State Senator Jessica Ramos endorsed former Governor Andrew Cuomo for mayor, with an official announcement at the District Council of Carpenters on Friday morning. The progressive Democrat from Queens had previously criticized Cuomo’s campaign in ways that make her endorsement now unexpected. A number of groups that had backed the state senator from Queens have since rescinded their endorsements of her campaign.
According to the New York Times, Ramos said that while she is staying in the race, Cuomo is “the one best positioned right now to protect this city,” adding that “with Trump threatening to bulldoze New York and take us backward, we need someone in City Hall who knows how to hold the line and deliver under pressure.” Andrew Cuomo thanked Ramos for her support in a statement: “we’re both proud Queens kids, and with it comes a Queens attitude that is both tough and protective of their families and their neighbors and by extension, all New Yorkers.”
Speaking at a District Council of Carpenters event on Friday with the former governor, Ramos said that New York could not beat Trump “with hashtags and headlines stunts. We need delivery over dogma,” a statement that is being perceived as a swipe against insurgent candidate Zohran Mamdani, whose campaign has benefited from a strong social media campaign and impressive grassroots support in terms of donations and volunteers. Speaking to reporters after the event, Cuomo made clear that her endorsement was a one-way street: “she is endorsing me, I am not endorsing her.”
Jessica Ramos’ progressive credentials are strong enough that she had garnered a ringing endorsement from the United Auto Workers in February, which declared in a statement at the time that she “is who we go to in order to pass legislation that helps working people.” Since news of the announcement, they have removed her name on their ranked-choice ballot guide, instead backing Michael Blake.
Voices For Seniors, an advocacy group for the elderly formed in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, released a scathing statement disapproving of Ramos’ endorsement. “Jessica Ramos has chosen to align herself with a man whose legacy is one of arrogance, deception, and deadly mismanagement. For a progressive to endorse Cuomo is hypocrisy at its worst,” a spokesperson for the organization said, adding: “this is not unity. This is not leadership. This is whitewashing a legacy of preventable death.” Cuomo has faced broad criticism for his policy of forcing COVID-positive patients back into nursing homes at the height of the pandemic, which led to over 15,000 deaths in those facilities.
In recent months, Ramos has called Cuomo a “megalomaniac” and stated that his “mental acuity is in decline,” likening the 67-year-old to President Joe Biden. She also had lambasted him for “sins” committed as governor, including his handling of the COVID-19 crisis, telling Spectrum News in April: “It’s not just about the women he touched without consent. It is not even only about all the seniors that we lost in nursing homes, people that died in group homes during the pandemic, his closing of our mental health institutions, his defunding of Medicaid during the pandemic.”
At the Democratic primary debate on Wednesday, Ramos largely avoided taking more shots at the former governor, pushing her campaign platform, which includes a plan to withhold tax dollars from the federal government in reciprocal measure to Trump’s cuts in federal funds coming to the city. Ramos also defended delivery app workers who are facing increasingly strict traffic enforcement from the NYPD, saying that the resulting escalation of summonses from civil to criminal offenses is “leaving breadcrumbs for ICE.”
Ramos’ endorsement is likely the last major public showing for her campaign, as she has not qualified for the second primary debate among Democratic candidates set for June 12th, two days before the start of early voting. The Democratic primary is on June 24th. The latest polling shows Assemblymember Mamdani in second place behind former Governor Cuomo.
