I’ve never won an argument with Andrew Cuomo. When Bill de Blasio wanted to raise New York City’s minimum wage, Cuomo argued it was the selfish act of a mayor more interested in campaigning than governing and that it would create economic havoc if low-wage workers in the city earned more than those in Nassau and Westchester. I was a loyal staffer so I nodded along and repeated his arguments everywhere I went. Cuomo was always brilliant at convincing you why someone else was wrong.
The closing argument he’s making in his campaign for mayor is far less subtle. Cuomo’s vision for New York City isn’t about ideas or purpose. It has no philosophy, no cause, no promise of what he will do. It’s about making New Yorkers afraid of Zohran Mamdani. Because he’s young. Because his ideas are new. And now, most shamefully, because he’s a Muslim New Yorker.
There’s a cold logic behind this. Even in the friendliest polls, Cuomo has the smallest enthusiastic base of any candidate. Curtis Sliwa has more people excited to vote for him. Cuomo’s only shot is patching together enough voters who fear or despise his opponent enough to accept him by default. He has nothing to offer for the future, just a cynical warning that we cannot trust it to someone else.
When de Blasio became mayor, I was one of the few Cuomo staffers in the room who had worked for both men, and I was genuinely excited at first. They were both brilliant, demanding and difficult. I thought their powers combined might solve New York’s most intractable problems.
Instead, Cuomo’s first instinct was to tear de Blasio down. There was no tempering his anger. The universal pre-K plan was naïve, he said. His tax proposal was a disaster. There are many moments I wish I could say pushed back. But I followed along, convinced New York City couldn’t be trusted in de Blasio’s hands. Cuomo needed to be in control.
But what really hurt New York wasn’t the mayor’s policies, it was the endless fighting. Agencies stopped coordinating. We treated the city as an enemy. It was dumb. It was wrong. But we all saw the world through Cuomo’s eyes.
The best description of this gift comes from Walter Isaacson, who wrote about Steve Jobs’ “reality distortion field” — the power to make others believe the impossible through sheer force of will. Cuomo had it. For more than two terms, it worked. He wielded power with more effect and less opposition than anyone since Robert Moses. His imprint is everywhere: tunnels, bridges, train stations, airports.
But that same need to control has brought him here: stuck in a race he’s unlikely to win, for a job he never really wanted. And that’s because Cuomo can see everyone’s faults but his own. He doesn’t show humility. He rarely apologizes. And if you never admit mistakes, you never learn from them. You never evolve.
Ambition can move mountains, but it can also alienate you from the world you’re trying to shape. Cuomo’s ambition has left him unable, or unwilling, to speak to what New Yorkers actually need. He has no plan to push back on authoritarianism from Washington or make life affordable in the nation’s most expensive city.
For every diatribe launched against Mamdani or maneuver made to push Sliwa out of the race, there’s a gaping absence of solutions for New Yorkers. No ideas for lowering youth unemployment, fixing transit, or standing up to Donald Trump. His argument has narrowed to a single line: I’m the only choice you have.
That’s why his campaign feels like it’s from another era. He’s running the only playbook he knows: raise big money, blanket the airwaves, hammer his opponents. His argument isn’t about what he’ll do for voters. It’s about why they should fear the person standing in the way of his return to power.
I can’t pretend I didn’t learn from Cuomo. I did. When faced with a hard political problem, I still hear the counterargument he’d make, the one that would beat me. For years he used that gift for persuasion to do real good: marriage equality, gun safety, college education in prisons.
But now he’s using it to make New Yorkers scared of one another. As disappointing as that is to see from a leader I once admired, I don’t need to believe he’s evil to vote for someone else. That’s the kind of argument Andrew Cuomo would make.
Wing runs the political marketing firm Wingspan and previously served as Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s press secretary.
