Andrew Cuomo was the worst of us

Andrew Cuomo will not be mayor.

This was apparent, probable even, by the end of the night on June 24. But Andrew Cuomo doesn't know when someone isn't interested, so he haunted us all summer and into fall. And if his campaign didn't inspire anyone, at least it cemented his legacy the way we should all remember it.

As a man who will do anything, say anything, hurt anyone, just to keep a grip on power.

Every day that the election marched on, Cuomo's campaign looked less and less like the work of a man who wanted to help anyone in the city and more like a spiteful tantrum thrown in the face of a city he no longer knew. The campaign ideas, such as they were, amounted to the trollish, the desperate and stupid and the "Why didn't you do this when you were governor?"

It didn't work. And when it didn't work, the man who started the Trump Era by saying "As a New Yorker, I am Muslim" broke containment on the ugliest politics that were available to him.

It wasn't enough for him to say that Zohran Mamdani was too young, too inexperienced, too pie in the sky. It wasn't even enough for Cuomo to keep spamming the cynical "anti-Semitism" and "Jewish safety" buttons that failed him during the primary and were failing him in the general election. He had to inject the poison of explicit Islamophobia into the race.

It couldn't just be that Zohran Mamdani didn't have the chops to run New York. It had to be that Zohran Mamdani, immigrant and Muslim, couldn't actually be from New York, couldn't understand New York.

Zohran Mamdani. The Bronx Science grad, the guy whose campaign was filled to the brim with New York City signifiers from the moment he talked about "halalflation" through to the walk down Broadway all the way to the moment to he capped his campaign by walking on stage at his own rally to Edwin Diaz's entrance music.

This was someone that the faded copy of a beloved former governor said didn't understand New York City in 2025, because he was born in Uganda. The election couldn't end with Cuomo going quietly as he realized he was actually the one who didn't realize what New York City turned into, as he lorded over it from a mansion in Albany and then in exile in Westchester.

It had to end with Cuomo standing next to Eric Adams as he ranted about "Islamic extremism," with with Cuomo cutting an AI attack ad that began with Mamdani eating rice with hid hands, with Cuomo begging Republicans to listen to the president waging war on New York City, and with someone driving a box truck around that linked Zohran Mamdani to September 11.

And why? Not because he wanted to help anyone. Because "he lives for political power," one of his own longtime supporters said as a compliment. Because he's a Gollum who looks in the mirror and sees himself as an Aragorn.

We're going to have time to wait for the ways that Zohran Mamdani disappoints and compromises and doesn't get it all done. We'll have time to debate what his ultimate margin of victory means for a mandate or a divided city. But tonight we should bury the memory of Andrew Cuomo. Ignore his "I won by losing" concession speech. It's the last gasp of a man rejected by history. No more comebacks. No more campaigns. No more off the record calls to reporters. No more hearing from his Smithers and his Renfield.

He was the worst this city had to offer. Good riddance.

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