Will Cuomo Run for Mayor? Racial Politics Complicate His Decision.

Andrew M. Cuomo has been here before.

In 2002, fresh off a stint as the nation’s housing secretary, Mr. Cuomo decided to run for governor of New York. Fellow Democrats already had a well-liked Black candidate in mind, H. Carl McCall, but Mr. Cuomo bet his family name and raw political talent would carry the day.

It did not. Mr. Cuomo, who is white, came across as brash and entitled. He quit the race days before the primary, but Black leaders still accused him of undermining Mr. McCall’s chance at making history. Mr. Cuomo later called the humiliation “the worst thing that could happen to you, short of death.”

Two decades later, that race offers a cautionary tale as Mr. Cuomo wrestles with whether to run for mayor of New York City. Now, like then, he appears to be caught between his own conviction and a prominent Black leader, Mayor Eric Adams — and he cannot afford a repeat.

Nearly a dozen people who have spoken with him said they had little doubt that Mr. Cuomo, 67, was pining for a comeback after he resigned as governor in scandal in 2021. His boosters believe Mr. Adams has been mortally wounded by federal corruption charges and that Mr. Cuomo will benefit this time from deep reserves of good will he built up with New Yorkers, including African Americans, during his decade as governor.

But to run against Mr. Adams, a pugnacious rival who insists he is being unfairly targeted by prosecutors, could also open the kind of unpredictable political and racial fault lines Mr. Cuomo has scrupulously avoided since “the Carl McCall debacle,” as Black leaders — many of whom became Cuomo allies — sometimes refer to it.

Mr. Adams and his allies appear ready to make race a part of his fight for a second term. Groups opposed to the former governor have already cut ads portraying Mr. Cuomo as disrespectful and derisive to the Black community, according to a Democratic operative familiar with them. They could begin running immediately.

The operative said the ads resurfaced comments from 2008 in which Mr. Cuomo appeared to use a racially charged term, “shuck and jive,” to suggest that Barack Obama, then a presidential candidate, deceived reporters (Mr. Cuomo insisted he was not referring to Mr. Obama). They also use a more recent remark in which he accused Letitia James, the state’s Black attorney general, of “incompetence” after her investigation into accusations of sexual harassment against Mr. Cuomo helped end his governorship.

Even his closest advisers say they are not certain if Mr. Cuomo, who has myriad other considerations, will take the plunge. To win, he would almost certainly need to peel away a sizable share of Black voters who are sympathetic to Mr. Adams without setting off a backlash that could undermine his chances.

Mr. Cuomo “can’t be seen as prospering off the misfortunes of Eric Adams,” warned the Rev. Johnnie Green Jr., the influential pastor of Mount Neboh Baptist Church in Harlem.

“Black people are just not going to stand for it. Black people are saying give Eric his fair day in court, and then we’ll make a decision,” the reverend said. “No candidate can assume that because of Eric’s legal troubles that we’re just ready to abandon him.”

Rich Azzopardi, a spokesman for Mr. Cuomo, said discussions of the former governor entering the race are “premature.”

“But this premise is absurd on its face,” he continued. “The race for New York City mayor currently includes three Black candidates, two far-left fringe white candidates, a Latina and a Muslim American: That is the beautiful diversity of New York, and New Yorkers will ultimately cast their ballot based on merit and who they believe can deliver results for their families.”

For now, Mr. Cuomo appears to be taking pains to avoid any suggestion he is edging Mr. Adams out. Even if he has privately concluded that the mayor does not have a path to re-election, the former governor has yet to utter a critical word about him in public since the charges. He has told mutual associates, including former Gov. David A. Paterson, that he thought the charges against Mr. Adams — that he accepted thousands of dollars in travel perks and illegal campaign donations from Turkey — were relatively weak.

Mr. Cuomo’s aides say he still has time to watch Mr. Adams’s case play out before reaching his decision. Unlike the half dozen candidates in the race, Mr. Cuomo is near universally known by voters and leads the field in a series of recent public opinion polls.

But if Mr. Cuomo is still hoping to avoid a direct fight with Mr. Adams, the timeline is tight. Candidates need to begin collecting petitions to qualify for the June primary in late February. Mr. Adams is not scheduled to go on trial until April. Making matters more unpredictable, President-elect Donald J. Trump has dangled a possible pardon to the mayor, and the two met at Mr. Trump’s golf club in Florida on Friday.

Behind the scenes, Mr. Cuomo is moving to put together a potential campaign team. He has engaged Charlie King, a prominent Black strategist and Mr. Cuomo’s running mate against Mr. McCall in 2002, to help run a potential mayoral campaign, according to two people familiar with the planning. Mr. King said it was premature to discuss what role he might have in a potential campaign. The move was reported first by Politico.

Mr. Cuomo’s allies also see a potential race against Mr. Adams as different from the one Mr. Cuomo ran against Mr. McCall in key ways.

In an interview, Mr. King pointed to private polling that shows Mr. Adams has hemorrhaged support, including among Black voters, even without Mr. Cuomo in the race. (A poll taken in October by The New York Times and Siena College found a similar pattern.)

“It’s also a fact that Andrew Cuomo is popular among African American voters and that’s due to his decades-long service in government,” Mr. King said.

“The governor is currently not a candidate for any race,” he added. “Should he become a candidate, I’m sure they’ll both have an opportunity to compare their records of accomplishment and let the voters decide based on the merits.”

Mr. Adams and Mr. Cuomo have historically been allies, with a shared belief in law-and-order centrism and connection to working class voters. But as reports of Mr. Cuomo’s possible campaign grow, the mayor has begun offering a taste of how he intends to try to drive a wedge into Mr. Cuomo’s coalition.

He told Politico that Mr. Cuomo would have to answer for his decision to sign legislation ending cash bail that has grown politically radioactive among many of the former governor’s moderate supporters. This week, Mr. Adams, who has frequently wielded his status as the city’s second-ever Black mayor as a cudgel against white opponents, all but called Mr. Cuomo a privileged scion.

“Polls don’t make mayors. People do. And when you look at some of the people who ran office, they inherited empires,” Mr. Adams said. “I didn’t inherit empires. I had to start from the bottom, and now I’m here.”

Zellnor Myrie, a Black state senator in the race, has indicated he is ready to go on the offensive, too. He has made thinly veiled references to Mr. Cuomo while speaking at Black churches. Asked about how Mr. Cuomo’s potential entry into the mayoral race might affect Black voters, Mr. Myrie said that he took “issue with politicians who only come around for forgiveness and votes, who don’t show up for empowerment and hope.”

Mr. McCall was not the only significant Black leader who once stood in Mr. Cuomo’s political path.

In 2008, Gov. Eliot Spitzer resigned in scandal and he was replaced by Mr. Paterson, who became the state’s first Black governor. Mr. Cuomo, then the state attorney general, saw a potential opening for another run. The problem was that Mr. Paterson also wanted a full term in the job.

Mr. Cuomo contributed to a pressure campaign urging him not to run. Mr. Paterson took umbrage, but this time, Mr. Cuomo did not take much blame. Mr. Paterson had other heavy political liabilities, and when he dropped his campaign, Mr. Cuomo inherited his support and easily won the office in 2010.

“Somehow it always seems to happen with him,” said Mr. Paterson, who is now on friendly terms with Mr. Cuomo. “There are plenty of other white candidates who ran for things, and it wasn’t racialized. But with Andrew, it started with McCall and it just become part of his situation.”

It is not that Mr. Cuomo was “racist or is hateful,” he added. “But I think that certainly some of the tactics would almost seem that way.”

Many of the city’s most prominent Black officials and civic leaders are watching Mr. Cuomo’s shadow campaign cautiously. Some said they believed that Mr. Adams had been treated unfairly by prosecutors. Others indicated that Mr. Cuomo could be their second choice in a field made up of more progressive Democrats, even after sexual harassment allegations ended his governorship and a congressional committee recommended he be criminally charged for lying about his involvement in a state Covid report on nursing home deaths.

“I don’t think we’re prepared to have that conversation until we know what’s happening with Eric,” said the Rev. Al Sharpton, who is close with both men. “I would tell Andrew that he would have to keep his powder dry for a minute.”

He called old scar tissue around the McCall and Paterson episodes a “sensitivity that he should not ignore.”

For his part, Mr. McCall took a circumspect view but predicted Black New Yorkers could embrace Mr. Cuomo under the right circumstances.

“You know the old saying, in politics there are not permanent friends or permanent enemies,” he said. “Only permanent interests.”