Andrew Cuomo is the lesser of two evils

New York City politics has rarely offered voters a clean choice. This year, with Eric Adams out of the mayor’s race, the city faces one of its grimmest dilemmas yet: Andrew Cuomo or Zohran Mamdani.

Let’s be clear – this is not an endorsement of Cuomo. The former governor has baggage that most voters can recite from memory. But politics isn’t about picking saints; it’s about survival. And when survival is on the line, sometimes the only responsible thing to do is choose the lesser of two evils.

Cuomo may be corrupt, arrogant and heavy-handed. But at least he governs from a place of pragmatism. Mamdani, by contrast, represents the radical left’s fantasy of New York City – a city where utopian slogans replace hard choices, where affordability gimmicks mask fiscal chaos and where public safety is sacrificed at the altar of ideology.

If that sounds harsh, let’s take a walk down memory lane.

Do you remember the “Market of Sweethearts” in Roosevelt, Queens? That area became infamous for its open-air prostitution scene. It wasn’t just an embarrassment – it was a full-scale community crisis. Families couldn’t walk their own streets without being confronted by sex work, drug dealing and human trafficking.

To his credit, Eric Adams at least tried to clean it up. Under Zohran Mamdani’s vision for New York, that problem wouldn’t just return – it would multiply. He would welcome prostitution zones as some sort of progressive liberation, never mind the devastation it causes to families and neighborhoods. Imagine the man in the mayor’s office not on your side, but on the other side of the football field, actively cheering on the breakdown of community values.

That’s the reality New Yorkers risk under Mamdani. New Yorkers don’t need another cheerleader for decline – they need someone willing to stop the bleeding.

Mamdani isn’t just another Democrat. He’s part of the Democratic Socialists of America, the same ideological club that gave us Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. He talks like her, governs like her and dreams of turning New York into a socialist laboratory.

The problem is, New York is not a laboratory. It is a living, breathing city of eight million people – families, immigrants, small business owners, police officers, students – who can’t afford to live under ideological experiments.

If Mamdani wins, AOC wins. And when the Squad wins, ordinary New Yorkers lose.

Mamdani’s big-ticket idea of free buses sounds wonderful – until you do the math. The MTA already runs deficits and routinely comes begging for subsidies to keep the trains moving. Wiping out fare revenue would blow a hole in the budget the size of the Midtown Tunnel.

Where would that money come from? Higher taxes, of course. The same taxes that already drive families and businesses out of New York. Mamdani calls it “affordability,” but in practice, it’s a recipe for fiscal collapse. Free rides today, higher taxes tomorrow.

Then there’s his rent-freeze proposal, another crowd-pleasing slogan that sounds like relief but delivers the opposite. When you freeze rents indefinitely, you don’t just cap prices – you cap incentives. Developers walk away, construction slows and the housing supply shrinks. The result? Fewer apartments, higher competition and ironically, less affordability.

For a city already struggling with housing shortages, Mamdani’s plan is not a fix but a death sentence. It’s economics 101, and yet the radical left refuses to learn the lesson.

Crime remains the elephant in the room. Adams ran and won on restoring public safety, though his record is mixed at best. But at least Adams acknowledged the crisis. Cuomo, for all his flaws, has too.

Mamdani? He wants to cut NYPD overtime, pair social workers with officers and further shackle a police force that, despite its imperfections, remains one of the best-trained in the nation. I am not opposed to accountability. No one serious is. But undermining law enforcement when crime is still a top concern is reckless at best, dangerous at worst.

Ask yourself: do you want a mayor who takes crime seriously, or one who sees crime as a laboratory for social experiments?

This is why Cuomo, battered and bruised as he may be, becomes the only defensible option. He won’t save New York. He won’t inspire confidence. But he won’t accelerate the city’s decline, either.

Sometimes the best you can do in politics is buy time. Cuomo represents damage control. Mamdani represents a freefall.

Conservatives understand this principle well because they’ve lived it. In blue strongholds, voters rarely get a candidate who reflects their values. But they can at least choose the candidate who won’t turn the city upside down. New York doesn’t need utopian dreams right now – it needs guardrails.

Eric Adams’ collapse should be a wake-up call. His downfall wasn’t just about scandal; it was about a Democratic Party that no longer tolerates moderates. The radicals have seized the microphone, and their policies are poised to reshape the city.

New Yorkers must now decide whether they want a radical experiment or a flawed but familiar pragmatist. That is not a glamorous choice, but it is the only choice.

The “lesser of two evils” isn’t a rallying cry that stirs the soul. It’s not meant to. It’s the sober recognition that when faced with two bad options, responsibility demands choosing the one that will do the least harm.

And in this race, that means Andrew Cuomo.