All aboard Scott Stringer’s anti-Cuomo tour bus

Former New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer played tour guide Friday afternoon, boarding a van with reporters to highlight a handful of locations across Manhattan as he jockeys for support in the competitive mayoral race. 

But forget the towering Empire State Building, Central Park’s sweeping grounds, the historic halls of Grand Central Station and other iconic Manhattan tourist stops. The focus of this particular sight-seeing tour was squarely on one of Stringer’s fellow Democratic primary candidates: Andrew Cuomo. And Stringer’s itinerary certainly wasn’t intended to be a highlight reel for the former governor – rather, as he described it, an accounting on how Cuomo’s leadership hurt the city. 

“It’s time for Andrew Cuomo, who is the self described front-runner, to come down from the mountain – whether it's in Westchester or here and start engaging us in debate,” Stringer said, standing outside of Cuomo’s luxury apartment on East 54th Street – the first of five stops. “If he’s not willing to do that, then I’m going to do it for him.”

Stringer’s team even created an interactive Google Map, complete with little icons marking over a dozen locations that he argued symbolize ways they say Cuomo failed the city as governor. While those places were spread out across the city, Stringer’s tour was much less far flung. The van gradually snaked its way through Manhattan, cutting a path from Sutton Place through Midtown and into the Upper West Side.

Outside Cuomo’s apartment – which only became his home address in September – Stringer questioned the former governor’s residency and argued his ties to the city are shaky. Outside of One57 on Billionaire's Row, Stringer said Cuomo failed to bolster the city’s affordable housing stock as needed and to uphold rent regulations. At Columbus Circle, Stringer accused Cuomo of “consistently underfunding” the MTA. At Mount Sinai West, he slammed Cuomo for mishandling the COVID-19 pandemic and his decision to pen his lucrative pandemic memoir. And finally, outside an elementary school, Stringer charged that Cuomo’s cuts to education adversely impacted students. 

At each stop, Stringer sought to draw a sharp juxtaposition between himself and Cuomo – taking a flurry of questions from reporters and highlighting his own policy proposals. 

“The mayor that we want now has to be somebody who has strength, has principles and is able to engage and debate with the press and engage with voters where they are,” Stringer said at one point. 

A few minutes before Stringer kicked off the tour, Cuomo himself made a brief appearance, entering his apartment building as the tour congregated outside. While he didn’t stop for a chat, a spokesperson for his campaign later told City & State that “no amount of gaslighting from a gas guzzling bus” is going to change the fact that New Yorkers know the truth about Cuomo’s record.

“Scott Stringer rented a van and called it a bus in order to trap reporters to talk to him, which tells you everything you need to know. Governor Cuomo has a real record of results,” Cuomo spokesperson Rich Azzopardi said, pointing to the former governor’s efforts to raise wages, cutting taxes for the middle class and building infrastructure projects like the LaGuardia Airport redesign and the Second Avenue subway.