Andrew Cuomo’s Struggles Are A Blaring Alarm For The Democratic Establishment

On Friday morning, the man who made Joe Biden the 2020 Democratic presidential nominee weighed in on another contentious Democratic primary. Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.), 84 years old and no longer the assistant leader of the Democratic Party in the House of Representatives, endorsed former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo for mayor of New York City.

In his statement, Clyburn praised Cuomo — who a state investigation found sexually harassed 11 women during a decade-long tenure as governor, and who has spent tens of millions of taxpayer dollars fighting those allegations — for his “character.” He said the 67-year-old Cuomo, as mayor, would be “uniquely positioned to play an important role in the future of the national Democratic Party.”

Cuomo should not need Clyburn’s endorsement, nor that of former President Bill Clinton, who chimed in on his behalf on Sunday. He has the name identification one can only earn from being the son of a former governor and then winning five terms in statewide office in his own right. He has a massive financial advantage: His campaign and allied super PACs, flush with more than $8 million from former mayor and billionaire media mogul Michael Bloomberg, have spent more on television ads than the rest of the sprawling field combined.

Other powerful members of New York’s political establishment have offered their consent primarily in the form of silence. Sens. Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand have said little, even though Gillibrand pushed for Cuomo’s resignation as the sexual harassment allegations against him mounted. “This is a country that believes in second chances,” she recently told a local television station.

But in the closing days of the race, it’s clear Cuomo, weighed down by years of scandals over his management of the coronavirus pandemic and corruption in state government, might blow his second chance. While he is still a narrow favorite to pick up the Democratic Party’s nomination on Tuesday night, his race has turned into a dogfight with 33-year-old democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani, who has focused his campaign relentlessly on the cost of living.

Mamdani does have his own famous family — his mother is an Oscar-nominated filmmaker — but has a mere two terms in the state assembly under his belt. He also brings his own baggage, in the form of far-left positions on contentious issues like policing and Israel. That this race is close at all is a blaring alarm for establishment Democrats, especially the party’s most comfortable and sclerotic. If it’s happening to Cuomo, it can happen to them.

Looking to New York City’s mayoral race for insights about the national political mood is typically a fool’s errand. Utterly unlike the rest of the country in everything from racial breakdown to population density to ideology, the better year-after-the-presidential-race markers are traditionally the Virginia and New Jersey governors’ races.

This year, however, scrutinizing the Democratic gubernatorial primaries in New Jersey and Virginia, won respectively by Reps. Mikie Sherrill and Abigail Spanberger, would not provide you with an amazing array of insights into the mood of the Democratic electorate. Democratic voters like pro-choice suburban women with a background in national security? Groundbreaking.

And what you can see in New York City is all of the Democratic establishment’s problems at once: an unwillingness to cut one of their own loose, no matter how old or scandal-plagued; a lack of bold ideas; a tendency to panic and scramble to prevent potential leftist wins rather than working to appeal to the party’s liberal base voters in the first place. If Cuomo loses, the moderate establishment will have only itself to blame.

“Establishment Democrats, writ large, could not imagine anyone else besides the person they know as mayor,” said Amanda Litman, co-founder of Run For Something, the well-known progressive PAC helping young people run for office. “There was a whole field of other non-Zohran candidates they could have gotten behind six months ago. It’s such a failure of imagination and a misread of this moment.”

Those alternative candidates, ranging from movement progressive City Comptroller Brad Lander to a market-oriented liberal like state Sen. Zellnor Myrie to a still-quite-establishment candidate like City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, were all available and eager to accept endorsements that never really came. Any of the above could have appealed to the New York City portion of the 62% of Democrats nationally who want to replace their existing party leadership.

Instead, a member of the old guard claimed the frontrunner mantle easily, and now Democratic moderates are scrambling to prevent Mamdani’s nomination. Beyond Bloomberg’s millions, centrists are openly worrying about how a left-winger in charge of the nation’s cultural and financial capital could harm the party’s brand.

Third Way, a centrist think tank, released a memo on Friday warning that Mamdani’s membership in the Democratic Socialists of America could link Democrats to unpopular left-wing ideas like defunding the police, drastic cuts to military spending, ending deportations and even the abolishment of the Senate.

“A Mamdani win for such a high-profile office would be a devastating blow in the fight to defeat Trumpism. It does not take much imagination or political acumen to see how the DSA ideas could be weaponized against Democrats everywhere,” the group wrote. “Republican attack ads in swing districts attaching moderate Democratic candidates to Mamdani and the DSA practically write themselves.”

Third Way is undoubtedly correct that Mamdani will be grist for the GOP attack mill. But in a press call, Third Way Executive Vice President Matt Bennett was not eager to defend or promote Cuomo when asked if he worried about Cuomo’s scandals harming the national Democratic Party brand.

“I don’t want to get into Cuomo and whether he is or isn’t a good candidate for New York. We take no position on that whatsoever,” he said. “I will point out the things that you noted are personal to him and very hard to connect to other Democrats in ways that it’s much simpler to connect a set of ideas to other Democrats.”

(A sign of how drained of energy and ideas Cuomo’s campaign is: While the buzzy Abundance movement is designed for a moderate candidate to pick up and run with its ideas, Mamdani has done far more to engage with it than the former governor has.)

The time for choosing may not actually be over: Thanks to New York’s fusion ballot system, it’s possible both Cuomo and Mamdani could run all the way through to a November election in which the city’s incumbent mayor, the deathly unpopular Eric Adams, will be running as an independent. And there will be more contentious primary challenges to come.

Litman, whose group has received interest from more than 50,000 people hoping to run for office since Trump’s second presidential victory, said Mamdani’s campaign, fueled by viral moments like walking the length of Manhattan on Friday night, is almost certain to inspire more primary challenges.

“If Zohran even comes close, it’s going to inspire a whole new wave,” Litman said. But she noted the next bloc of candidates won’t automatically share Mamdani’s left-wing belief system.

“I don’t think it’s going to be as clearly ideological,” she said. “They’re going to be about a way of communicating and a way of thinking about what is possible.”

In one of his final media appearances in a campaign full of them, Mamdani was on the popular social media series Subway Takes — a show where Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris somehow managed to botch her appearance — where he had a chance to fend off Cuomo’s attacks on public safety and taxes. The host, Kareem Rahma, ended the appearance not with praise of Mamdani’s leftist ideology, but with a simple plea: “Let’s try something new.”

The Democratic Party might want to listen.