Andrew M. Cuomo, tieless but never casual, was making a familiar point in an unfamiliar place.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou know, government is supposed to function,\u201d Mr. Cuomo, the 67-year-old mayoral candidate, told Logan Paul, the 30-year-old influencer-wrestler-bro, seated recently in a luxury hotel room between at least six bottles of Paul-branded energy drinks and two Paul-branded snack packs. \u201cIt\u2019s not a debating society.\u201d<\/p>\n
The host had something to add.<\/p>\n
\u201cEYOOOOOOOOOO.\u201d<\/p>\n
Suddenly Mr. Paul was shouting, transition-less, at his great many podcast listeners, smash-cutting to a prerecorded ad break about professional wrestling merch.<\/p>\n
Thirty-two seconds later, Mr. Cuomo had the floor again.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was a great senator, Ted Kennedy, God rest his soul \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
There was a governor, Andrew Cuomo, God rest his decade ruling Albany, who would have sooner traveled the state by Winnebago with Bill de Blasio, his sworn nemesis, than submit to the sundry humiliations of the modern underdog campaign.<\/p>\n
Now, straining to catch Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee, in the closing stages of this mayoral race, Mr. Cuomo has shown far more hustle than he did in his languid primary bid \u2014 sitting with seniors and shock-jocks, semi-smiling for cellphone selfies, play-grabbing the shoulders of men with silver hair who said they remembered his father.<\/p>\n
He has embraced schlocky A.I.-generated advertising to depict Mr. Mamdani as a secondary character from the Austin Powers franchise; adopted a high-pitched voice to play the role of New Yorker Grateful for Andrew Cuomo\u2019s Construction Projects as Governor (\u201cThis is nice! We did this! I feel good about New York!\u201d); commended Mr. Paul for his feats in hydration commerce (\u201cI\u2019m going to bring some bottles with me\u201d).<\/p>\n
What Mr. Cuomo has not done, what former aides have long said he is incapable of doing, is change.<\/p>\n
To see him up close in the campaign\u2019s final frames \u2014 pressing, pleading, seeing what sticks, calling his opponents meritless hacks and unbridled zealots while lamenting the bygone civility he ascribes to the less-than-utopian New York of his 1970s adolescence \u2014 is to see a man betting that this city has not changed as much as others seem to think it has, either.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur city,\u201d he thundered last weekend in Queens, standing atop a flatbed truck draped in hybrid American-Israeli flags. \u201cOur city.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr. Cuomo has peppered some of his recent appearances with warnings that his main opponent, Zohran Mamdani, would harm the city if elected.Credit…Vincent Alban\/The New York Times<\/p>\n
And doesn\u2019t everyone remember? Don\u2019t they remember when he was younger, when we all were, when he was in charge? Don\u2019t they remember that New York \u2014 where he was feared and respected and feared and ascendant and feared and inevitable and occasionally beloved?<\/p>\n
There is a reason his remarks lately have drifted toward a verbal slide show about his decades in public life:<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I was H.U.D. secretary \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I was governor \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI go out into the briefing room \u2014 CNN, live \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
He has made it plain that his chief regret<\/a> about any behavior that led to his resignation as governor is that he resigned.<\/p>\n He has issued increasingly foreboding warnings<\/a> about \u201cthat young man\u201d before audiences who worry, too, that a victory for Mr. Mamdani would signal the end of something for them.<\/p>\n \u201cHe is an extremist!\u201d Mr. Cuomo said in Kew Gardens Hills, Queens, looking out on a crowd of yarmulkes and a MAGA cap or two.<\/p>\n \u201cWho\u2019s the oligarch?\u201d Mr. Cuomo asked at a senior center in Harlem, speaking beside a headshot of Barack Obama as older Black voters urged him on. (Mr. Cuomo\u2019s $4.9 million in income<\/a> last year did not preclude his hyping Mr. Mamdani\u2019s family wealth.)<\/p>\n \u201cThis election is a choice,\u201d he told a business group in Midtown, \u201cbetween capitalism and socialism.\u201d<\/p>\n Yet for him, the race remains less a choice than a referendum: Andrew Cuomo or not Andrew Cuomo; unlikely redemption or another unwanted retreat.<\/p>\n Aides and allies used to invoke an iron rule of Cuomo scholarship: Since his failed first campaign<\/a> for governor in 2002, he had resolved<\/a> to never again risk such embarrassment, arranging to run only in elections he viewed as virtual certainties.<\/p>\n Andrew Cuomo first ran for governor of New York in 2002, but ended his campaign before Primary Day.Credit… Joe Rogate\/Getty Images<\/p>\n That he abandoned that principle after his stunning primary defeat in June is as instructive as anything, those who know him say \u2014 the crackling id behind everything he is saying and doing to reverse that recent history before it can happen again.<\/p>\n \u201cHe lives for political power,\u201d Frank Seddio, a former Brooklyn Democratic chairman who has known Mr. Cuomo since the 1970s, said after the two campaigned together in southeast Brooklyn last week. This was a compliment.<\/p>\n And so, with some polls tightening and Mr. Cuomo\u2019s rhetoric unbound, his last days on the trail have felt at times like a collective spasming of the old guard \u2014 or a proper countermovement, admirers hope \u2014 as a new would-be political order threatens their grip and his relevance.<\/p>\n Outside his event with Mr. Seddio, Cuomo supporters and backers of Curtis Sliwa, the Republican nominee, bickered on the sidewalk between a Chinese takeout spot and a vape shop, before agreeing that they should all probably leave the city together if Mr. Mamdani wins.<\/p>\n In Queens, hats and signs specking an outdoor crowd of more than 100 seemed as good a marker as any of Mr. Cuomo\u2019s closing messages: \u201cReady on Day One.\u201d \u201cMamdummy.\u201d \u201cDon\u2019t Kvetch. Vote.\u201d<\/p>\n There and elsewhere, Mr. Cuomo has spoken often of his father, Mario M. Cuomo, who, like his son, won three terms as governor. He suggested the elder Mr. Cuomo, who died in 2015, would not recognize a New York that elected Mr. Mamdani.<\/p>\n After a decisive primary defeat in June, Mr. Cuomo has kept a more active campaign schedule, appearing more frequently in places like a Bronx hair salon.Credit…Shuran Huang for The New York Times<\/p>\n \u201cHe sheds a tear,\u201d Mr. Cuomo said, \u201cthat we need to be here.\u201d<\/p>\n The younger Mr. Cuomo can likewise sound flabbergasted at his current lot \u2014 the Democratic son of a Democratic stalwart sitting for a Fox News interview as a third-party challenger with an I-for-independent identifier on the chyron, emphasizing his own fiscal discipline in a triple-bank-shot bid for conservative votes.<\/p>\n At nearly every appearance, though, he continues to argue he is the true Democrat.<\/p>\n \u201cI didn\u2019t change,\u201d Mr. Cuomo told Mr. Paul, noting that he was once caricatured as a \u201ccrazy liberal\u201d and is now considered a moderate. \u201cThe planet shifted.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Cuomo\u2019s spokesman, Rich Azzopardi, said that the campaign had course-corrected after a lackluster Democratic primary effort without altering the fundamental political product on offer.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve never tried to sell him as anybody but himself,\u201d he said. \u201cWouldn\u2019t be right to the voters.\u201d<\/p>\n What has changed most is what Mr. Cuomo seems willing to put up with, at least in the interim.<\/p>\n His relative media blitz in recent weeks \u2014 after Mr. Mamdani\u2019s success with an everywhere-all-at-once strategy in the primary \u2014 has compelled Mr. Cuomo to navigate the sort of unwieldy interactions he once tended to avoid.<\/p>\n He has laughed along with a right-wing radio host who said that Mr. Mamdani would cheer another 9\/11-style terrorist attack on New York City.<\/p>\n He has smiled tightly through a procession of unflattering questions from the women of \u201cThe View\u201d:<\/p>\n \u201cWhy aren\u2019t you doing better?\u201d (\u201cYeah, good question.\u201d)<\/p>\n \u201cWhy are you losing to a democratic socialist?\u201d (\u201cIt is a very good question.\u201d)<\/p>\n What of the sexual harassment allegations? (\u201cIt\u2019s a good question.\u201d)<\/p>\n Other stops have been more comfortable for him.<\/p>\n Last week, Mr. Cuomo visited an office building on Park Avenue to address the Association for a Better New York, a business group, and deliver some attendant reminders.<\/p>\n \u201cRemember Amazon!\u201d Mr. Cuomo said, recalling left-wing opposition to the company\u2019s planned corporate campus in Queens years ago.<\/p>\n Mr. Cuomo has stressed how New York City should elect someone with his experience.Credit…Anna Watts for The New York Times<\/p>\n \u201cA.O.C.,\u201d an attendee whispered gravely to her seatmate in the back. (Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a high-profile supporter of Mr. Mamdani, helped lead the backlash against Amazon.)<\/p>\n It was a room full of people whom Mr. Cuomo had known and teased and sometimes thrilled and often tormented, people who knew him when he was permitted to thrill and to torment with civic impunity.<\/p>\n The session was moderated by Steven Rubenstein, the association\u2019s chairman and the son of Howard Rubenstein, the New York public relations titan who died in 2020. Mr. Rubenstein asked Mr. Cuomo how he planned to negotiate governing partnerships amid complicated relationships across Washington and Albany.<\/p>\n \u201cLove,\u201d Mr. Cuomo deadpanned. \u201cGive love, get love, circle of love.\u201d<\/p>\n This, understandably, was a laugh line.<\/p>\n But as he outlined the future he imagined, Mr. Cuomo lingered on the New York he remembered.<\/p>\n His father and Mr. Rubenstein\u2019s father had \u201cmade this place,\u201d Mr. Cuomo said. This was their city.<\/p>\n \u201cI will be damned,\u201d he vowed, \u201cif Steven Rubenstein and Andrew Cuomo are going to leave their children a New York that is anything less than they inherited.\u201d<\/p>\n And if he was wrong about all that \u2014 about what his city thought it needed; about what awaited New York if he lost; about what awaited him \u2014 that was not something that Mr. Cuomo seemed ready to contemplate yet.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m afraid for New York City,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd I am New York City.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Andrew M. 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