NEW YORK — Andrew Cuomo is pitching himself as the only New York City mayoral candidate competent enough to manage a sprawling bureaucracy. A series of campaign trail missteps, on top of serious questions about his handling of Covid and infrastructure projects, threaten to undermine his case.
In recent weeks, the frontrunner in the Democratic primary botched paperwork that cost him millions of dollars in public matching funds, misspelled the names of two labor leaders in a press release about their endorsements of Cuomo and issued a housing plan with typos that critics also seized on for its ChatGPT-fueled research. The former governor’s team blamed those mistakes on voice technology used by a staffer who is missing an arm.
The hiccups belie the competency Cuomo is trying to evince. And they compound blemishes in his much-touted Albany record — from his handling of Covid nursing home policies that critics blame for thousands of undercounted deaths, to an underfunded mass transit system that is in disrepair. Along with a close examination of his gubernatorial record, it all paints a picture of a candidate who — despite dominating the mayoral race — has a history of significant managerial gaps that contradict his self-styled leadership image. And it comes at a time when voters are thirsting for a strong executive in City Hall, following a period of chaos under Mayor Eric Adams.
“It’s always about what’s going to get him a good headline than what’s going to solve the problem,” said former Syracuse Mayor Stephanie Miner, a former Cuomo ally-turned-foe. “His goals are always transactional and short term. True leaders in the civic arena think in long terms about solving problems.”
Problems lurked beneath the surface of many of Cuomo’s signature accomplishments.
He muscled through a replacement of the Tappan Zee Bridge with a $3.9 billion span crossing the Hudson River that fully opened in 2018. He wanted to name the new bridge for his late father, three-term governor Mario Cuomo, which state lawmakers acquiesced to — turning the already significant project into a legacy achievement with familial overtones. The bridge opened with ceremonial flourish: the younger Cuomo was among the first to drive over it behind the wheel of a Packard convertible used by Franklin Roosevelt.
But as the governor steered the vintage automobile over the bridge, behind the scenes things were less rosy. Structural problems — which state officials were aware of — plagued several stages of construction that preceded Cuomo’s celebratory ride. Bolts popped off girders as they were being assembled at an upstate port. And in some cases, they had snapped off the bridge itself. New York officials conducted a slow investigation of the contractor, following the less-than-ideal incidents. The state Assembly would later use the controversy as grist for a broader Cuomo impeachment probe.
“This was one of the largest and most ambitious infrastructure projects in the nation and it was done on time and on budget at a time when no project in the nation could say the same and the safety of the span has never been in question,” Cuomo spokesperson Rich Azzopardi said. “There’s a dispute between a contractor and the state that is in court, but it would be deranged to try to spin this as anything other than the success it is.”
Cuomo’s aggressive press strategy, his fundraising appeal, his near-universal name recognition and New Yorkers’ collective memory of his award-winning daily Covid briefings have overwhelmed the rest of the Democratic field, allowing him to insist he is leading solely on competency.
That image — owed to big infrastructure accomplishments, a tightly-controlled state Capitol and major legislative successes during his Albany tenure — is central to Cuomo’s identity as a leader. His team has asserted his consistent polling advantage is based on his reputation as an effective manager, but as he vies to oversee the nation’s largest school district, trash collection operation and police force, he is glossing over his mistakes and betting voters won’t remember.
Asked for comment on this story, Cuomo’s campaign pointed to the former governor’s long list of accomplishments — the legalization of same-sex marriage, tighter gun control laws and a paid family leave measure. Azzopardi also credited Cuomo for having “built infrastructure projects that had languished for decades,” like Moynihan Train Hall, the completion of the Second Avenue Subway, the new LaGuardia Airport — and the Mario Cuomo Bridge.
The 67-year-old Cuomo often casts his younger, lesser-known opponents as too inexperienced to lead New York City, touting his own decades-long governmental career working for his father, as state attorney general and as the top housing official in President Bill Clinton’s administration.
He’s also banking on New Yorkers valuing that experience enough that they’re willing to set aside the long list of controversies that drove him from office.
Cuomo became governor in 2011, inheriting a state government widely considered to be in disarray. Through his tough negotiating style, he quickly racked up a series of budget victories during a financial crisis and got state spending under control.
But by 2021, he was resigning in scandal, after the state attorney general issued a report concluding Cuomo sexually harassed 11 women. He was also beset by Covid-related controversies that engulfed his administration for a year.
He now denies all wrongdoing, and hopes voters think of him as a hard-charging executive who was able to effectively twist arms and win tough fights. That framing was apparent in his 17-and-a-half-minute campaign launch video, which touted a host of accomplishments and condemned New York City’s “crisis in leadership.”
Adams was under indictment at the time for a federal corruption case that a judge has since dismissed, at the behest of the Trump administration.
“I know government can make a positive difference — because we did,” Cuomo said in the video. “Was it easy? No. But together we achieved historic progressive accomplishments. We did things they say couldn’t be done.”
Implicit in his claims and resumé is Cuomo’s belief that he alone is suited to stand up to President Donald Trump, whom he has known for decades.
Like Trump, Cuomo is loath to acknowledge substantive mistakes during his decade-long reign in Albany. When asked in March to list his biggest errors, the ex-governor ignored the sexual harassment accusations or his Covid controversies, and instead said he regretted not providing more police funding while in office.
For those who have worked for and against Cuomo over the years, the ex-governor’s leadership mystique can quickly fall apart when his record, feuds and micromanaging style are scrutinized.
“His managerial skills are not as great as he wants you to believe,” said Karen Hinton, a press secretary for Cuomo foe, former Mayor Bill de Blasio.
Take the pandemic, a global crisis that made Cuomo a national political celebrity and stoked speculation of a presidential run. He won an Emmy for his daily televised briefings and received a $5 million contract for a book on “leadership lessons” learned during Covid. Then the Emmy was rescinded and the book became impeachment fodder, with a probe concluding Cuomo used staffers to help him write it.
Perhaps more critical to his management argument is his administration’s requirement that nursing homes not turn away Covid patients, which quickly came under scrutiny and was blamed for unnecessary deaths across the state. A GOP-controlled House panel this week urged the Trump Justice Department to prosecute Cuomo for lying to Congress as part of an investigation into those nursing home policies.
The ex-governor has denied any wrongdoing and condemned House Republicans for politicizing the controversy.
New York spent more than $450 million on Covid-related equipment, including ventilators and oxygen tanks that were purchased in 2020, but a recent report from Democratic state Comptroller Tom DiNapoli found only three items were used. The rest remain in their original packaging in a warehouse and were never distributed, according to DiNapoli’s audit. Cuomo’s campaign said states were pitted against each other for medical supplies and the dash for equipment was part of a life-saving governmental response.
And POLITICO reported in March that as governor, Cuomo withheld vaccine doses from a Citi Field distribution facility championed by de Blasio, the former governor’s longtime rival. A Cuomo campaign spokesperson denied the state held back the doses and blamed a national shortage.
“Cuomo really ignored the professionals in the state health department and brought in outsiders to basically run the state’s response,” said Dick Gottfried, a Democrat who chaired the Assembly Health Committee.
Cuomo’s Democratic primary opponents have tried to turn the former governor’s managerial reputation against him, but they’ve struggled to break through. He continues to lead every poll, vacuum up endorsements — including from people who once called on him to resign — and amass campaign cash.
One of his opponents, New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, has blamed him for underfunding mass transit, leading to a so-called “summer of hell” on the city’s subways. He’s also lambasted him for closing psychiatric hospitals that he said fueled a homelessness problem.
“Cuomo’s history of abusing everyone under him while making decisions only to serve his own personal ambitions is the opposite of good management and the last thing New Yorkers need right now,” Lander said.
In response, Azzopardi said, “New Yorkers know Andrew Cuomo and his record, and won’t be influenced by campaign tactics of a group of unqualified, unaccomplished career politicians throwing everything they can at the wall to see what sticks.” Operational funding for the MTA grew by $2.4 billion annually during Cuomo’s tenure, Azzopardi said.
Joe Lhota, a former Metropolitan Transportation Authority chair under Cuomo and a one-time Republican mayoral candidate, called the attacks on the former governor’s mass transit record “revisionist history.”
“The governor opened up the Second Avenue subway; he found a way to fix the tunnels under the East River without shutting down,” he said in an interview.
But Cuomo has never run in a local-level election before, and despite leading the static race, cracks in his armor have started to form.
Following the campaign cash mishap, his team must now wait until May 12 to receive the millions of dollars in matching funds, presuming it makes no further errors.
Cuomo’s operation also blamed a “fast-paced campaign” for the typographical errors in a housing policy document, which was later corrected.
While his campaign brushed the recent blunders aside, image is paramount to the former governor. Cuomo is preoccupied with how his leadership skills are viewed and puts a clear premium on optics. In a 2014 memoir, he described a Norman Vincent Peale-like positive thinking that can be used to will something into being.
“Creating the perception of competence is one way to build real competence,” he wrote in the book “All Things Possible.” “Belief in yourself, in turn, can shape reality.”