Cuomo won't fix New York City for working people

David Mirtz is a co-chair of the NYC Working Families Party

After a decade as New York's governor, Andrew Cuomo resigned in 2021 under a cloud of controversy around sexual misconduct.

He is now running for New York City mayor. In the words of his campaign spokesman, Cuomo is “the candidate with the experience and record to help fix what's broken in this city.”

What Cuomo wants us to forget is that the city was broken and breaking during his 11-plus years as governor and that he had the power to fix it but chose not to.

The fiascos that have accompanied the Adams administration aside, it may come as a surprise to many that the City Council and mayor have limited power over the city’s affairs. As an NYU law professor, Roderick Hill, has observed, “New York’s version of ‘home rule’ is well-known to be a sham’” 

The power over things large and small in the city belong to the state legislature and very much with the governor. Andrew Cuomo was the most powerful elected official in the state with broad powers over the budget and policy direction of the state and all its cities. As governor, he had more power and flexibility to fix the city’s problems than even the mayor.

New York's affordability crisis was already acute when Cuomo was first elected in 2011. Economic insecurity, driven by unaffordable housing, a broken health care system and stagnant wages, were critical problems facing working people across the state. 

City residents already faced unaffordable rents and a homelessness crisis; a decaying subway system and overcrowded classrooms; non-existent childcare services; and growing income inequality. Rather than use his gubernatorial powers to address these central problems, Cuomo along with then Democratic State Senator Jeff Klein created the Independent Democratic Conference (IDC) and orchestrated a power sharing deal with state Senate Republicans. Under Cuomo’s watch, legislation and policy initiatives that would have brought relief to the daily lives of New Yorkers languished and died.

When reforms did happen, it was after immense public pressure often led by New York's labor movement and only when Cuomo found it politically useful. Marriage equality, a raise in the minimum wage and universal pre-K being the most prominent examples of wins that happened in spite of, not because of Cuomo.

Even after voters defeated the turncoat IDC Democrats in 2018, Cuomo, a so-called “fiscal conservative,” continued to use his extensive power to block steps that would have improved people's lives. Stiffing public workers on their pensions, decimating the city’s mental health infrastructure and using the MTA as his “pet projects” piggy bank.

Those who think Cuomo will clean up City Hall after the Eric Adams mess should remember that his 2022 resignation confirmed the running joke that in Albany more people leave office from indictments or scandal than from losing an election. 

In July 2013, when demands to address corruption in Albany reached a fever pitch, there were high hopes when Cuomo established the Moreland Commision. That panel had a mandate to investigate corruption and recommend reforms of the state’s ethics and election laws. “To everyone’s extreme surprise at the end of March 2014 the legislature passed a few small reform laws and the governor declared victory.… He all but disbanded the commission by press release.” commented Columbia Law Professor Richard Briffault, a former Moreland commission member. An investigation by The New York Times “found that the governor’s office deeply compromised the panel’s work, objecting whenever the commission focused on groups with ties to Mr. Cuomo or on issues that might reflect poorly on him.”

Over the years, Cuomo has posed as a “pragmatic progressive” and he is counting on our collective amnesia about his real record as governor. In reality, he did just enough to cover both his left and right flanks but never truly challenged New York's ruling powers or his big donors. He has proven himself a skilled defender of the interests of New York's rich and well-connected.

After the collapse of Eric Adams as a viable option for those who oppose a more worker-friendly city administration, in Cuomo’s candidacy they have found their champion.

For the city's working families, a “Mayor Cuomo” offers only to manage their misery, tinkering around the edges of problems, while not fundamentally addressing the city’s challenges. To properly address the obstacles working people face will require a mayor who is a moral leader, not just a manager, a mayor who will stand up for working people, challenge the power of a private health insurance industry that blocks real health care reform, help end the privatization of Medicare and rally New Yorkers to pass the NY Health Act. 

We need a mayor who will challenge the power of a real estate industry that blocks the creation of truly affordable housing by demanding an end to the private equity takeover of New York City’s housing stock and advocate for the Housing Justice for All program. Residents need a mayor who will challenge the power of oligarchs and a finance industry that siphons wealth from the working people that create it and put it back into their pockets by demanding the passage of the Working Families Tax Credit, the Invest in Our NY Act and the establishment of a living wage.

Fixing the city will mean fighting for working families when and where it counts, not just when it's politically convenient. Cuomo’s long record as governor proves that in spite of his “tough guy, get it done” image, he's not up to the task. He wasn’t as governor and he definitely won’t be as mayor.