For anyone who has covered New York politics in the last half-century, listening to a member of the Cuomo family waxing eloquent about his support for Israel and opposition to antisemitism is standard fare. Thus, Andrew Cuomo appearing via video for a featured speech last month at a Carnegie Hall event honoring the 80th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, even 19 months after he resigned as governor of New York in disgrace, is not altogether surprising.
It appears Cuomo is attempting a comeback by running against Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) next year. Like his late father, Mario, who also was elected three times as governor of the Empire State, the younger Cuomo has long cultivated a reputation as a friend of the Jewish community. So what could be more natural than to launch his return by playing the kind of religious/ethnic politics that has long been the mother’s milk of New York public life? That Cuomo was assisted in this effort by the celebrity cleric and Kosher Sex author Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, a frequent dabbler in the political world and the organizer of the Carnegie Hall event, was also nothing out of the ordinary.
Undaunted by the fact that there is no shortage of groups whose purpose is to build support for the Jewish state, Cuomo announced at the event that he was founding yet another one, which he has named Progressives for Israel. That’s not to say it’s not a savvy move: As a new Gallup tracking poll indicated, for the first time, there are more Democrats who support the Palestinians than those who back Israel when forced to choose, and pro-Israel activists are inclined to welcome any effort along these lines. Cuomo was also right to say, as he recently did on his podcast, that the intersectional Left is intimidating centrist Democrats on the issue.
But the notion that a politician who was driven from office because of multiple charges of sexual harassment, as well as carrying heavy baggage from thousands of COVID-19 deaths among the elderly that were arguably caused by his decisions, is going to be the answer to Israel’s problems among Democrats seems more than a stretch. While Cuomo’s pro-Israel advocacy may be sincere, the purpose of his speech, as well as his activism on the issue, has more to do with his insatiable personal ambition than the conflict in the Middle East or anti-Jewish hate.
Faced with possible prosecution for his actions toward women as well as possible impeachment from Albany politicians who once feared his wrath, Cuomo had no choice but to resign as governor in August 2021. But he made it clear almost immediately that not only would he not admit guilt, but he was also determined not to accept the end of his political career. Spending the rest of his life in quiet obscurity after decades in office was not in the cards for a man who only a year earlier had become a COVID media star and who believed that, sooner or later, he should be president of the United States.
That explains why, at a time when others in his position might be content with getting out of the crosshairs of the media, Cuomo was openly plotting a comeback only a few months after his resignation. He flirted with the possibility, among other targets, of seeking to unseat Attorney General Letitia James, the woman whose investigations helped topple him. Once he saw that wasn’t a viable opinion, he wisely sat out the 2022 race. But he appears determined not to let another election cycle pass without seeking some kind of political vindication.
The attempted resurgence of this 65-year-old political thug felled by #MeToo charges and COVID-19 blowback poses some consequences far beyond Gotham: Rather than just a test of the appeal of a politician and a family name that has been a dominant force in New York politics for two generations, a Cuomo comeback would also generate enormous national attention and likely become a liability for the Democratic Party during what could be a difficult quest to reelect President Joe Biden.
A rapid fall from grace
Cuomo’s fall from grace was spectacular.
In 2021, he was preparing to run for a fourth term in Albany. There was little indication that he wouldn’t succeed in doing something that eluded his father, who, after 12 years in the governor’s mansion, was defeated for reelection in 1994.
During his 11 years as governor, Cuomo achieved the sort of dominance that few governors achieve, especially in normally fractious Albany. Though he was repeatedly beset by left-wing opponents, he trounced everyone, including a well-funded and highly publicized primary challenge by Sex and the City actress Cynthia Nixon in 2018. State legislators feared to cross him, even when, as was the case with his nursing home COVID-19 scandal, he appeared to be highly vulnerable.
Cuomo came up in politics as a loyal aide to his father, who was allowed to play philosopher prince while his eldest son used rough tactics to help him get elected as governor. The crown prince of a would-be Democratic dynasty, he married into the Kennedy clan and moved up the political ladder as the head of a fashionable nonprofit organization and a member of Bill Clinton’s Cabinet. After a failed effort to win the governorship in 2002, he rebounded by being elected as state attorney general and then succeeded Gov. Eliot Spitzer, who was himself toppled by a sex scandal, as governor in 2010, after an interim governorship by Spitzer’s lieutenant, David Paterson.
Moreover, in 2020, he became the country’s pandemic hero. With Biden, then the Democratic presidential nominee, keeping an understandably low profile to avoid harming his cause with blunders, Cuomo’s daily televised press conferences, for which he won an honorary Emmy Award, made him a star and the face of his party. Fawning treatment from leading figures in the corporate liberal press, talking heads, and the hosts of late-night comedy programs who contrasted his supposedly steady and empathetic leadership to that of President Donald Trump contributed to his enormous popularity at the time.
That was in spite of his infamous March 25, 2020, order, in which he had forced New York nursing homes to accept recovering coronavirus victims. This action led to thousands of preventable deaths and was compounded by the cover-up of the number of victims by the governor’s office. But this still would not be Cuomo’s undoing.
His problem was that once Trump was defeated and defending the Biden administration became the priority for the media, Cuomo became expendable. So when the multiple charges of sexual harassment, detailed in a report issued by James, the attorney general, were made public, his former sycophants and enablers ran for cover.
At that point, Cuomo’s trademark arrogance and his willingness to run roughshod over friend and foe alike caught up to him. He left Albany with his reputation destroyed and his career apparently at an end.
Cuomo isn’t willing to accept that, and as improbable as it may seem, a successful comeback may not be as unlikely as it sounds.
Gillibrand’s weakness
Gillibrand has reportedly already begun telling her donors that Cuomo will run against her in a Democratic primary next year when she seeks her third full term (she served out the last two years of Hillary Clinton’s term after being appointed to fill the seat following the former first lady’s appointment as secretary of state in 2009).
At first glance, having a #MeToo victimizer challenging a female senator seems like an insane idea. There are others on the long list of men whose careers were “canceled” by accusations of sexual misconduct after the #MeToo tide broke with the Harvey Weinstein revelations in 2017 who have resumed some public activity. But the attempt of a governor, who was treated as an icon by the corporate media during the pandemic, to return to a position of trust and power after a very public shaming is somewhat different. It is not to be compared with the ability of, say, a comedian such as Louis C.K. to win a Grammy after apologizing and taking a brief hiatus out of the public eye.
But Gillibrand might be far weaker than those who think Cuomo is dreaming understand, and she is right to be scared. With $10 million in campaign funds still in his account, Cuomo has the resources to attempt a credible challenge to Gillibrand. More than that, his knowledge of New York politics and extensive connections to the party apparatus were not all lost in the summer of 2021 as his sexual harassment scandal overwhelmed him.
As his pro-Israel gambit indicates, Cuomo understands that New York politics can be intensely tribal. While this initiative will not endear him to the state party’s powerful left-wing faction, primaries in New York aren’t necessarily determined by the Manhattan elites who never had much use for him in the first place. Cuomo understands that turning out specific groups in a low-turnout primary, whether it is Jews from the outer boroughs or the suburbs as well as Hasidic enclaves, whose residents vote en masse in blocs, can be more important than the inevitable avalanche of scorn that will be aimed at him from liberal outlets such as the New York Times.
The first point of vulnerability is that Gillibrand hasn’t faced a competitive election since her first successful run for Congress in 2006, when she upset four-term Republican incumbent Rep. John Sweeney. But even that happened only after the leak of a domestic violence complaint against him in the final weeks of the campaign that effectively turned that race on its head. After being appointed to the Senate, she has coasted to easy victories in what has become, in effect, a one-party, deep-blue state. But her much-hyped attempt to run for the Democratic nomination for president in 2020 was a disaster, in which her reputation as an inauthentic striver with few clear political principles — she abandoned her pro-gun rights and other more conservative positions once she entered the Senate — dogged her. She withdrew in August 2019, long before a single vote had been cast.
Gillibrand also has more than her share of political enemies. Many in the party resented her determination to drive Al Franken from the Senate after #MeToo accusations involving inappropriate conduct during his days as an entertainer were lodged against him in 2017. Franken was shamed into resigning, but many on the Left who admired the former comedian, as well as Democrats who believed that such charges should only be taken seriously when they involved Republicans, blamed Gillibrand for his forced departure from politics. Indeed, the backlash against her on this score has been so strong that even Gillibrand has voiced some second thoughts about her stance against Franken. Her problems fundraising for her presidential campaign are also traced to this.
There is also the sense that Gillibrand lacks Cuomo’s grasp of the tribal politics that can make the difference in races when the opposition is more than, as in her 2010, 2012, and 2018 Senate races, a token Republican with no chance of victory. And with only mediocre approval ratings — a Quinnipiac University Poll from last fall showed her with only a 45% positive rating, with 36% negative and 19% saying they didn’t know — Gillibrand can’t count on any great reserve of popularity to carry her to victory if faced with a tough challenge.
That’s why Cuomo’s bid to position himself as the champion of the Jews and Israel shouldn’t be entirely dismissed as nothing more than cynical posturing. Cuomo’s father had a part-time job as a Shabbes goy in his youth, a non-Jew hired by Orthodox Jews to turn on lights and appliances on the Sabbath. It was a line that this father used frequently with Jewish audiences and one Andrew Cuomo invoked at the Carnegie Hall event — declaring that he will be a Shabbes goy who will fight the rising antisemitism that is prevalent within his own party’s left wing. In doing so, he is attempting to seize control of an open lane in New York Democratic politics that could prove extremely advantageous in a state with so many Jewish voters.
Boteach, who met Cuomo in Poland when they both attended the ceremonies commemorating the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, has had close associations with other political figures such as Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ). He says he has no qualms about backing Cuomo: “I believe in redemption and repentance. He paid a huge price and took responsibility for his actions. I don’t want to live in a country where people can never atone for mistakes.”
Of course, it is far from clear that Cuomo actually has made amends for his behavior, his ludicrous claim that his unwanted touching was merely a matter of being an Italian American or the attempts by staff and friends to besmirch his accusers. But undaunted by that, Boteach said that if Cuomo is willing to leverage his reputation to speak about antisemitism at a time of an epidemic of anti-Jewish violence in New York City, he deserves the gratitude of Jewish voters. Boteach also pointed out that on the most important vote concerning Israel during her Senate career, Gillibrand voted for the Iran nuclear deal that endangered the Jewish state’s existence. But while that can be used against her, it’s also true that Cuomo didn’t take a stand against the pact at the time either.
An opening for a centrist
Boteach seems to be turning a blind eye to the tone of defiance rather than repentance that Cuomo has exuded since his troubles began. But he might not be the only one thinking that in a Democratic Party increasingly dominated by progressives and celebrity members of the congressional “Squad” such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), who helped to push weather vane politicians such as Gillibrand further to the left, even someone with Cuomo’s baggage might be useful in the fight against the radicals.
Though New York’s Democratic Party is one in which socialists are considered kosher, centrists understand that Gov. Kathy Hochul’s narrow victory last fall over Republican Lee Zeldin, who may also challenge Gillibrand next year, was due to the pro-criminal policies enacted by a left-wing-dominated legislature. If Cuomo runs as the pro-cop, anti-crime, and anti-woke candidate in the primary, that might be seen as more important than his past indiscretions.
Still, the odds against a successful Cuomo comeback remain long. The thought of someone with the #MeToo badge of shame successfully competing against a woman in any state, let alone ultraliberal New York, boggles the imagination. Talk of redemption notwithstanding, the main vibe Cuomo still gives off is entitlement. But if anyone could accomplish such a feat, the former governor, armed with the money and the political know-how needed for the rough and tumble of New York politics, might be the only one who could do it.
Jonathan S. Tobin is the editor-in-chief of JNS and a columnist for Newsweek. Follow him on Twitter at @jonathans_tobin.
