Andrew Cuomo said he’s “assessing that landscape” to determine whether to go forward with an independent run for New York City mayor after a shocking defeat in the Democratic primary.
A winner hasn’t been formally declared in Tuesday’s primary, but the former New York governor conceded his loss that night as state Assembly member Zohran Mamdani declared victory. But Cuomo also left the door open to running as an independent in the general election, having already received enough signatures to make the ballot.
Cuomo told CBS News in an interview on Wednesday that the results in the primary were “clear” to him despite not being final, so he didn’t want to waste people’s time. But he said the Democratic primary only includes a small fraction of the city’s electorate, making it possibly not representative of the city overall.
He said more people vote in the general election, yielding a “broader pool” of New Yorkers.
“I have an independent line. That’s done. And I am right now assessing that landscape and looking at the information, talking to people, talking to the stakeholders in my campaign about what that general election is gonna look like,” Cuomo said. “I can tell you there are a lot of people who have a lot of concerns.”
Cuomo indicated possible interest in continuing his mayoral campaign shortly after his concession on Tuesday, saying he’d consult with his colleagues to determine the “best path for me to help the City of New York.”
Mamdani pulled off a stunning upset of Cuomo in the Tuesday primary after outperforming expectations, intensifying a battle over the future of the party more broadly. Cuomo had been the favorite for months to win the Democratic nomination and position himself to complete a political comeback after his 2021 resignation as governor.
As of the latest vote count, Mamdani leads in the first round of counting in the Democratic primary with 43.5 percent to Cuomo’s 36.4 percent. Mail-in ballots can be counted for up to a week after the primary, so a winner likely won’t be declared until Tuesday, July 1, but Mamdani is viewed as almost certain to prevail.
In May, Cuomo formed his own party line called the Fight and Deliver Party to run in the general election outside of the Democratic Party, giving him another avenue to compete for the mayor’s office.
Mamdani is already set to face Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa, independent Jim Walden and incumbent Mayor Eric Adams, who ditched the Democratic primary and is running as an independent for a second term.
