The old cliché is that everyone gets a third act in American politics. In 2025, Andrew Cuomo is trying to get his.

For the past three months, Cuomo has led the pack in the race for Democratic nominee for New York City mayor. The win would be at once a major demotion for a man once tipped to be a future US president, and a stunning political comeback for someone whose political career seemed to have burned out in disgrace just a few years ago, when he resigned as the state’s governor. That ten-year tenure in the New York governor’s mansion was itself the crest of a previous redemptive arc for Cuomo, after a disastrous 2002 gubernatorial run nearly destroyed his reputation.

Many have asked how someone as scandal-plagued as Cuomo could possibly be poised to win back public office, and to do so in the most progressive city of a liberal state where, on the eve of his exit, only 28 percent of voters approved of the job he was doing and 70 percent wanted him to resign. Much mainstream coverage has, deservedly, focused on the massive sexual harassment scandal that capped off his time as governor, a scandal that has, in the years since, expanded into a ruthless legal harassment of his accusers.