Michael Goodwin: Andrew Cuomo has my vote for NYC mayor the Big Apple cannot afford a Mamdani mistake

If anyone had dared to tell me last winter that I would eventually vote to make Andrew Cuomo New York’s next mayor, I would have shot back, “Never.” I was still thoroughly disgusted with the former governor, had applauded his forced 2021 exit from Albany and saw no evidence he was doing anything to make himself fit to hold public office again. In the three-plus years since his resignation, he had continued to play defense and attack his critics, including me, but had done nothing to demonstrate he had learned anything or accepted any responsibility for his historic collapse. In his public remarks and private conversations, there were no apologies for the heartless nursing home debacle he caused during the COVID pandemic. Nor was there remorse over the finding that he was guilty of sexually harassing 13 women. He never said so directly, but he seemed to believe that if he got back into politics, enough voters enamored of the Cuomo name would give him a second chance, even if he didn’t show them why he deserved it. My view was that the nursing home deaths and the harassment findings probably marked the end of any chance to get back into the game. In fact, he had become so toxic in his own party that not a single fellow Democrat anywhere defended him as his troubles piled up. His reflexive defense against criticism — “it’s all politics” — wasn’t working since it was his own party tearing him down.Even then-President Joe Biden joined the chorus in calling for his head. Facing certain impeachment and removal by the Legislature, the governor threw in the towel and skulked out of town, presumably, in political terms, a dead man walking. But fate gave him a new chance.

And fate has forced me to see him from a different perspective. The result is that I do indeed plan to vote for him next Tuesday. Getting here has been a long, bumpy process driven by facts and the poor alternative choices in the race for City Hall. The campaign has evolved i...