page urged its liberal readers not to give him any of their votes on their ranked-choice ballots. Mamdani, the editorial stated, “offers an agenda that remains alluring among elite progressives but has proved damaging to city life.” It added: “His agenda reads like a turbocharged version of Mr. de Blasio’s dismaying mayoralty.”

The Times could not bring itself to actually endorse Cuomo but admitted he would be a better choice than Mamdani. When faced with the prospect of Mamdani, Cuomo appears to be a safer pick, one with more experience and a greater knowledge of city and state government. Many New Yorkers seem willing to overlook the sexual harassment charges against Cuomo and his reputation as a bully who burns political bridges, just to avoid turning the city over to a radical like Mamdani.

The second reason Cuomo’s candidacy took off was the implosion of the administration of current mayor Eric Adams. Although he has promised to run in the November election as an independent, Adams’s political career is all but over. The city is now running on autopilot. Adams was elected four years ago as a “moderate” after eight years of the progressive Bill de Blasio, but that was a bit of a stretch. Adams has always proven to be ideologically flexible. Too much of his administration has been about public relations rather than governance.

When many of his top aides came under federal investigation and began leaving city government, attention focused on Adams’s own ethics. Last year, Adams was indicted by the feds on charges of bribery, fraud, and receiving illegal foreign donations. He was determined to continue in office despite the charges. But what killed his political career was when President Trump’s Department of Justice dropped the charges against Adams in a highly unusual move. Although Adams is now out of legal jeopardy, Trump effectively neutered Adams politically, as many Democrats wondered why Adams would receive such a gift from Trump.

In truth, New York City’s political culture has been dying for some time. After 20 years of leadership under Rudy Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg, the city has been adrift under Bill de Blasio and Adams. Although the city is hardly where it was in the 1970s, polls consistently show New Yorkers are unhappy with the way things are.

There are no more political machines — the two political parties as institutions are basically dead. And there is not even a hint of a reform movement. For much of the 20th century, governing New York went back and forth between the political machines and reformers elected to clean up the mess made by machines. It was far from a perfect system, but it provided some balance to city politics and allowed a wide variety of interest groups some say in city government. Those days are gone.

One can look back at the 1977 Democratic mayoral primary and compare it with today. Andrew’s father Mario, then secretary of state of New York, ran against Ed Koch. Both represented more moderate outer borough voters. Mayor Abe Beame was the machine candidate. Bella Abzug represented the left wing of Democratic voters. Herman Badillo represented the rising power of the city’s Puerto Rican community, while Percy Sutton was a Democratic clubhouse candidate who represented the African-American community. Compared with today’s Democratic primary, it was a veritable cast of all-stars.

The best that can be said of most of the eleven Democrats running today is that they are “low profile.” Some, like Scott Stringer and Brad Lander, have been around city politics for a while. But the fact that they have gained little traction in the race speaks to their weak political profiles.

Ideologically, the Democratic field is a progressive monochrome. Hedge fund manager Whitney Tilson is the moderate in the race but has been scraping by in the low single digits. Cuomo does not identify as a moderate and has no desire to run or govern as one. Instead, he is seeking to reclaim the liberal mantle from the woke left, no doubt trying to fulfill the unfinished legacy of his father, Mario.

When Andrew Cuomo was elected governor, he sought out center-right voices. But as the political center of the Democratic Party moved to the left, Cuomo found himself appeasing progressive Democrats in the legislature. Today, Cuomo’s campaign looks little different from Bill de Blasio’s mayoralty. Cuomo is in favor of universal pre-K. While Mamdani calls for an increase in the minimum wage to $30/hour, Cuomo sets his rate at only $20/hour.

While Cuomo had criticized the defund the police movement, his campaign has been relatively quiet regarding crime and disorder. He has made it clear that if elected, he will become a leading critic of the Trump administration. While Mamdani appeals to younger, college-educated progressives, Cuomo’s base seems to be more mainstream liberal Democrats, including African Americans. It remains to be seen whether Cuomo has the will to directly challenge the city’s progressive Democrats, who have a stranglehold on the city council. As with most American cities, the center of political gravity in New York has shifted significantly to the left as more-moderate voters move out and are replaced by younger, more-educated, and more-progressive voters.

Whoever wins today’s primary will face off against Adams as an independent and Curtis Sliwa as the Republican — although there is a chance that if either Cuomo or Mamdani loses, they could also run as third-party candidates. Adams is dead politically. Sliwa could not break 30 percent of the vote in 2021 and is unlikely to do much better this year. The likelihood is that the next mayor of New York will be some variation of progressive Democrat, which means it is likely the city will continue drifting along the path it has been traveling for the last decade.