Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo is officially running for New York City mayor.
Cuomo, 67, whose sharp rise to national prominence during the COVID pandemic preceded his stunning resignation amid a series of sexual harassment claims, officially launched his mayoral bid Saturday after months of flirting with a return to electoral politics.
In a video posted to X, Cuomo said New York City is in crisis.
“You feel it when you walk down the street and try not to make eye contact with a mentally ill homeless person, or when the anxiety rises up in your chest as you're walking down into the subway,” he said. “You see it in the empty storefronts, the graffiti, the grime, the migrant influx to random violence, the city just feels threatening, out of control and in crisis.”
“Today it is necessary to launch a bold action plan to turn New York City around, to save our city,” he added.
Cuomo becomes an instant contender in a crowded Democratic primary field that includes incumbent Mayor Eric Adams and a slew of challengers from the left, many of whom have spent months sharpening their attacks against both the incumbent mayor and the former governor.
The Queens native is attempting his political comeback in the city where he was born and raised but hadn’t lived since the 1990s. Last year, he changed his voting address to an apartment in Manhattan, further fueling speculation he was eying a mayoral run.
During his decade as governor from 2011 to 2021, he racked up a slew of accomplishments that include shepherding the passage of New York’s same-sex marriage law and codifying Roe v. Wade abortion rights into state law. He often made a point of focusing on large-scale infrastructure projects, like building a new Tappan Zee Bridge (and renaming it for his father) and overhauling LaGuardia Airport.
But his downfall was brought on by a series of scandals that are sure to follow him through his campaign.
That includes the sexual-harassment allegations from a number of women, including several who worked for him in the governor’s office. Among them were an aide who accused Cuomo of groping her under her shirt after he summoned her to the Executive Mansion in Albany to perform a task; another, who was in her 20s, claimed Cuomo asked her repeated, invasive questions about her personal life, including whether she had ever been with an older man.
Cuomo’s August 2021 resignation came a week after a report, issued by private attorneys selected by state Attorney General Letitia James, concluded he sexually harassed 11 different women. The former governor denies ever harassing anyone and has claimed the report was politically motivated by James, who briefly ran for governor after Cuomo’s resignation.
At the time, the governor was also dogged by questions over his administration’s efforts to conceal the true number of nursing home residents who died of COVID during the early days of the pandemic, as well as ethics complaints about his use of gubernatorial staff to help write a pandemic-era book that earned him $5 million.