Few political allies turned as quickly into rivals as did Andrew Cuomo and Bill de Blasio.
Their tit-for-tat fights while Cuomo was governor of New York, and de Blasio was mayor of New York City, were far-ranging — over questions like who had the power to shut down the city during the pandemic, and who had the authority to manage the city’s subways.
But de Blasio wasn’t the only municipal leader with whom Cuomo quarreled. Now attempting a political comeback, seeking de Blasio’s old job, these dust-ups with local leaders are resurfacing — fueling skepticism about his penchant for local politics.
All hopes of a partnership with de Blasio crumbled in 2015, when Cuomo derailed de Blasio’s attempts to fund universal pre-K and scuttled other initiatives the then-governor found politically untenable. And de Blasio fired back.
“What we’ve often seen is if someone disagrees with him openly, some kind of revenge or vendetta follows,” the Democratic mayor said at the time, lamenting that his ideas often got “rejected or manipulated.” “He believes deeply in the transactional model, and I think he needs to transcend that model if he wants to be a more effective leader.”
Other pitfalls would prove Cuomo’s undoing. And while supporters now reflect on Cuomo as a tough-minded politician adept at working the levers of government to get things done, others recall a bigfooting bully who was full of big promises and even bigger aspirations but was dismissive of local authority and too often failed to deliver.
'A challenging relationship'
Cuomo first ran for governor in 2002, but the failed bid ended before the Democratic primary. He was later elected in 2010, which many at the time considered a comeback for the former state Attorney General and U.S. Secretary for Housing and Urban Development.
He would rise to become one of most popular public officials across the country. He signed legislation that legalized same-sex marriage in 2011, making New York a relative pioneer on LGBTQ+ rights. New York enacted stricter gun regulations in response to the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, and in 2016 it became the first state to enact a $15 minimum wage for public sector jobs. And Cuomo became a trusted voice during the early chaos of the pandemic.
As for Cuomo’s working relationship with local governments, well, that was a constant dance.
“It is a challenging relationship, because the state has priorities, the governor has priorities, and the counties ... sit in a mandated position to execute and deliver the state's programs and the federal government's programs,” said Stephen Acquario, executive director of the New York State Association of Counties. “It's an ongoing area of tension between the counties and the state every day.”
During Cuomo’s daily COVID-19 briefings, for example, he would make executive orders without prior notice to local leaders, said Rensselaer County Executive Steve McLaughlin.
“Nobody knew what was going to happen until it happened,” said McLaughlin, a Republican who has been in office since 2018, and previously served in the state Assembly. “So at the county level, we're shaking our heads, going, ‘You got to be kidding me.’”
Stephanie Miner, who served as Syracuse’s mayor for eight years, said Cuomo was — and is — more concerned about his political image than addressing local communities’ issues.
“Andrew Cuomo’s view of government and success is that if you won the media cycle, if you got the best headlines, nobody would be paying attention months or years later when those policies were deemed and shown to be wild failures,” Miner said.
Miner, who initially saw an ally in Cuomo, said their relationship soured when she penned a New York Times op-ed in January 2013, expressing concern over his state budget proposal and pension plan.
At the time, Syracuse was set to receive infrastructure funding through a state program for projects like building roads and expanding broadband access. Not long after Miner wrote that Cuomo’s plan didn’t do enough to address rising costs for cities like hers, she said she got a call from someone working in state politics who had spoken with the governor’s office. Syracuse, she was told, would never get money as long as she was mayor.
And they didn’t, she said.
![Stephanie Minor and Andrew Cuomo meet in Syracuse in October 2013, eight months after the then-mayor's New York Times editorial criticizing the then-governor. At the time, Minor downplayed the rift, telling reporters, "I think this got blown way out of proportion, and it sort of became a fun thing for people to cover, because they could say, how many days has it been, how long has it been. I was at the (Executive] Mansion last night. The governor had a professional and cordial conversation."](https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/c2c909f/2147483647/strip/true/crop/1028x683+0+0/resize/840x558!/format/webp/quality/90/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F6d%2F33%2F2504d32c4a20ad0ddcfffb51f570%2Fcuomo-and-miner-together-for-first-time-since-disagreement-wrvo-public-media-04-01-2025-10-10-pm.png)
“The governor was continuing to deny the people of the city of Syracuse money for infrastructure because I had dared to disagree with a policy pronouncement that he made,” she said.
Later, in 2015, when Syracuse was in search of additional funding for water infrastructure, Cuomo told the city to “fix your own pipes.”
“Everybody knew that if you wanted the benefits of state government, you should not disagree with Andrew Cuomo,” she said, “privately or publicly.”
Where the state did invest, though, was in helping build a $15 million film studio in a suburb of Syracuse. Cuomo promised that Hollywood would come to Onondaga County.
“It was a ridiculous statement then, and it (is) a ridiculous statement now,” Miner said of the 2014 undertaking.
Corruption charges derailed the project. And in 2018, a corporation set up by Onondaga County bought the studio building for $1. None of the allegations tied back to Cuomo. Nor did other scandals that clouded Cuomo’s tenure, including the controversy over the Buffalo Billion, which Cuomo branded in 2012 as an opportunity to inject $1 billion into Buffalo’s struggling economy. Several developers and Cuomo aides ended up facing charges of bid-rigging, but the U.S. Supreme Court partially overturned the charges. A state audit in 2020 found the initiative failed to deliver on revenue and jobs promises.
The Cuomo campaign brushes off the criticism as sour grapes or opportunism.
“New Yorkers aren't stupid,” campaign spokesperson Rich Azzopardi wrote in a statement provided to the New York Public News Network. “They have known Andrew Cuomo for decades and are not going to be swayed by revisionist history.”
Cuomo, he said, has a proven track record of serving New Yorkers. Azzopardi then singled out Miner, noting she ran against Cuomo for governor in 2018 “lost by 58 points,” and alleged she “fell off the face of the earth and has now resurfaced” to promote her new book, Madam Mayor — which, in part, chronicles her tensions with Cuomo.
'He had a vision'
Cuomo’s supporters say that during his time in Albany, he proved himself to be a strong-headed leader with a tough personality that is required in rough-and-tumble political arenas. Acquario said Cuomo was someone who also looked for synergies, and proponents of Cuomo’s campaign say New York City is in need of that effective combination.
“He always was curious about local government and how the state could, and should, work with them,” said Acquario, who declined to endorse any candidate in the mayoral race. “To work in this space, you got to deal with strong personalities who are under tremendous pressure and with tremendous responsibility.”
As a representative for New York’s counties, Acquario was in the room when Cuomo successfully negotiated casino expansions with the Mohawk, Seneca and Oneida tribes in 2013. The topic had long been a source of tension between the state and Native American communities.
“He brought those parties in a room, shut the door. I was in that room and he said, ‘Nobody leaves this room until we resolve these issues,’” Acquario said. “And he did.”
Cuomo had to work with the tribal nations and their exclusive rights to gaming to figure out a way to distribute gaming revenues to counties: “That was a very historic and important moment in the state's history,” Acquario said.
There were, however, disagreements over the amount of control Cuomo thought he could exert over the counties: “He had a belief that the counties and local governments were more under the direction and control of the state of New York, and we didn't see it that way,” Acquario said.
While those tensions manifested in different policy matters, including who should front Medicaid costs, Acquario said those disagreements were well-spirited and that Cuomo always worked to serve the state.
“He had a vision. He understood government,” Acquario said.
Bob Duffy saw that as lieutenant governor during Cuomo’s first term, from 2011 to 2014. Cuomo personally recruited Duffy, the former mayor of Rochester, to join his ticket with the promise that Duffy could do more for his city by being in Albany.
Contrary to Cuomo’s critics, Duffy said the governor’s office made serving local communities a top priority. He points to a series of Rochester riverfront projects jumpstarted with $50 million in state funding as an example. Cuomo’s office, he noted, also was the first to establish the state’s regional economic development council process. Though chided as the “Hunger Games” for funding among 10 designated regions, Duffy said the council fostered greater collaboration across the state.
“The governor and his team in the state would, without fail, fund at least one, two or three of each of the region’s priority projects every year,” Duffy said.
'One of us'
If there is an issue on which Cuomo’s stock rises or falls, it’s his handling of the pandemic.
“You were left to fend for yourself, largely, (with) very little communication, lots of dictatorial edicts about who was going to be vaccinated, who wasn't,” said Rensselaer County’s McLaughlin.
“It was sort of fast and furious, with a lot of information coming out,” said former Nassau County Executive Larua Curran. “But if we had questions or complaints, ... (there was) a back and forth.”
Curran, a Democrat who was in office from 2018 to 2021, said she too found out new developments only during the pandemic briefings. But she said Cuomo’s office was receptive to clarifying directives and taking feedback from her and constituents, including her own calls to allow malls to reopen during re-opening phases.
McLaughlin, though, describes Cuomo as a “tyrant.” He was the only county executive in the state to oppose Cuomo’s directive to place elderly COVID-positive patients into nursing homes. And when the first COVID vaccines came out in 2021, he wanted to have highway workers vaccinated quickly so they could clear the roads. But soon after McLaughlin announced highway workers would get the vaccine, he said his phone rang. It was a governor’s aide, calling to clear things up. Highway workers weren’t on the governor’s approved list at the time.
“There's the rub, right? I publicly defied the great and powerful Andrew Cuomo,” McLaughlin said. “That's all he ever cared about, was maintaining an insane grip on power.”
Azzopardi did not comment on the alleged incident.
Now Cuomo hopes to become mayor of the largest city in the country.
“This is the same guy that looked down on us,” McLaughlin said. “I find it more than a little ironic that now he wants to be one of us.”
