Photos: YouTube Screenshots\Wikimedia Commons
This month, disgraced former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo formally entered the New York City mayoral race, officially confirming his narcissistic return to politics is indeed upon us.
Despite my own incredulity, people seem to love him: Recent polling shows Cuomo well ahead of the rest of the field, and some analysts already think that it’s his race to lose. But the people who actually know his policies and politics have long despised him because of his abject cruelty and injustice.
I was a public defender in Brooklyn during Cuomo’s governorship. And I saw up close how he impacted the city I love, and the people and communities I represented. With public safety at the center of this election, here’s a rundown of the five biggest reasons Cuomo is patently unqualified to lead New York City.
1. He takes the “copaganda” bait.
Cuomo has never been a progressive on criminal justice reform. Instead, he has repeatedly shown that he is ready and willing to take the propaganda bait by listening to and spreading police talking points. As governor, he painted expanding police and investments in policing as a cure-all for societal ills, even in a city that’s home to the largest police force in the country and which costs taxpayers an estimated $29 million a day.
In 2019, Cuomo demanded that an already beleaguered Metropolitan Transport Authority (MTA) make room in its budget to hire 500 more cops to surveil commuters on the subway. Not only was this a precursor to the failed transit policing policies that we’ve seen under Mayor Eric Adams, but it caused mayhem for everyday New Yorkers. One example of this chaos was when NYPD cops violently pushed a man out of the station after he asked them to wear masks at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Then, as the pandemic took hold, Cuomo caved to police and white supremacist propaganda about a new bail reform law that had only been in effect for three months when Cuomo made sharp rollbacks to it in the dead of night during state budget negotiations. He turned his back on Black and brown communities – who were facing the brunt of the pandemic – without any opportunity for those who had tirelessly fought for the reform to be heard.
In the spring of 2021, after his disastrous COVID leadership (we’ll get there), Cuomo decided to try once again to undermine progressive criminal justice reform. As New York was on the cusp of finally legalizing marijuana, there was a hold-up because Cuomo insisted that after legalization, cops should still be allowed to lie about smelling an “odor” to justify racist stops and searches. (Thankfully, advocates didn’t give up—and they won.) Later that year, he nominated a group of conservatives to the highest court in New York, including Madeline Singas, a pro-carceral former district attorney who is one of the most avid peddlers of fears over criminal justice reforms in the state.
2. His much-lauded COVID-19 record is actually a humanitarian disaster. …
