NEW YORK — Andrew Cuomo, frontrunner in the Democratic primary for New York City mayor, will release a positive campaign ad Tuesday that seeks to reintroduce him to voters — a contrast to some of the doom-and-gloom messaging of his candidacy.
“Rise,” the third ad of his campaign and the first in which he speaks directly to the camera, is a six-figure buy across streaming television and digital platforms. It comes three weeks from primary day, in a tightening race in which his rivals are clamoring to define the three-term governor — who resigned in disgrace four years ago — by his controversies and scandals.
“New York City has an affordability crisis, but we will rise,” Cuomo says in the 30-second spot, standing in his shirtsleeves on a Brooklyn street corner. The candidate promises to push for a higher minimum wage, as he did as governor, and build 500,000 affordable homes, referencing his tenure as U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development.
In the campaign ad, set against uplifting music, Cuomo also references building bridges, train stations and airports as governor and his leadership during Covid.
“Because there’s a simple solution to a crisis: you act,” Cuomo says in the ad. “So let’s rise together.”
His management of the pandemic lifted his profile nationally, but is also the source of a criminal referral from congressional Republicans to the Department of Justice. The DOJ is now reportedly investigating Cuomo, though he said Sunday he has yet to receive a subpoena.
The former governor’s critics have said he was part of the problems he now pledges to fix as a candidate. Cuomo has been accused of misrepresenting his advocacy on raising the minimum wage as well as his management of the Covid pandemic that claimed thousands of New Yorkers’ lives.
Cuomo, who still leads in the polls but was separated from Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani by just 9 points in a recent Emerson College survey, has also released ads about President Donald Trump targeting him and his governance during the pandemic, called “Crisis.”
He spoke directly into the camera in his unusually long campaign launch video, during which he painted a bleak portrait of the city over the course of more than 17 minutes.
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