Opinion: What will Andrew Cuomo do next?

When political insiders or everyday voters ask my prediction of Andrew Cuomo’s future, I simply say: “He’s hanging around the basket.”

I’ve always liked sports metaphors. In basketball, players hang around the basket in order to be in place for the best shot or to grab a rebound if a teammate misses their shot.

Or as Wayne Gretzky once said, “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.”

Cuomo is hanging around the periphery of the New York City Democratic mayoral primary in June 2025 and the state gubernatorial primary in June 2026.

Not unlike the Republican candidate for president, the former governor is looking to make a comeback and avenge his abrupt resignation from office under pressure in the late summer of 2021.

Cuomo is 66 years old and, except for a brief foray in the wilderness of the private sector from 2003 to 2005 following a losing campaign, he has been involved in New York state politics and political campaigns going back to his early 20s, more than four decades ago. 

As they say, fish gotta swim.

For those who have been in high office, it’s often tough to let go, as we so dramatically witnessed with President Biden over the last few weeks. It’s not just older white men who suffer from this syndrome: Diane Feinstein, Ruth Bader Ginsberg and others also didn’t know when it was time to pass the torch.

I’m not suggesting Cuomo is too old to run for office or govern for another decade. But he’s at an age when most people like me (at 62 years old) are looking to downshift and mentor the next generation of leaders. He could do the same and end a mostly successful career selflessly by passing along lessons learned and wisdom accumulated.

But Cuomo is likely to run again for mayor or governor. Why else is he starting a nonprofit aimed at stamping out antisemitism? Or speaking so regularly at Black churches? Or making an appearance in front of potential donors, as he did at the Westhampton synagogue on a recent Saturday night?

I am in regular touch with an array of former Cuomo aides – some still close to him and others who are no longer part of his inner circle. They are divided between those who say, “He’s definitely running for mayor next year,” and those who say, “He’s not challenging Mayor Adams, and he’ll only run if Adams gets indicted or doesn’t run for re-election.”

My conclusion: they’re both mostly correct. Cuomo doesn’t want to challenge a Black incumbent mayor who is still popular with many minority voters, regardless of his sagging poll numbers or looming investigations. To win, Cuomo needs a large chunk of Black voters to choose him first in ranked-choice voting.

Cuomo’s preferred outcome is a return to the governor’s mansion in 2026. But it is possible that come January 2025, when the trauma of a Trump victory (or the euphoria of a Kamala Harris triumph) calms down, and all eyes are on the June mayoral primary, Cuomo will decide that his path to Gracie Mansion is more likely to succeed. Tens of thousands of dollars will be spent on citywide and statewide polling, and Cuomo will decide which shot will likely hit nothing but net.

Right now, the mayoral field looks quite crowded: Adams, the charismatic but beleaguered incumbent; Scott Stringer, a lifetime West Side pol on his own comeback tour; and state Sen. Zellnor Myrie and Assembly Member Zohran Mamdani, two young left-wing state legislators. Progressive city Comptroller Brad Lander is rumored to be jumping in any day now. Queens state Sen. Jessica Ramos might become the only woman to challenge at least five men in the race. 

In a field like this, could Andrew Cuomo win? Yes, he could, but it wouldn’t be easy. If white, progressive voters (mostly in Manhattan and Brownstone Brooklyn and liberal pockets of Queens like Astoria) are split between Myrie, Lander and Mamdani (and possibly Ramos), he could eke out a win by getting outer-borough, blue-collar voters and much of the business and real estate community behind him, as well as a slice of the Black community that might have soured on Adams.

But it’s like pulling an inside straight, to use a poker term. Cuomo would need to astutely knit together a coalition that wants his managerial experience and competence back in office after an administration that has been criticized for a chaotic management style.

But, but, but…Cuomo has so much baggage from his last few years in office that it would sink a 747 jetliner. 

The accusations from more than a dozen women of offenses ranging from harassment to assault – which Cuomo and his attorneys say are not truthful – will dog him throughout his campaign. There are a lot of women in the city (and men, too) who would rank Cuomo seventh, even in a field of only six people.

Ranked-choice voting will not be the former governor’s friend. He will likely garner a large share of first-choice votes, but it’s hard to imagine a lot of people putting him second or third in a largely left-wing and non-white field of candidates. Ranked-choice changes the whole calculus of political campaigns. It is easy to imagine a scenario where Myrie, Mamdani and Lander (and potentially Ramos as well) all cross-endorse each other, allowing one of them to capture the progressive/left-wing/young/disaffected vote. 

It’s also very hard to unseat an incumbent mayor in a Democratic primary. The last time that happened was in 1989, when then-Manhattan Borough President David Dinkins unseated three-term Mayor Ed Koch.

Although polls 18 months before a primary election are blunt instruments, it is worth noting that a December 2023 Slingshot Strategies survey found Cuomo the easy winner for mayor in a hypothetical race that assumed an Adams indictment and withdrawal from the race and a field that included Public Advocate Jumaane Williams and former mayoral candidate Kathryn Garcia. In that poll, Cuomo easily beats Williams in a ranked choice vote, 64% to 36%. 

Ultimately, New York City will have to decide whether it has had enough of the Cuomo dynasty or whether it wants to bring back a controversial leader who has wielded his sharp elbows on the New York political scene since before many of his mayoral opponents were born. 

The other option for Cuomo would be to sit out a crowded Democratic mayoral primary and plot his comeback to the governor’s mansion in 2026. He and his former aides incessantly criticize his hand-picked running mate and successor, Gov. Kathy Hochul. The governor and his allies have even criticized things like bail reform and congestion pricing which Cuomo himself rubber-stamped while governor. In March, for instance, Cuomo came out against congestion pricing, arguing that much has changed since he originally signed congestion pricing into law five years ago.

But even if Hochul opts not to run – she recently told City & State reporter Rebecca C. Lewis she’s all in for 2026 – there would still be popular Attorney General Tish James and a slew of fresh faces (maybe Rep. Ritchie Torres?) who could impede Cuomo’s path back to the governor’s office. 

Two years is a lifetime in politics. Just look how much happened in just the last month: Trump’s selection of J.D. Vance, an assassination attempt against Trump, Biden’s withdrawal from the race and Harris’ rapid ascent to becoming the presumptive Democratic nominee – not to mention a historic address to Congress by an embattled Israeli Prime Minister that rattled both parties.

In less than 100 days, we will make a momentous pick for president of the free world. In less than a year, we will reelect or pick a new mayor. Adams could either become the first Black mayor of New York City to win a second term or he could be ousted by a conga line of ambitious pols lining up to knock him off his perch. 

Looming over every conversation – popping up like Waldo in churches, synagogues and political events all over the city – will be the hard-charging and unbowed ex-governor, who seems determined to disprove author F. Scott Fitzgerald’s famous saying that “there are no second acts in American lives.”