After a double-digit loss in the Democratic primary for New York City mayor, Andrew Cuomo launched his independent bid for the office in June with a video mimicking the style of his primary adversary, Zohran Mamdani. Since then, his campaign seems to have taken most of its cues from the pair’s supposed common adversary, President Donald Trump.
Throughout his run, Cuomo has used AI slop in attack ads every bit as disgraceful as the worst of Trump’s Truth Social feed, while flirting with the kind of fearmongering and bigotry that have colored Trump’s entire political career. It’s a questionable choice in a campaign filled with questionable choices. The former governor’s closing argument seems destined to be clarifying for any voters still on the fence—just not in the way he hopes.
While Mamdani made a splash throughout the primary by campaigning heavily, cutting social-ready videos, and hammering a message of affordability, Cuomo appeared to sleepwalk through the race. He held relatively few events, didn’t speak to many reporters, and clung to an outdated message of public safety. In April, he released a 29-page, typo-ridden housing plan with a footnote referencing ChatGPT. (In response, the campaign claimed they only used ChatGPT for research, leaving them open to charges of outsourcing important policy to AI.)
It was as if Cuomo hoped name recognition and a foggy collective memory around why he left the governor’s office would propel him to victory. He certainly seemed surprised when it turned out New Yorkers might indeed harbor some reservations about a candidate tainted by more than a dozen credible sexual harassment allegations and a peak COVID-era nursing home scandal. Clearly, he needed to try something new.
The general-election playbook was somehow worse, with Cuomo mostly making waves for the videos his campaign posted that were generated by AI and designed to stoke fear and bigotry.
One thing nobody can accuse him of in the general race is lacking sustained, sweaty effort, which translated into some of the dirtiest, most AI-heavy campaigning the country has seen so far—at least, from someone who isn’t Donald Trump.
A festival of fearmongering and bigotry
Cuomo started out in the general election with a campaign of cringe, loaded with clumsy stabs at humor, including Office memes. The end stretch has seen Cuomo pivot from his usual attacks on Mamdani’s policies and lack of experience to more fear-driven, identity-based tactics against the frontrunner, who would be the first Muslim mayor of New York City. Cuomo also did not denounce blatantly Islamophobic attacks against Mamdani, including an October 23 ad from the Cuomo-supporting For Our City PAC, which placed the words “Jihad on NYC” over Mamdani’s smiling face.
But the nadir of the campaign had actually come a day earlier.
On October 22, Cuomo tweeted and quickly deleted an AI-generated mock ad from a group called “Criminals for Zohran Mamdani.” (The ad lives on in Instagram clips and elsewhere.) It starts with an uncanny-valley Mamdani eating rice with his hands—a common custom in Uganda, where Mamdani was born, which his more xenophobic critics have deployed to fearmonger based on his perceived foreignness. The ad then features a procession of criminals, including a man who bears a striking resemblance to actor Idris Elba donning a keffiyeh to do some shoplifting. After predictable backlash, Cuomo’s campaign quickly blamed the ad on a “junior staffer,” claiming it was released by accident.
The same day For Our City released the “Jihad” ad, Cuomo turned a guest spot on radio host Sal Rosenberg’s show into a lightning rod for toxic publicity when he raised the question of how Mamdani might handle “another 9/11.” The host suggested Mamdani would be “cheering” in this hypothetical scenario, a wildly insulting attack many critics alleged crosses a line. Cuomo didn’t merely let the claim go unchallenged; instead he added, “That’s another problem,” before circling back to the more general bedlam that might result from Mamdani presiding over the city during such a crisis.
Cuomo has since acknowledged that Rosenberg’s comment was “offensive,” but still insists that “nobody is attacking [Mamdani] for being Muslim.” Meanwhile, even the Republican candidate in the race, Curtis Sliwa, has weighed in against Cuomo’s characterization of the interview. (“Andy, get your big boy pants on,” he said of Cuomo. “When you go on a talk radio program and you say something, own it. Own it.”)
Ultimately, what Cuomo’s much-criticized radio interview accomplished is handing Mamdani an opportunity to open up, finally, about the Islamophobia he has encountered during this race, and throughout his life. His video on the topic was viewed 25 million times on X alone.
Ramping up the AI
As offensive as it was, the “Criminals for Zohran” ad was just one of several missteps in Cuomo’s full-blown embrace of Trumpian AI in attack ads in the final stretch of the campaign. While the AI slop in the president’s Truth Social feed has long since infected the rest of his administration’s weirdly meme-filled social output, it’s a new development for the mayoral race in New York City.
The AI usage began inoffensively enough, with an October 1 ad depicting Cuomo performing various jobs throughout the city. He stars as a window washer, a subway conductor, and a theater grip; all to demonstrate the NYC jobs he knows he’s not suited for as a way to underscore his preparedness to run the city. Although his AI smile in the ad is as strained as the real one, the clip is more clever than much of the campaign’s previous output.
He didn’t stay in this lane for very long. On October 21, Cuomo released a trollish ad using AI to render Mamdani as a Mini-Me to former Mayor Bill de Blasio’s Dr. Evil—a youth-courting reference to Austin Powers, the last installment of which came out 23 years ago. Although it may have been jarring to see a candidate other than lame-duck Eric Adams depict Mamdani using AI, the Mini-Me ad came across as more pathetic than offensive. It ended up being a warmup for the “Criminals for Mamdani” ad the next day.
The wide criticism Cuomo’s AI ads have generated has not deterred the candidate from releasing more of them. Last week, he released a Schoolhouse Rock-style clip—finger on the pulse as ever—which attracted attention for featuring a legislative bill that appeared to be pregnant. The ad also stood out for attributing claims about Mamdani’s voting to ChatGPT.
Finally, Cuomo released a trick-or-treating themed ad on Halloween, featuring an AI likeness of Mamdani going door-to-door wearing the scariest costume of all—“socialist.”
If Cuomo has any qualms about a political future in which candidates use AI to literally put words in each other’s mouths, they are not evident at this time.
The desperation of imminent defeat
Cuomo isn’t the only NYC mayoral candidate who posted a video on Halloween—Mamdani did, too. Instead of AI-based fearmongering, though, his video featured the candidate out in the streets interviewing trick-or-treaters. (The caption? “It’s scary how cute Park Slope was tonight.”) This post is reflective of a campaign that has remained focused on positivity and affordability more than mudslinging, although the candidate has landed some tremendous dunks along the way.
There’s a reason Cuomo has apparently opted for the dark side at the end of his campaign. It’s because his tortured-smile, Man of the People act at the beginning did not resonate. Neither did much else, for that matter. The biggest bump in his polls throughout the election cycle came after Adams dropped out in September, and it still left him underwater by double digits. Cuomo is leaning on Trumpian AI, fear, and bigotry because he’s desperate. And anyone that desperate to win shouldn’t be trusted to lead—least of all under a Trump presidency.
Cuomo keeps insisting he’s “the last person Donald Trump wants to see as mayor,” even though that is objectively untrue. Cuomo reportedly courted Trump’s endorsement and as of this past weekend, he apparently got it.
If Cuomo truly were the last person Trump wanted to see as mayor, though, it would be only because Trump might hate to see someone win an election by so blatantly stealing his shtick.
