So far, Cuomo has survived because the cautious labor unions are still in his corner, as well as the state’s wealthiest donors. If the titans of finance and Wall Street decide they are sick of Cuomo, he is in deep trouble. James must merely improve on Nixon’s New York City vote share, since there are many anti-Cuomo Democrats to be found north of the five boroughs, particularly in the Albany area.

The path to beating Cuomo is joining black and Latino voters, many of them more moderate and church-going, with white progressives who also vote reliably. Teachout and Nixon could not create this coalition. James, with her pedigree, can. No longer perceived as Cuomo’s lackey, she has won headlines for suing Donald Trump and investigating Cuomo himself.

This won’t be easy, of course. Cuomo is a prodigious fundraiser and there are enough blinkered MSNBC-watching liberals who will stick by him. But James has a chance to do what was once unthinkable — end the reign of another Cuomo.

Ross Barkan is the author of “The Prince: Andrew Cuomo, Coronavirus, and the Fall of New York” (OR Books).

Read the full article here.

“The New York governor’s initial ‘nothing to see here’ response to the coronavirus was a step behind reality from the very start and sounded a lot like Trump.”

Read the excerpt here.

“The news that Chris Cuomo has been advising his brother, the governor of New York, on how to counter a barrage of sexual harassment allegations against him is the sort of brazenness that would get the CNN anchor fired if CNN was serious about being a news network and not just another entertainment channel.“

Read the article here.

“The news, when it arrived, was too stunning to quite believe: New York State had fallen 89 people short, in the U.S. Census count, of keeping all of its congressional seats.

Recriminations, both online and in person, immediately spread across the state: laments about how one apartment building, a schoolyard, or a trendy bar on a good night would pack in at least that many people. Rage built against those who fled the city throughout the pandemic, beginning in March 2020 — the Hamptons and Hudson Valley dwellers who inevitably, while sipping white wine on their patios, didn’t bother to fill out their census forms.

Within the world of politics, where blame flies easily but courage can be in short supply, many began to say out loud what they had uttered, in quiet, for months — that scandal-scarred Andrew Cuomo should be blamed.”

Read the article here.

“In this corrective to Cuomo’s cherry-picked account of his (mis)management, American Crisis, veteran journalist [Ross] Barkan, who has covered Cuomo as a journalist at City Hall for eight years, urgently chronicles the governor’s crushing fall from grace amid the relentlessly grim backdrop of the virus. In lucid, declarative prose, the author cites numerous incidents that have contributed to the deterioration of Cuomo’s administration… Barkan dissects the Covid fiasco in a clear timeline showing the spread of the virus across America on the heels of the Trump impeachment proceedings… Based on original reporting and expansive interviews, this slim, scathing book convincingly debunks Cuomo’s ‘false narrative of triumph’ and, in exacting detail, reveals the corrupt side of present-day New York government.”

Read the full review here.

“Unions that have grown close to Cuomo over the years would do well to remember who he really is. As Ross Barkan writes in his new book The Prince: ‘Cuomo’s first campaign for governor reflected his fundamental political beliefs. Unlike his father, he had no interest in speaking the language of the left. He campaigned, and would subsequently govern, as a triangulating Democrat, vowing to slash taxes, shrink government, and empower the state’s finance and real estate lobbies against organized labor.'”

Read the article here.

“Barkan is nearly as tough on his fellow journalists, whom he views as deeply complicit in levitating Cuomo to undeserved hero status…“

Read the review here.

“Real estate titans and landlords might just be New York governor Andrew Cuomo’s last base of support. The embattled governor is rewarding them handsomely for their loyalty.”

Read the article here.

“The governor’s premature victory lap seems that much worse as he races to reopen things to fend off other scandals in the state with America’s second highest death toll.”

Rad the article here.

“The story begins before the coronavirus hit New York state.”

Read the article here.

 

There’s a brawl shaping up between two books about New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo. The New York Times says sales of the governor’s memoir, “American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic,” have evaporated. In October, Crown reportedly printed about 450,000 copies of “American Crisis,” but by the end of February it had sold only about 46,000. With the governor battered by accusations of sexual harassment and claims that he suppressed data on nursing home deaths related to covid-19, few readers seem eager to hear Cuomo brag about his administrative prowess. Crown has “paused” marketing for “American Crisis” and has no plans for a paperback edition.

The indie publisher OR Books smells blood in the water. It’s rushing to release an exposé called “The Prince: Andrew Cuomo, Coronavirus, and the Fall of New York,” by journalist Ross Barkan. The marketing campaign places Cuomo’s memoir right beside Barkan’s book: “Not Available in Paperback” vs. “Soon Available in Paperback.”

OR publisher Colin Robinson tells me, “No response from Cuomo yet, but we will certainly be sending a copy to him.” This is just the kind of situation Robinson’s nimble firm is designed to exploit. OR promotes its books heavily online, sells directly to readers and prints on demand. The publisher has already taken “lots of pre-orders” and plans to get copies out the door in a few weeks. “It’s not just that we’re quick,” Robinson says. “We can also take chances that larger, more staid houses would shy away from, especially when it comes to aiming fire at powerful figures like Andrew Cuomo.”

The Machiavellian cover of “The Prince” gives a good indication of Robinson’s wry sensibilities. He notes with a certain glee that OR’s first book back in 2009 was a reply to Sarah Palin’s memoir “Going Rogue” called “Going Rouge.” The cover caused such confusion that Fox accidentally showed OR’s parody instead of Palin’s memoir during a story about the former Alaskan governor. “Bliss,” Robinson sighs.

Read the newsletter here.

“The media puffed up Cuomo as a pandemic savior and anti-Trump. Now he’s accused of sexual harassment and concealing nursing home deaths.”

Read the article here.

“You can’t make three enemies a week for 10 years and hope to survive. People who were close to him are like, ‘Andrew Cuomo, who’s that?’”

Read the article here.

“The governor was anointed as the anti-Trump and happily, greedily played the part as facts were ignored, dismissed, even hidden. Mass death meant mass fame.”

Read the article here.

“He may not resign. But his era of dominance is over.”

Read the article here.

“[Andrew Cuomo’s] political oligarchy effectively ended when he faced reality and realized he could not have a political crony ‘investigate’ the charges that he sexually harassed two young staffers.

At least, that’s Ross Barkan’s take — and he’s had a string of on-point takes recently. Plus, he has a book coming out about Cuomo’s handling of the COVID-19 crisis that includes the governor’s initial February scandal over nursing home deaths.”

Read the article here.

As Ross Barkan wrote for CJR last March, Cuomo initially downplayed the threat of the virus and U-turned on a shelter-in-place order for New York City, yet he faced “relatively few” tough questions about his preparedness. “Why is New York City the next Northern Italy?” Barkan asked. “These are the kinds of questions that will take more than a PowerPoint slide to answer.”

Read the article here.