Announcing his bid to run for mayor of New York City over the weekend, former Gov. Andrew Cuomo declared that he would “save our city.”
On Monday, Mayor Eric Adams passed on several opportunities to punch back — but said he did agree with his fellow Democrat on one point.
“I do believe we need to be saved — from him,” Adams said at a City Hall news conference.
The comment was Adams’ first public criticism of Cuomo since the former governor launched his campaign Saturday with a 17-minute video that blasted the city’s leadership and described it as a threatening place where crime has spun out of control. It was also the public’s first preview at how the race between the two scandal-scarred politicians may look in the months until June’s Democratic primary election.
Asked whether sexual harassment allegations against Cuomo — and his administration’s undercounting of COVID-19 deaths in nursing homes — were “disqualifying,” Adams responded that he doesn’t believe in disqualifying a person unless they do something “that’s really despicable.”
He said he had met with families of nursing home residents and that he believed the women who have made allegations against Cuomo. But, he said, those were issues Cuomo would have to answer for on the campaign trail.
Reached for comment, Cuomo spokesman Rich Azzopardi said: “We’ll let the voters decide.”
Adams was indicted last year in a sweeping bribery case in which federal prosecutors allege Adams accepted luxury travel perks and illegal campaign contributions. He has pleaded not guilty.
The incumbent’s woes deepened significantly this year after the U.S. Department of Justice moved to drop the case so Adams could help with Republican President Donald Trump’s immigration agenda, leaving open the possibility that the case could be reinstated at a future date.
Cuomo entered the race with an announcement that framed himself as an experienced moderate leader with the political knowhow to tackle the city’s most pressing issues.
But he has his own set of damaging baggage: Cuomo resigned in 2021 after a report from the state’s attorney general found that Cuomo sexually harassed at least 11 women.
He has also been criticized for his COVID-19 response, in particular a policy that early in the pandemic barred nursing homes from refusing to readmit coronavirus patients who were discharged from hospitals.
Cuomo and Adams are among several candidates in New York City’s Democratic mayoral primary race, which given the city’s political bent, is widely viewed as the defining contest of the election. Also running in the primary is Comptroller Brad Lander, state Sen. Zellnor Myrie, state Sen. Jessica Ramos, state Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani and former city Comptroller Scott Stringer.