Can Cuomo win? Despite daunting odds, he's barnstorming the five boroughs in bid to be NYC mayor

Andrew M. Cuomo's victory in the 2025 New York City mayoral race was a fait accompli, until suddenly, and shockingly, it wasn't.

Once polling double digits ahead of every challenger, the 67-year-old former governor is now, with just weeks until Election Day, polling double digits behind the Democratic nominee, Zohran Mamdani, a 33-year-old democratic socialist whose first and only job in elected office started five years ago.

But Cuomo's daunting odds, and decisive defeat in the primary, aren't deterring him from trying.

Since declaring in July he'd run as an independent, Cuomo has been barnstorming across the five boroughs, welcoming media questions, demanding additional faceoffs with his chief opponent, appearing more in public and mounting a pugilistic social media strategy — all of which he shunned during the Democratic primary, when he ran a rose garden campaign.

But can he win, or even come close? Is there hope in the waning five weeks to outmaneuver Mamdani, who bested Cuomo in the primary by nearly 13 percentage points?

After the publication of this story online on Friday, Cuomo spokesman Rich Azzopardi sent a statement: "Andrew Cuomo is fighting for every vote and will put his record of results and his ambitious agenda to make New York a safer and more affordable place against Mamdani's unworkable bumper sticker slogans any day."

Azzopardi declined to make Cuomo available for an interview.

Skeptical of chances

The political establishment is skeptical of Cuomo's chances.

Democratic strategist Trip Yang said perhaps the only shot Cuomo has is if incumbent Eric Adams, who is also running as an independent, and Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa both drop out — and both have so far balked at doing that.

Bradley Tusk, whose namesake firm helped Cuomo during the primary and who was a senior adviser during Mike Bloomberg's mayoralty, cannot see a likely path to victory.

"He tried to orchestrate getting Adams and Sliwa out of the race. That might have changed things if he succeeded, but he didn't," Tusk said of Cuomo.

"He would have to take a totally different approach to campaigning," Tusk said.

"He is a very skilled politician but also a very conventional one. He has been doing this in one form or another for nearly 50 years," starting with his father, former Gov. Mario M. Cuomo, Tusk said, adding that much of what Cuomo values isn't very important anymore, such as endorsements from elected officials and advertisements on local television stations.

The types of voters who are likely to go for Cuomo are older white ethnics, Black women who are middle-aged and older, Orthodox Jews, older Korean, Chinese and Southeast Asian voters and Upper East Side residents, Tusk said.

What would Cuomo need to do to win with more voters?

Tusk said Cuomo would need to put out "a proactive agenda that really resonates with New Yorkers."

Mamdani's message

Mamdani's agenda is to make New York City more affordable — freezing rents on regulated apartments, making public buses fast and free, providing government-funded child care, opening municipal supermarkets and more.

Mamdani's message has resonated with voters who find New York City less and less affordable except for the very rich. Mamdani has expanded the electorate beyond who voted in previous elections. To fund his promised social programs, Mamdani has called for tax hikes on the richest New Yorkers and big corporations. At campaign rallies with supporters, Mamdani has led call-and-response chants about his platform with his enthusiastic crowds.

For his part, Cuomo, a longtime political operative, former housing secretary, attorney general and governor, said he is the only candidate in the race who can actually deliver instead of merely trotting out what he considers to be empty slogans.

"Whether you think he can execute it or not, Zohran's affordability agenda resonates," Tusk said. "If Cuomo has something proactive like that, I don't know what it is."

One of Cuomo's approaches has been to say he is best suited to stop Mamdani — whom Cuomo considers a radical, inexperienced and unqualified naif — from winning.

That approach, Tusk said, just isn't enough.

"He would have to make a positive case for how he sees NYC and can move it forward and not just that he's the only way to stop Zohran. That approach didn't work in the primary and it's not going to suffice now either," Tusk said.

Policy researcher Eli Miller, also skeptical that Cuomo has a likely shot, wrote that a cascade of "Cuominos" need to fall "in a neat, orderly line for the Cuomo campaign to rise from the dead," including Cuomo marshaling a first-rate get-out-the-vote operation, while the tens of thousands of Mamdani volunteers, the ones who helped him win the primary, stay at home.

NYC's Democratic voters

The vast majority of the city's voters are Democrats, Yang noted, and the vast majority of Democrats reflexively vote for Democrats. Mamdani has been picking up momentum and the endorsement of mainstream Democrats, such as Gov. Kathy Hochul earlier this month and former Vice President Kamala Harris.

Yang said Cuomo would need to identify an argument that wins over voters and sinks Mamdani. Past and current attempts by Cuomo — highlighting Mamdani sponsoring a bill decriminalizing the sale and purchase of sex; his criticism of Israel; his past positions on defunding the police — have not dented Mamdani's lead.

Cuomo and supportive super PACs have tried, sinking millions of dollars. Nothing worked.

"He has to find an argument that sticks," Yang said. "None of it's really sticking. Mamdani's like Teflon in this election."

Alyssa Cass, a political consultant who worked for one of the mayoral candidates who ran against Cuomo in the primary, Scott Stringer, likewise doubts Cuomo can win.

"The path for Cuomo could only be opened if several spectacular things happened all at once: Zohran would need to implode epically on his own," Cass said.

Among the unlikely coincidences Cass articulated: The opposition would need to drop out and "very publicly" back Cuomo, such as Sliwa.

And Cuomo would need to reverse the electoral realignment that manifested in Mamdani's victory and "reignite ethnic politics to split the South Asian vote, jack up turnout in historically Italian neighborhoods, and get Trump/Mamdani voters to change the votes they just cast."

Said Yang: "He has to find something, ’cause he's running out of time."

By Matthew Chayes

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Matthew Chayes, a Newsday reporter since 2007, covers New York City.