Across NYC, political comeback bids failed

It was a bad night for the wannabe comeback kids. 

From political Goliath Andrew Cuomo to the scandal-scarred Anthony Weiner, every single former elected official trying to get back into the halls of political power lost their races in the New York City Democratic primary election last week. In short, out with the old and in with the new? 

Cuomo, with his near universal name recognition and the backing of the biggest super PAC ever assembled in a New York City mayoral race, lost to Assembly Member Zohran Mamdani, a 33-year-old Democratic socialist whose economic populist platform and joyful campaign electrified a historically disengaged, disillusioned electorate. Mamdani’s victory has rippled across the country at a time of widespread disillusionment within the Democratic Party toward its establishment leaders and even the party itself. 

Unlike Cuomo who was the clear front-runner for much of the mayoral race, the handful of former elected officials who ran for City Council seats faced longer odds. Many faced popular incumbents and carried their own hefty baggage. But in the era of President Donald Trump – a man impeached twice, ordered to pay hundreds of millions for shady business practices, held civilly liable for sexual abuse, found to be the “central cause” of the January 6 attack on the U.S. capitol, and was ultimately reelected – there are clearly some voters willing to set baggage aside. Ultimately though, that wasn’t the case in New York City. At least this time around. 

In the Bronx, Fernando Cabrera and Andy King both lost to incumbents in their longshot bids to win back their old seats based on a preliminary New York City Board of Elections tally of first-choice votes. Cabrera, a former longtime council member for Council District 14 who’d been term-limited in 2021, got about 22% of the vote to one-term incumbent Pierina Sanchez’s 67%. King, who’d been expelled by the City Council’s ethics committee for a cornucopia of misconduct in 2020, won just 24% of the vote to incumbent Kevin Riley’s 76%.  

Hoping to move past the shadow of his past more than a decade after he’d resigned from Congress amid a sexting scandal (only to be derailed by another sexting scandal a few years while running for mayor), Weiner got just 10% of the first-place votes in the lower Manhattan District 2 Democratic primary for term-limited Carlina Rivera’s seat.

In Southeast Queens, former City Council Member Ruben Wills won a mere 14% of the first-place vote in the crowded Council District 28 Democratic primary – placing second to last in the five-candidate field. With roughly 35% of the vote, City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams’ chief of staff Ty Hankerson seems to be the likely victor, though this could change following the full ranked choice vote count. While there’s a possibility Hankerson could be overtaken by candidates Japneet Singh or Latoya LeGrand, election night was likely the end of the road for Wills in his quest to win back his old seat eight years after his expulsion from the City Council and corruption conviction (which was later vacated).

And finally in Southern Brooklyn’s Council District 48, former City Council Member Ari Kagan lost handily to Republican incumbent Inna Vernikov with about 33% of the vote to her 66%, according to unofficial results from the Board of Elections. A recent Democrat-turned-Republican, Kagan had hoped challenging Vernikov could be his way back into the City Council. He’d initially lost his neighboring district seat to Democratic City Council Member Justin Brannan in 2023 after redistricting pitted the two incumbents against each other.