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Former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo has overhauled his campaign strategy as he continues his bid to become mayor of New York City on a third-party line.
Aug. 18, 2025Updated 8:51 a.m. ET
After losing the Democratic primary in June, former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo promised to be more visible to voters and aggressive in courting their support as a third-party candidate in the New York City mayor’s race.
He has largely kept to his word. There have been far more sightings, in street-side meet-and-greets with voters and with potential donors in the Hamptons. He has visited places like Shirley Chisholm State Park in eastern Brooklyn to remind voters of his accomplishments as governor.
He adopted an acid-tongued voice on social media that now regularly engages with haters and fans, treating the Democratic nominee, Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani, like an exemplar for his social media savvy, but also as a political pariah for his brand of democratic socialism. He even had his campaign logo redesigned.
It’s hard to tell if this pivot will be enough to overcome the steep odds of defeating Mr. Mamdani in a city where about two-thirds of the electorate are registered Democrats. Recent polls suggest Mr. Cuomo is still a distant second to Mr. Mamdani, but his battle is not confined to winning over voters.
Mr. Cuomo’s re-energized underdog spirit appears to be also geared toward rallying the city’s donor class, some of whom are still skeptical of Mr. Mamdani and seem open to supporting someone else.
“Andrew has to prove that he has a new spunk, and I think he’s doing better,” said Ruben Diaz Jr., the former Bronx borough president, who supported Mr. Cuomo in the primary and served on the board of the super PAC that raised close to $25 million for the former governor in the spring. The group, however, has raised only about $700,000 since the primary.
“I endorsed him during the primary, because he is the classic example of governing in prose,” Mr. Diaz said. “But quite frankly, he’s struggled to campaign in poetry.”
Mr. Diaz, who has since left the super PAC and is talking to Mr. Cuomo and the incumbent, Mayor Eric Adams, about an endorsement, said that donors with deep pockets right now are watching Mr. Cuomo to see if he can be a more effective campaigner.
“They will make an assessment once the summer is over,” he said.
As Mr. Cuomo did in the spring, he has assiduously courted business titans at fund-raisers in the Hamptons, small confabs on Zoom and more formal gatherings with business associations like the Partnership for New York City, a consortium of 350 corporate giants, law firms and banks.
In these forums, he stresses how the primary defeat has changed his strategy, and added in an interview on Friday that the general election and the primary were different animals.
“They are different electorates. There are different issues, there are different moods, there are different candidates,” Mr. Cuomo said. “I’m a different candidate for having gone through the primary, and I’m a different candidate in the general.”
On Saturday, he brought that message to the Hamptons again for a fund-raiser hosted by Jimmy Finkelstein, a conservative news executive, and his brother, Andrew Stein, a former New York City Council president and a decades-long friend of President Trump.
Last month, Mr. Stein visited the Oval Office with Mark Penn, a pollster who has worked for Bill and Hillary Clinton, to brief Mr. Trump on the race. The New York Times recently reported that Mr. Trump and Mr. Cuomo spoke as well.
Mr. Stein said Mr. Trump may have “left New York, but his heart is still here and he doesn’t want a communist and socialist running the city,” referring to Mr. Mamdani, who is not a communist.
“I told him that I thought the best chance of beating him was Cuomo,” Mr. Stein said.
He added that he believed Mr. Adams, who is running as an independent, had “zero chance” of winning, even though he asserted that the mayor should be proud of his accomplishments.
“Andrew has the best chance. So, you know, I’m going to help out any way I can,” said Mr. Stein, underscoring his fear of a Mamdani administration by calling him “Commie Mamdani.”
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Mr. Cuomo on Friday had a Hamptons fund-raiser hosted by, among others, Gregg Hymowitz and his wife Marcella, who gave $150,000 to the super PAC supporting Mr. Cuomo in the spring. This swing through the East End was at least his fourth trip there since the primary.
On top of that he has had several Manhattan fund-raisers recently, including one that was set up by Nancy Jacobson, the founder of the No Labels organization and Mr. Penn’s wife, and Irwin Simon, who hosted a fund-raiser last year for Mr. Cuomo’s pro-Israel advocacy group Never Again, NOW!
During these private events, Mr. Cuomo has broadly hewed to the same rhetoric from the primary, while also expressing regret for his sclerotic campaign operation.
“People are centrist by nature,” Mr. Cuomo said, according to audio obtained by The Times of a private event hosted last week by the Association for a Better New York. “Not the people who turn out in the primaries, but the people in the middle and this general, we have to give those people new hope. That’s my challenge.”
Mr. Cuomo and his aides hope that come September, if the polls make clear that the only chance of defeating Mr. Mamdani is in a head-to-head battle, lesser rivals like Mr. Adams and Curtis Sliwa, the Republican candidate, will end their campaigns. If that scenario comes to pass, Mr. Cuomo and his supporters believe that the big donors might return to the fold.
“Cuomo has a base in the Democratic Party, and if he can open up a big tent across all parties, he could pull off an upset,” Mr. Penn said in an email.
“That’s something neither Adams nor Sliwa can do, which is why Cuomo is the best alternative,” added Mr. Penn, whose firm was paid in the primary by a pro-Cuomo super PAC.
Campaign disclosures, which run only through July 11, show Mr. Cuomo has raised little money since June. A better picture of his campaign’s finances may emerge later this week when reports covering mid-July to mid-August are due.
“It’s not impossible,” said Patricia Duff, the political influencer and philanthropist, who supported Mr. Cuomo in the spring. “I’m hoping that Cuomo will get out there and show that he has strength in these next few weeks.”
Mr. Cuomo has always been known for having a tight group of aides around him, but his circle of advisers has shrunk since the primary loss. It prompted the departure of several key aides, including the political director, a pollster and a number of senior advisers.
Longtime confidantes such as Rich Azzopardi, Melissa DeRosa, William Mulrow and his fund-raiser, Jennifer Bayer Michaels, remain in the orbit. Mr. Cuomo has also brought in new people to manage his social media and digital strategy. Daniel Liss, who previously was the chief executive of a social media start-up, is helping manage Mr. Cuomo’s accounts. He also served as a policy analyst in former Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s administration.
The campaign also sought assistance from some former national Democratic operatives. Quentin Fulks, who helped lead both former President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s re-election campaign and former Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign, was considered for a role leading Mr. Cuomo’s operation, but nothing came of their conversations.
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Over the last month, Mr. Cuomo has held a series of policy briefings meant to contrast his vision of the city with Mr. Mamdani’s. He also popped up in different neighborhoods and chatted with constituents. These exchanges were then packaged and distributed in an onslaught of videos on social media, along with a slew of attacks against Mr. Mamdani.
Last week, Mr. Cuomo blasted Mr. Mamdani, an assemblyman earning $142,000, for living in a rent-stabilized apartment in Astoria, Queens. That unit, which is relatively affordable at $2,300 a month, should have gone to a needier New Yorker, Mr. Cuomo argued. He then proposed a new law named after Mr. Mamdani that would means-test who can live in the city’s roughly one million rent-stabilized units.
In response, Mr. Mamdani denounced the “petty vindictiveness” of Mr. Cuomo’s attacks and blamed the former governor and his supporters for exacerbating the housing crisis.
Reporting was contributed by Dana Rubinstein, Maya King and Nicholas Fandos.
Benjamin Oreskes is a reporter covering New York State politics and government for The Times.
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