The New York City mayor’s race is an ethics test
Trump, Adams, and Cuomo have made it a choice between corruption and Mamdani.
If you like Eric Adams (and Donald Trump), you’ll love me. That seems to be former Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s closing argument as New Yorkers start voting for their next mayor.
Cuomo rushed off from a final mayoral debate Wednesday to sit with the current mayor at a Knicks game, posting a photo of the smiling pair, complete with Cuomo thumbs up. Turned out that was just a preview for Adams endorsing him Thursday.
Beyond the arguments over experience, housing, policing, socialism, and affordability, corruption is on the ballot. This election will answer the question of whether city voters are fed up with ethically compromised politicians like Adams, Cuomo, and the reigning giant of the field, Mr. President.
For months, Trump has loomed over this contest, threatening to withhold money from New York City if frontrunner Zohran Mamdani, a state legislator, a democratic socialist, and the Democratic nominee, wins the race. He’s made clear he prefers Cuomo, which makes perfect sense. In the bizarro upside-down world of Team Trump, where Jan. 6 rioters get pardons and conscientious prosecutors get fired, scandals and transgressions are credentials, not disgraces.
Trump is also looming because of his interventions for Adams. The Justice Department indicted the mayor a year ago, accusing him of benefitting from a decade-long bribery and wire fraud scheme. Less than a month after returning to office, Trump’s administration moved to dismiss the charges, leading to a wave of resignations and the widespread assumption that Adams was now indebted to Trump.
The charges were dismissed permanently in April. But in August, Adams’ former chief adviser was indicted on charges of accepting more than $75,000 in bribes. She had resigned in December, just before being indicted on separate corruption charges.
Adams was already trailing badly in his bid for reelection as an independent, and Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa was also well behind. Last month, Trump advisers allegedly discussed administration jobs for both if they dropped out, the New York Times reported in a story based on three unnamed sources.
The two candidates reacted negatively, and Sliwa is still in it – though almost certainly not to win it in a blue city. But Adams obliged by exiting the race last month, and again on Thursday by officially blessing Cuomo.
This Trump-Cuomo-Adams axis is not surprising, given their shared tawdry approach to politics and governance. Cuomo famously resigned as New York governor in August 2021 after an independent investigation by the state Attorney General’s Office found that he had sexually harassed 11 women. Less famous, but equally disturbing, is what he did years earlier: He created the Moreland Commission in 2013 to root out public corruption, but dissolved it nine months later because it was looking into people and businesses connected to him.
“We were sure that we were going to be able to look into corruption, wherever it was in Albany, and that turned out not to be true,” former commission co-chair Kathleen Rice told Capital Tonight in 2021, when she was a congresswoman. “And some of the nastier interactions that I had with the governor, usually were around, you know, subpoenas that were sent to people that got a little too close to him.”
That same year, state legislative investigators reported that Cuomo used state resources to write a book celebrating his own (now somewhat discredited) Covid leadership. They said he had directed staffers to help with the book as the pandemic raged and had made over $5 million from the deal.
A successor to the Moreland Commission, the Joint Commission On Public Ethics, tried that year to force Cuomo to repay the money to the state, and Cuomo sued. He won that case in 2022, but by then that commission had been succeeded by another one – the Commission on Lobbying and Ethics in Government—which started its own probe. Cuomo again filed a lawsuit, claiming the panel itself was unconstitutional. But the state’s top court ruled against him in February, about 10 days before he jumped into the mayoral race.
In other ethics news, a conservative watchdog group filed a complaint in June asking the city to investigate Cuomo for failing to disclose $2.6 million in nuclear technology stock options before he ran for mayor.
Some voters might wish (understandably) for a Democratic nominee who is more moderate or conventional or experienced. But the ballot is not a wish list. It’s a short list, and it’s maddening that it includes Cuomo.
Mamdani’s main campaign theme is affordability, but he also is hammering at corruption. “What I don’t have in experience, I make up for in integrity. And what you don’t have in integrity, you could never make up for in experience,” he told Cuomo in the first mayoral debate. And that Knicks game photo with Adams? “Corruption goes courtside,” Mamdani posted on X.
It’s no accident that for months, Mamdani has been praising police commissioner Jessica Tisch (popular among business leaders and some Mamdani allies) for reducing corruption and crime. At the final mayoral debate Wednesday, Mamdani said he’ll ask Tisch to stay if he wins.
That commitment was a sign that he respects competence. It helped him win an endorsement from House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. It sent an unmistakable simmer-down signal across the five boroughs. And, as a closing message, it sure beat Cuomo’s late embrace of Adams and his baggage (which includes Trump and his baggage).
That’s the choice, New York City. Take your pick.
Jill Lawrence is the author of “The Art of the Political Deal: How Congress Beat the Odds and Broke Through Gridlock.”
 | A guest post by
|
"This Trump-Cuomo-Adams axis is not surprising, given their shared tawdry approach to politics and governance. "
I knew that from the moment this unholy threesome coalesced. I'm not a New Yorker, but I knew good and well that Adams was a lying, corrupt sack of shit as evidence of his theft from the people unfolded. I knew Trump was an angry cheater from the moment I watched the documentary about his taking ancestral land from Scots in order to build his golf course, and the psychological warfare he inflicted on those who resisted. And Cuomo? Like some sociopaths, such as Rudy Giuliani, he was good a hiding it.
The victims--of all three of these crooks--are now all of us. When you dick with justice, you harm every citizen in this land. Dear New Yorkers, yes: you owe your fellow citizens the rejection of these sharks, just as we all needed to see lying George Santos lose what he had gained from those very public lies. We needed his loss of status as person worthy of the public trust. These three are a stain on all of us. Please vote with your country as well as your city in mind.
"What I don't have in experience, I make up in integrity. And what you don't have in integrity, you could never make up for in experience."
That's quite the statement.
Yay Leader Jeffries for endorsing Mamdani.