The Democratic mayoral primary in New York has included some shocking twists and turns. City comptroller and mayoral candidate Brad Lander was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents. Zohran Mamdani, a Muslim democratic socialist who relentlessly focuses on bread-and-butter issues but also refuses to bend to the demands of centrist respectability on issues like Palestine, went from being the longest of long shots to being neck and neck with former governor Andrew Cuomo. As New Yorkers head to cast their votes today, multiple recent polls have Mamdani ahead of Cuomo.
One development that’s not particularly surprising, although it is grotesquely revealing, is that Cuomo scored a last-minute endorsement from Bill Clinton. The president who once infamously declared that “the era of big government is over” praised the governor who once withheld COVID vaccines from New York City as a “fighter” who “knows how to make government work.” The president who repeatedly attacked the rights of criminal defendants, first with the infamous 1994 Crime Bill and then with the even more civil liberties–shredding Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, said that Cuomo would “stand up and protect the people of this city” at a time when “basic right are under assault.”
Given that Cuomo is trying to stage a comeback four years after he had to leave office due to multiple credible accusations of sexual harassment, you might be forgiven for thinking he wouldn’t want the public backing of a former president who faced similar accusations from several different women and who was notoriously linked to the late Jeffrey Epstein. But the mainstream media and the Democratic establishment are more than willing to…
Auteur: Ben Burgis
