I’ve by no means received an argument with Andrew Cuomo. When Invoice de Blasio needed to lift New York Metropolis’s minimal wage, Cuomo argued it was the egocentric act of a mayor extra keen on campaigning than governing and that it could create financial havoc if low-wage staff within the metropolis earned greater than these in Nassau and Westchester. I used to be a loyal staffer so I nodded alongside and repeated his arguments all over the place I went. Cuomo was at all times good at convincing you why another person was unsuitable.
The closing argument he’s making in his marketing campaign for mayor is much much less delicate. Cuomo’s imaginative and prescient for New York Metropolis isn’t about concepts or goal. It has no philosophy, no trigger, no promise of what he’ll do. It’s about making New Yorkers afraid of Zohran Mamdani. As a result of he’s younger. As a result of his concepts are new. And now, most shamefully, as a result of he’s a Muslim New Yorker.
There’s a chilly logic behind this. Even within the friendliest polls, Cuomo has the smallest enthusiastic base of any candidate. Curtis Sliwa has extra folks excited to vote for him. Cuomo’s solely shot is patching collectively sufficient voters who concern or despise his opponent sufficient to just accept him by default. He has nothing to supply for the long run, only a cynical warning that we can’t belief it to another person.
When de Blasio grew to become mayor, I used to be one of many few Cuomo staffers within the room who had labored for each males, and I used to be genuinely excited at first. They had been each good, demanding and troublesome. I assumed their powers mixed may clear up New York’s most intractable issues.
As a substitute, Cuomo’s first intuition was to tear de Blasio down. There was no tempering his anger. The common pre-Okay plan was naïve, he mentioned. His tax proposal was a catastrophe. There are lots of moments I want I may say pushed again. However I adopted alongside, satisfied New York Metropolis couldn’t be trusted in de Blasio’s fingers. Cuomo wanted to be in management.
However what actually damage New York wasn’t the mayor’s insurance policies, it was the limitless combating. Companies stopped coordinating. We handled the town as an enemy. It was dumb. It was unsuitable. However all of us noticed the world by Cuomo’s eyes.
The most effective description of this reward comes from Walter Isaacson, who wrote about Steve Jobs’ “actuality distortion area” — the facility to make others imagine the unimaginable by sheer pressure of will. Cuomo had it. For greater than two phrases, it labored. He wielded energy with extra impact and fewer opposition than anybody since Robert Moses. His imprint is all over the place: tunnels, bridges, practice stations, airports.
However that very same want to regulate has introduced him right here: caught in a race he’s unlikely to win, for a job he by no means actually needed. And that’s as a result of Cuomo can see everybody’s faults however his personal. He doesn’t present humility. He hardly ever apologizes. And if you happen to by no means admit errors, you by no means study from them. You by no means evolve.
Ambition can transfer mountains, however it may possibly additionally alienate you from the world you’re attempting to form. Cuomo’s ambition has left him unable, or unwilling, to talk to what New Yorkers really want. He has no plan to push again on authoritarianism from Washington or make life reasonably priced within the nation’s costliest metropolis.
For each diatribe launched towards Mamdani or maneuver made to push Sliwa out of the race, there’s a gaping absence of options for New Yorkers. No concepts for decreasing youth unemployment, fixing transit, or standing as much as Donald Trump. His argument has narrowed to a single line: I’m the one selection you’ve.
That’s why his marketing campaign feels prefer it’s from one other period. He’s working the one playbook he is aware of: elevate massive cash, blanket the airwaves, hammer his opponents. His argument isn’t about what he’ll do for voters. It’s about why they need to concern the individual standing in the best way of his return to energy.
I can’t faux I didn’t study from Cuomo. I did. When confronted with a tough political drawback, I nonetheless hear the counterargument he’d make, the one that will beat me. For years he used that reward for persuasion to do actual good: marriage equality, gun security, school schooling in prisons.
However now he’s utilizing it to make New Yorkers scared of each other. As disappointing as that’s to see from a frontrunner I as soon as admired, I don’t have to imagine he’s evil to vote for another person. That’s the form of argument Andrew Cuomo would make.
Wing runs the political advertising and marketing agency Wingspan and beforehand served as Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s press secretary.
