{"id":21359,"date":"2025-10-29T15:20:11","date_gmt":"2025-10-29T15:20:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/21359\/"},"modified":"2025-10-29T15:20:11","modified_gmt":"2025-10-29T15:20:11","slug":"the-same-old-cuomo-dividing-as-always","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/21359\/","title":{"rendered":"The same old Cuomo, dividing as always"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve never won an argument with Andrew Cuomo. When Bill de Blasio wanted to raise New York City\u2019s minimum wage<\/a>, Cuomo argued it was the selfish act of a mayor more interested in campaigning than governing and that it would create economic havoc if low-wage workers in the city earned more than those in Nassau and Westchester. I was a loyal staffer so I nodded along and repeated his arguments everywhere I went. Cuomo was always brilliant at convincing you why someone else was wrong.<\/p>\n

The closing argument he\u2019s making in his campaign for mayor is far less subtle. Cuomo\u2019s vision for New York City isn\u2019t about ideas or purpose. It has no philosophy, no cause, no promise of what he will do. It\u2019s about making New Yorkers afraid of Zohran Mamdani. Because he\u2019s young. Because his ideas are new. And now, most shamefully, because he\u2019s a Muslim New Yorker<\/a>.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a cold logic behind this. Even in the friendliest polls, Cuomo has the smallest enthusiastic base of any candidate<\/a>. Curtis Sliwa has more people excited to vote for him. Cuomo\u2019s only shot is patching together enough voters who fear or despise his opponent enough to accept him by default. He has nothing to offer for the future, just a cynical warning that we cannot trust it to someone else.<\/p>\n

When de Blasio became mayor, I was one of the few Cuomo staffers in the room who had worked for both men, and I was genuinely excited at first. They were both brilliant, demanding and difficult. I thought their powers combined might solve New York\u2019s most intractable problems.<\/p>\n

Instead, Cuomo\u2019s first instinct was to tear de Blasio down. There was no tempering his anger. The universal pre-K plan was na\u00efve, he said. His tax proposal was a disaster. There are many moments I wish I could say pushed back. But I followed along, convinced New York City couldn\u2019t be trusted in de Blasio\u2019s hands. Cuomo needed to be in control.<\/p>\n

But what really hurt New York wasn\u2019t the mayor\u2019s policies, it was the endless fighting. Agencies stopped coordinating. We treated the city as an enemy. It was dumb. It was wrong. But we all saw the world through Cuomo\u2019s eyes.<\/p>\n

The best description of this gift comes from Walter Isaacson, who wrote about Steve Jobs\u2019 \u201creality distortion field\u201d \u2014 the power to make others believe the impossible through sheer force of will. Cuomo had it. For more than two terms, it worked. He wielded power with more effect and less opposition than anyone since Robert Moses. His imprint is everywhere: tunnels, bridges, train stations, airports.<\/p>\n

But that same need to control has brought him here: stuck in a race he\u2019s unlikely to win, for a job he never really wanted. And that\u2019s because Cuomo can see everyone\u2019s faults but his own. He doesn\u2019t show humility. He rarely apologizes. And if you never admit mistakes, you never learn from them. You never evolve.<\/p>\n

Ambition can move mountains, but it can also alienate you from the world you\u2019re trying to shape. Cuomo\u2019s ambition has left him unable, or unwilling, to speak to what New Yorkers actually need. He has no plan to push back on authoritarianism from Washington or make life affordable in the nation\u2019s most expensive city.<\/p>\n

For every diatribe launched against Mamdani or maneuver made to push Sliwa out of the race, there\u2019s a gaping absence of solutions for New Yorkers. No ideas for lowering youth unemployment, fixing transit, or standing up to Donald Trump. His argument has narrowed to a single line: I\u2019m the only choice you have.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s why his campaign feels like it\u2019s from another era. He\u2019s running the only playbook he knows: raise big money, blanket the airwaves, hammer his opponents. His argument isn\u2019t about what he\u2019ll do for voters. It\u2019s about why they should fear the person standing in the way of his return to power.<\/p>\n

I can\u2019t pretend I didn\u2019t learn from Cuomo. I did. When faced with a hard political problem, I still hear the counterargument he\u2019d make, the one that would beat me. For years he used that gift for persuasion to do real good: marriage equality, gun safety, college education in prisons.<\/p>\n

But now he\u2019s using it to make New Yorkers scared of one another. As disappointing as that is to see from a leader I once admired, I don\u2019t need to believe he\u2019s evil to vote for someone else. That\u2019s the kind of argument Andrew Cuomo would make.<\/p>\n

Wing runs the political marketing firm Wingspan<\/a> and previously served as Gov. Andrew Cuomo\u2019s press secretary.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I\u2019ve never won an argument with Andrew Cuomo. When Bill de Blasio wanted to raise New York City\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11521,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[9,24,63,299,134,136,135],"class_list":["post-21359","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-staten-island","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-opinion","tag-staten-island","tag-staten-island-headlines","tag-staten-island-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21359","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21359"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21359\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11521"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}