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It boggles the mind to consider that Andrew Cuomo managed to squeeze a second failed resurrection out of the embers of his first attempted resurrection.
When Cuomo got smoked in the June primary, it was widely assumed that he would do the honorable thing — not commit seppuku, necessarily, but at least take a final bow and leave New York in peace.
After all, resigning the governorship in disgrace, claiming that his handsy behavior was simply Italian in origin, having his Emmy Award taken away and then losing his comeback bid ought to have been enough to dissuade even a massive egomaniac that, maybe, the voters just aren’t that into you.
Not if you are Andrew Cuomo. Having been rejected in the mayoral primary by Democrats in a city that had been voting for Cuomos on the D line for almost 50 years, he decided that running in the general election as an outsider was his ticket to redemption.
Seemed perverse. But in a career fueled mostly by his family name, megalomania and a … healthy sense of personal destiny, it only makes sense that Cuomo — who was always vaguely vampiric — would have to be dragged wheedlingly and complainingly to the political boneyard.
It was only a scant six months after being ignominiously chased from Albany in 2021 that Andrew Cuomo began clawing himself out of his hastily dug grave. He blitzed the state with a tv ad explaining that he was — surprise! — a victim.
“Political attacks won. And New Yorkers lost a proven leader,” his bizarre spot mourned.
It’s plausible that Cuomo was driven out of the governor’s mansion in a kind of palace coup; he certainly had no lack of enemies. But if you are a career politician you can’t coherently dismiss your opponents’ attacks as “just politics” without explaining who, how and why.
Follow the latest on the Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani:
In fact, there were plenty of reasons not to like Andrew Cuomo. His governorship was a decade-long exercise in preening vanity, bad policies and cynical maneuvering that left few people happy.
Ever taken a trip through western New York state — at one time one of the richest regions in the country — and wondered why so many houses look like something out of the Dust Bowl?
For the sake of comparison, cross the state line into Pennsylvania and note the differences. South of the line, new cars and trucks, prosperous communities; north of the line, hardship and worry.
What’s the difference? Fracking, which Andrew Cuomo banned statewide in 2014 under pressure from environmental advocates and donors — few of whom, if any, lived in Broome, Chautauqua or Cattaraugus counties or attended many Southern Tier deaths-of-despair funerals.
New York counties bordering Pennsylvania have triple the poverty rate as their neighbors to the south.
Cuomo’s “Buffalo Billion” program to turn western New York into a Rust Belt version of Silicon Valley-cum-Hollywood (remember the “Central New York Film Hub”?) should have been called the Buffalo Boondoggle.
Two of Cuomo’s most trusted advisers, Joe Percoco and Alain Kalayeros, were convicted of bribery and fraud in connection with the Big B.B. True, their convictions were overturned, but it was never in dispute that they took the money.
Andrew Cuomo signed into law some of the worst criminal-justice legislation in New York history.
Bail reform saw to it that even violent criminals would be back on the street within hours after arrest. Discovery reform put absurd demands on local prosecutors, forcing them to drop important cases due to tight office resources.
“Raise the Age” legislation kept 16- and 17-year olds out of criminal court. This has led to a spate of hard-core teenage gangbangers getting shunted into family court, where they face light discipline and sealed records.
Cuomo’s sudden decriminalization of marijuana as a matter of “social justice” turned the state into a Wild West of drug sales and use. And he eliminated psychiatric beds just when marijuana-associated serious mental illness spiked.
I leave you with a final vision of Andrew Cuomo’s fatuous leadership. In 2017, he opened the new Mario Cuomo Bridge by vaingloriously crossing it in FDR’s 1932 Packard Phaeton, which he dragged out of a museum display and overhauled to make street-legal.
’Nuff said.
Let’s just be honest. Zohran Mamdani is unquestionably going to be a terrible mayor. He has no experience managing anything more complicated than a ping-pong game.
He cozies up to the worst people in America. And he is set on vitiating New York of its vigor and collapsing its prosperity and safety.
Would Andrew Cuomo have been any better? Probably. He has deep knowledge of how the city and state actually work, he has managed huge budgets and wouldn’t enter municipal office with an aggressive foreign-policy agenda.
But the voters have spoken, and they will get what they asked for. As will the rest of us.
As for Andy, let him enjoy his well-deserved, and delayed, retirement from electoral politics.
Seth Barron’s next book, “Weaponized,” will be out this winter. He is a member of The Post Editorial Board. @sethbarronnyc
