The mayor’s race is fully upon us with former Gov. Andrew Cuomo and City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams now in the fray. Ultimately, a handful of factors will determine the outcome.
What do voters know about Cuomo? Cuomo’s opponents argue that once voters are reminded of issues like the sexual harassment scandal and the nursing home scandal, their support for Cuomo will dissipate. Cuomo’s backers say that the voters are well aware of Cuomo’s strengths and flaws and when they tell pollsters they’re for him, the negatives are already baked in. If the latter is true, dislodging Cuomo’s lead will be difficult.
Can someone unite hard core progressives and slightly more moderate progressives? Around a fifth of the Democratic primary electorate are far, far left progressives. Heading into the race, no fewer than five of the current candidates saw themselves as the face of that movement. They all can’t capture the same voters. To win the election, that candidate will have to capture both the far left and the larger bloc of the slightly more moderate left — voters who see themselves as very liberal but also hate feeling unsafe on the streets and subways.
That candidate will have to make the case that adhering to far left policies does not preclude governing competently and practically. When times are good and the city feels safe, voters are willing to grant that assumption (i.e. Bill de Blasio). When times are hard, voters are much less generous. At this moment, that generosity may not exist.
Where’s the opportunity to break through? There are a few ways for a candidate to do this: by getting a lot of earned media, by being able to overwhelm the other candidates in paid media, by getting key media endorsements, by consolidating special interests like organized labor or by uniquely capturing the zeitgeist of the race.
- There’s not enough earned media to go around. Reporters are fixated on Cuomo. Eric Adams is always a magnet for controversy. Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani is dynamic, which makes him appealing to reporters. It is hard to see how the other candidates can meaningfully displace those three. If Eric Adams ends up not running, that will create some room for others to try to break through.
- Paid media is expensive and because of the city’s campaign finance system, the candidates will all have around the same amount of money. There will be independent expenditure campaigns, but unless those IEs raise tens of millions of dollars (extremely unlikely), they’re probably not enough to meaningfully move the electorate in any one direction.
- When Kathryn Garcia received the New York Times endorsement in the 2021 Democratic primary, she almost won. The Times has since gotten out of the business of endorsing local candidates. The Daily News remains an important and highly coveted endorsement. If the New York Post continues to train its animosity on Cuomo, that will hurt him. However, the Post doesn’t have a clear candidate to support, so it’s possible they don’t engage as heavily as they usually do. It’s not likely that the media will anoint a winner.
- Typically, the organizations that can move the most votes in a primary are unions with strong political operations. If 1199 and 32BJ and HTC and the UFT and DC37 all got behind one candidate, that could make a big difference. But it’s equally likely they are split all over the place. It is unlikely any business group raises and spends tens of millions of dollars on behalf of any specific candidate. Progressive organizations like the Working Families Party and Make the Road could have an impact but they’d have to unite behind one candidate and that candidate still has to capture the non-super far left vote too.
- Right now, the zeitgeist of the race is clear: voters want someone who will clean the city up and make it more affordable. All of the candidates realize this and most are promising more cops, more law and order, and a handful of conventional ideas to make the city less expensive. If one of them lands upon something truly novel or bold, that could help them break through. But if everyone is just saying a slightly different version of the same thing, it won’t matter.
In any campaign, a conventional approach typically yields a conventional outcome. In this case, with Cuomo way ahead, a conventional race by his opponents likely results in failure.
Presumably, every campaign is desperately trying to figure out how to differentiate itself. Let’s see if any of them can get it right.
Tusk is a venture capitalist, political strategist and philanthropist.