“Notoriety is better than being unknown.” A report on the city’s mayoral race and the voters who, like their counterparts across the country, have become addicted to scandal. Plus:
• Putin and Zelensky fight for Trump’s favor
• Reviving a late artist’s digital legacy
• Ed Helms considers history’s greatest blunder
Eric Lach
Lach writes regularly about New York City politics, people, and more.
Illustration by John Cuneo
A few weeks ago, I went fancy-condo browsing in Brooklyn with State Senator Zellnor Myrie, who is running to be mayor of New York City. Myrie, one of eleven Democrats who will be on the primary ballot in June, got in the race to be the housing candidate, campaigning on a plan to build a million more housing units in the city. He grew up in the borough and intimately understands the challenge that so many of his constituents in the historically Black neighborhoods of central Brooklyn are facing: being steadily priced out. “There’s something that doesn’t feel right, having to walk past luxury buildings that you will never be able to afford,” he said, as we strolled through an open house for a three-bedroom apartment near Prospect Park that was listed at $1.7 million.
However, even as many voters say housing is a top issue, Myrie has yet to crack double digits in the polls. Instead, the disgraced former Governor Andrew Cuomo—who resigned in 2021 after nearly a dozen women accused him of sexual harrassment—has dominated the race since before he formally announced his campaign. Alongside the scandals of Mayor Eric Adams, and the spectre of President Donald Trump, there hasn’t been room in the conversation for much else. “There’s just so many other things grabbing your attention,” Myrie said.
I write about the state of the mayoral race in this week’s issue. Cuomo and Adams, who is now running as an independent, are front and center, but the piece is also about why the other contenders are having such a hard time. With the exception of Zohran Mamdani, a State Assembly member and democratic socialist with a talent for social media, no other candidate has found much traction, and even Mamdani has never surpassed twenty-five per cent in any poll. Cuomo seems poised to run away with it. What’s happening here? Why are mainstream Democrats in New York, like elsewhere in the country, having such trouble pitching voters? Some say celebrity beats competency. Some say, in a world becoming more dominated by strong men, voters appreciate the tough guy. Some say we’re in a post-scandal moment, when notoriety is better than being unknown.
Eliot Spitzer, the former governor who resigned after a prostitution scandal in 2008, told me that he’d recently given some advice to one of the candidates. “I said, ‘There are three ways to get into the public consciousness: be around for a very long time, have a ton of your own money, or have a scandal,’ ” he said. He added, “You know, I did all three at one point.”
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For more: read Ian Parker’s Profile of Eric Adams, from 2023, and Nick Paumgarten’s Profile of Cuomo, from 2020.
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P.S. Catholic cardinals, some of whom have never participated in a papal election before today, are turning to last year’s hit movie “Conclave” for pointers on the actual thing, according to a report from Politico. What might they have discovered onscreen? Exhilarating performances but methodical drama, our critic Richard Brody writes. But what would the real-life cardinals make of the movie’s twist? ⛪️
Ian Crouch contributed to this edition.
