Few would have predicted a year ago that a week out from New York City’s Democratic primary, a thirty-three-year-old democratic socialist state assemblymember named Zohran Mamdani would be in striking distance of the city’s mayoralty, closing in on disgraced former New York governor Andrew Cuomo. But here we are. Now that Mamdani has narrowed the gap with Cuomo — one recent poll even shows the assemblyman in the lead — the political establishment’s paper of record, the New York Times, has weighed in. In its “Advice to Voters in a Vexing Race for New York Mayor,” the editorial board avers that it “do[es] not believe that Mr. Mamdani deserves a spot on New Yorkers’ ballots.”
The ed board is rather circumspect, on the other hand, in its criticism of Cuomo. After lauding the former governor as having “the strongest policy record” of all the candidates, the editors say that they have “have serious objections to his ethics and conduct” because of the many sexual harassment allegations against him — “even if he would be better for New York’s future than Mr. Mamdani.”
None of this is exactly shocking stuff from a pillar of the status quo like the Times. But it’s worth digging into the specifics of the Times’ case here. The paper of record cares surprisingly little about Cuomo’s sorry history of governance and fails to grasp the promise that Mamdani’s campaign is holding out — a promise of a fundamentally different way of doing politics for the working-class majority of a city facing an out-of-control crisis in the cost of living.
First, the question of Cuomo’s record. The former governor’s legacy, as Branko Marcetic wrote recently in Jacobin, is one of scandal after scandal after scandal, mentioned but not explored in detail in the Times piece.
Ironically, the city itself was a major victim of Cuomo during his 2011–21 tenure as New York’s governor. He subjected New York City to harsh austerity,…
Auteur: Nick French
