Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo is officially running for New York City mayor.
Cuomo, 67, whose sharp rise to national prominence during the COVID pandemic preceded his stunning resignation amid a series of sexual harassment claims, officially launched his mayoral bid Saturday after months of flirting with a return to electoral politics.
In a video posted to X Cuomo said New York City is in crisis.
“You feel it when you walk down the street and try not to make eye contact with a mentally ill homeless person, or when the anxiety rises up in your chest as you’re walking down into the subway,” he said. “You see it in the empty storefronts, the graffiti, the grime, the migrant influx to random violence, the city just feels threatening, out of control and in crisis.”
“Today it is necessary to launch a bold action plan to turn New York City around, to save our city,” he added.
Cuomo becomes an instant contender in a crowded Democratic primary field that includes incumbent Mayor Eric Adams and a slew of challengers from the left, many of whom have spent months sharpening their attacks against both the incumbent mayor and the former governor.
The Queens native is attempting his political comeback in the city where he was born and raised but hadn’t lived since the 1990s. Last year, he changed his voting address to an apartment in Manhattan, further fueling speculation he was eying a mayoral run.
During his decade as governor from 2011 to 2021, he racked up a slew of accomplishments that include shepherding the passage of New York’s same-sex marriage law and codifying Roe v. Wade abortion rights into state law. He often made a point of focusing on large-scale infrastructure projects, like building a new Tappan Zee Bridge (and renaming it for his father) and overhauling LaGuardia Airport.
But his downfall was brought on by a series of scandals that are sure to follow him through his campaign.
That includes the sexual-harassment allegations from a number of women, including several who worked for him in the governor’s office. Among them were an aide who accused Cuomo of groping her under her shirt after he summoned her to the Executive Mansion in Albany to perform a task; another, who was in her 20s, claimed Cuomo asked her repeated, invasive questions about her personal life, including whether she had ever been with an older man.
Cuomo’s August 2021 resignation came a week after a report, issued by private attorneys selected by state Attorney General Letitia James, concluded he sexually harassed 11 different women. The former governor denies ever harassing anyone and has claimed the report was politically motivated by James, who briefly ran for governor after Cuomo’s resignation.
At the time, the governor was also dogged by questions over his administration’s efforts to conceal the true number of nursing home residents who died of COVID during the early days of the pandemic, as well as ethics complaints about his use of gubernatorial staff to help write a pandemic-era book that earned him $5 million.
The book deal remains the subject of inquiry by the state ethics board — which Cuomo sued to invalidate, but the state’s top court rejected his claim. Cuomo continues to face civil lawsuits from two of his harassment accusers, including Brittany Commisso, the former aide who says he groped her.
Opinion polls — largely conducted by private consultants, including some working for other mayoral hopefuls — have shown Cuomo with a lead over the rest of the field ahead of the June primary. The former governor has been boosted in part by his near-universal name recognition alongside a slew of lesser-known candidates aside from Adams, whose own polling was anemic even before he was charged with federal bribery offenses last year.
Aside from Cuomo and Adams, those running for the Democratic nod are city Comptroller Brad Lander, former Comptroller Scott Stringer, state Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani, and state Sens. Jessica Ramos and Zellnor Myrie, among others.
Cuomo’s critics pounced within minutes of his long anticipated announcement.
“New Yorkers don’t need one disgraced elected official vying to replace another, said New York Working Families Party co-directors, Jasmine Gripper and Ana María Archila, in a statement. “Andrew Cuomo could fill a book with all of his scandals. Then again, he’d probably need one of his staffers to write it for him.”
Erica Vladimer, co-founder of the Sexual Harassment Working Group, said in statement that Cuomo’s run is an “insult to all New Yorkers” and accused him of being “cut from the same cloth” as President Donald Trump.
“[He’s] just another corrupt politician who harasses women, abuses public trust and looks out only for himself,” she said.
Stringer reminded people of the subway “Summer of Hell,” accusing Cuomo of “slashing MTA funding and wrecking the subway.”
Myrie said, “We deserve better than selfish leaders who spent decades in office putting their desire for power above New Yorkers’ needs.”
In a December interview with Gothamist, Mamdani said he was taking a potential Cuomo run “quite seriously.”
“So many of the crises we are facing today are ones that [Cuomo] created, ones that he sowed over many years of a government that mixed a commitment to incompetence with brutality,” Mamdani said.
Adams had been awaiting trial on charges that he accepted lavish travel perks and campaign contributions from Turkish nationals who leaned on him for favors. But on Feb. 10, the Trump-led Department of Justice ordered federal prosecutors in Manhattan to dismiss the case, arguing that it was brought too close to the 2025 election and interfering with the mayor’s ability to carry out Trump’s immigration crackdown.
The Justice Department order led to the resignation of several prosecutors, including Danielle Sassoon, acting U.S. Attorney for New York’s Southern District.
Adams has brushed off the early polling that has shown Cuomo with a lead in the race, noting that he was down in the polls ahead of his eventual win in 2021, too.
On Jan. 22, Adams told The Reset Talk Show that he’s unconcerned about Cuomo entering the race.
“Listen, I don’t know about any of you, but God is still in charge,” the mayor said on the streaming show. “And if God wants me to be the mayor, whatever God wants for you, no man can take away.”
His campaign was not among those to immediately weigh in Saturday.
Cuomo, who was a prolific campaign fundraiser as governor, had more than $7.7 million in his gubernatorial campaign account as of mid-January. But he won’t be able to use much of that on his mayoral campaign, which is subject to more restrictive campaign finance rules.
The mayoral primary election is set for June 24.
This story has been updated with additional information.
