As Adams looks to Trump, Cuomo looks mayoral

Daily Point

Decibels ramp up sharply for ‘Mayor’ Cuomo

The 2025 New York City mayoral race now reaches a unique defining moment against a chaotic national backdrop.

Under the White House’s urging, Justice Department officials are reportedly considering the abandonment of a federal corruption case against first-term Mayor Eric Adams whose chances of reelection, or those of anyone criminally accused, would look dicey at best.

The widely watched unspooling of that drama intersects with a key point on the state and municipal election calendar. In only three weeks, on Feb. 25, the circulation of designating petitions begins for all mayoral primary candidates. A total of 2,250 valid signatures is required to qualify for the nomination, which should be easy for a decently funded Democrat.

Which brings us to Andrew Cuomo. He resigned as governor under pressure from all the other power centers of his own state Democratic Party amid officially filed sexual harassment and abuse claims that never were prosecuted and other job-related allegations. But as Adams' fortunes appear to fade, Cuomo seems to be cautiously timing a jump for City Hall.

Suddenly, a poll appears this week, published by the Honan Strategy Group, that suggests Cuomo is favored by 35% of would-be Democratic primary voters surveyed in a race he has yet to enter. He hypothetically "leads" Comptroller Brad Lander who has 10%, and HSG’s president Brad Honan noted Monday that Adams lands tied for third in the scrum as of now.

The timing and circumstances surrounding the poll itself are interesting. Honan, a private consultant who apparently enjoys a positive reputation at least among Democratic insiders when it comes to polling and messaging, told reporters on a conference call Monday that he produced the work independently and at his own expense. It did attract nonpartisan attention, of course.

Honan isn’t always involved in the same type of putatively neutral endeavors as the regular Siena, Marist or Quinnipiac polls. His website bio says his work "output" has included "electing Democratic political candidates in tough primary races and general elections by identifying compelling messaging and effective voter targeting strategies."

It says: "Bradley spent about 10 years at the world-renowned polling firm of Penn, Schoen, and Berland, where he focused on developing the most effective messaging and targeting strategies in order to win tough primary races and persuade hard to reach swing voters."

HSG’s latest findings were leaked first to the New York Post, which in its story played up, above the candidate angle, negative and angry views that respondents shared about the city and its future. For second-day follow-ups, news media were invited to a phone-in news conference — where questions and subsequent dispatches focused more on Cuomo and Adams. Its results were right in Cuomo’s presumed strategic wheelhouse.

"Bad for Adams, good for Cuomo," said a Democratic Party insider who’s been cordial with both.

Rich Azzopardi, the Cuomo spokesman, was asked by The Point if he’s insisting as he has for weeks that it’s too early to discuss a mayoral run. He said by email: "It all remains premature, but Andrew Cuomo ... will always help any way he can to have (New York) succeed and New Yorkers know he worked day and night for them, raising wages for millions of workers, actually building infrastructure projects that politicians merely talked about."

And Azzopardi cited three major city projects built and completed under Cuomo’s tenure as governor — the Moynihan train station, Kosciuszko Bridge and the Second Avenue subway — as well as gun-control legislation, and abortion protections.

It looked, walked and sounded like a campaign statement — "premature" or not.

— Dan Janison dan.janison@newsday.com

Pencil Point

Missing the bus

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Quick Points

It’s the cart and the horse

• As median teacher salaries on Long Island continue to rise, teacher representatives continue to argue that the salaries reflect the high cost of living on Long Island. But it’s at least equally true that they contribute to the high cost of living via the high taxes LIers pay for their costly school districts.
• Three companies that manage thousands of apartments on Long Island are being sued by the Department of Justice for conspiring to inflate rents. Good, as long as we’re clear that rent collusion is very far from the only reason that the rents are too darn high.
• President Donald Trump fired the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Rohit Chopra, under whose direction the CFPB took several steps to save consumers money. If you’re thinking that firing such a person doesn’t align with a campaign promise to reduce the cost of living, you’re not wrong.
• Vice President JD Vance defended President Donald Trump’s remarks that diversity, equity and inclusion practices were linked to the midair plane crash in Washington Wednesday night, saying that Trump "wasn’t blaming anybody," only that DEI policies "have led our air traffic controllers to be short-staffed." Nice try, but that definitely was not what the president said.
• North Korea criticized Secretary of State Marco Rubio for calling the country a "rogue" state, saying his words were "coarse and nonsensical." Notably, North Korea didn’t say they weren’t true.
• After top security chiefs at the U.S. Agency for International Development refused to turn over classified information to one of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency crews that lacked security clearance, Musk posted on social media, "USAID is a criminal organization." Give him credit for a novel theory: that refusing to break the law makes one a criminal.

— Michael Dobie michael.dobie@newsday.com

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