03-03-2025
Cuomo takes aim at progressives, police funding at Manhattan campaign stop
Mayoral candidate and former Gov. Andrew Cuomo took sharp aim at progressives during a Sunday stop on what he hopes will be his political comeback tour.
'We are here today for one reason: We love New York, and we know New York is in trouble,' Cuomo said Sunday, a day after he announced in a video that he'd be entering the Democratic primary for mayor.
'We don't need stats, you can feel it,' Cuomo said, speaking at the New York City District Council of Carpenters Union Hall in downtown Manhattan. 'When you walk down the street and see the homeless mentally ill. When you walk into the subway and can feel the anxiety rise up in your chest.'
Cuomo added, 'These politicians now wanting to be mayor made a terrible, terrible mistake. They uttered the three dumbest words ever uttered by a government official: 'Cut police funding.''
Cuomo, who resigned as governor in 2021 amid sexual harassment allegations, enters a crowded field to challenge Mayor Adams, who's been embroiled in scandals surrounding his federal corruption indictment last September.
It includes including city Comptroller Brad Lander, former Comptroller Scott Stringer, Queens Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani, former Bronx Assemblyman Michael Blake and state Sens. Zellnor Myrie of Brooklyn and Jessica Ramos of Queens.
Progressive politicians pushed in 2020 for slashing at least $1 billion from the NYPD's budget in favor of reallocating more resources for social services, after the city and the nation was rocked by the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
Under Adams, crime overall dropped this year compared with when he took office in January 2022, but remains higher than prepandemic rates and when compared with all of former Mayor Bill de Blasio's eight years in office, NYPD data show.
On Sunday, Cuomo also challenged 'these democratic socialist candidates that released a wave of antisemitism throughout our city,' referring to 2024 pro-Palestine protests.
The 20,000-member carpenters union made official its endorsement of Cuomo, just days after Politco reported the labor union would likely line up behind the former governor.
Cuomo resigned as governor after being accused of sexually harassing 13 women, allegations the U.S. Department of Justice's civil rights division corroborated in a bombshell settlement last year. Cuomo has denied committing any misconduct.
He seemed to obliquely reference the scandal during the Sunday event, saying: 'You hit a tough spot in life, which is inevitable that something is going to happen, and you hit that tough spot, and you know what? Then you really find out who your friends are.'
He's also faced harsh criticism over his decision to understate the number of New Yorkers who died from COVID-19 in nursing homes in the state after he enacted a policy in early 2020 prohibiting such facilities from denying entry for residents diagnosed with the virus.
