Few political operatives have it easier than opposition researchers in New York City this year.
New York’s 2025 municipal races feature a scandal-laden cast of characters whose alleged or proven misdeeds have made front-page headlines for years. They include the front-runner heading into Tuesday’s Democratic mayoral primary.
Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has spent much of his bid to become New York’s next mayor cleaning skeletons out of his closet, whether he’s wanted to or not. The scion of a storied political family, Cuomo resigned in disgrace from the governorship in 2021 after an investigation led by state Attorney General Letitia James found that he had harassed 11 women and subjected some of them to unwanted touching and groping. A formal agreement between the state executive chamber and the U.S. Justice Department, released in 2024, found Cuomo had subjected at least 13 female employees to a “sexually hostile work environment.”
But Cuomo isn’t the only candidate seeking political redemption in New York City this month. Should he win Tuesday’s Democratic primary, he’ll take on incumbent Eric Adams, a Democrat running for re-election as an independent. Adams was indicted in September on federal corruption charges, which were dropped this year when the Justice Department argued, among other things, that the case distracted from Adams’ ability to enact President Donald Trump’s immigration agenda.
And then there’s Anthony Weiner.
Weiner resigned from Congress in 2011 after accidentally tweeting a sexually explicit photo of himself. More sexually explicit messages came out in 2013 when he ran for mayor in a first political comeback attempt. In 2016, the FBI launched an investigation after Weiner he was accused of sending sexual messages to a 15-year-old girl. Upon seizing Weiner’s computer, investigators discovered Weiner’s wife, Huma Abedin, had used the same laptop to send emails to her boss: then-Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
The ordeal sparked a new FBI review of Clinton’s use of a private email server just days before the 2016 presidential election, which Clinton lost to Trump. The FBI’s investigation also led to Weiner’s pleading guilty in 2017 to transferring obscene material to a minor, being sentenced to almost two years in prison and registering as a sex offender.
Weiner is now out of prison, and his political animal can’t be caged. He is vying for a spot on the New York City Council — part of an unofficial slate testing what voters will forgive and what they won’t in 2025.
In an interview this month, Weiner argued that the way he’s handled his controversies can’t be compared to the ways Cuomo and Adams have handled theirs.
“I’m not denying. I’m not pointing fingers. I’m not asking for a pardon,” said Weiner, running for a district encompassing the Lower East Side and East Village neighborhoods of Manhattan.
“I’ve served my time. I accepted responsibility. Now I’m moving forward,” Weiner said.
In the first Democratic mayoral debate, when the moderators asked Cuomo to share a regret from his years in politics, he did not share a personal failing; instead, he said he regretted “that the Democratic Party got to a point that we allowed Mr. Trump to be elected.”
Cuomo’s rivals aren’t letting him forget the accusations he’s faced.
Asked a seemingly innocuous question at that debate about improving public safety on New York City’s subway system, underdog candidate Michael Blake jumped in: “The people who don’t feel safe are young women, mothers and grandmothers around Andrew Cuomo. That’s the greatest threat to public safety in New York City.”
One week later, during the next debate, Cuomo’s main rival, democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani, unleashed a new slew of attacks. After Cuomo had lambasted Mamdani over his experience, Mamdani pounced.
“I have never hounded the 13 women who credibly accused me of sexual harassment. I have never sued for their gynecological records, and I have never done those things because I am not you, Mr. Cuomo,” Mamdani said in a monologue that went viral.
The allegations that led to his resignation — which Cuomo has repeatedly denied, though he also said upon resigning that there had been “generational and cultural shifts” that he “didn’t fully appreciate” — have come up in the campaign alongside other controversies from his governorship. Another 2021 report from the state attorney general accused him of undercounting nursing home deaths during the Covid-19 pandemic. On Juneteenth, City Council member Chi Ossé, who endorsed Mamdani, posted on X to resurface a 2019 interview in which Cuomo said the N-word while quoting a New York Times op-ed.
Still, Cuomo leads the pack in polling, though he could face a fight due to the city’s ranked choice voting system.
Adams, too, has denied wrongdoing and claimed vindication since the federal charges he faced were dropped.
Weiner says his experience has shaped the way he perceives Cuomo’s and Adams’ situations.
“Going through the maelstrom of public outcry, outcry and scandal, I do read the papers differently than I used to,” said Weiner, 60. “I have what they say in Yiddish or Hebrew ‘rachmones.’ I have feeling for people in difficult circumstances.”
Despite the empathy, he said comparing his checkered to Cuomo’s and Adams’ is “apples and oranges.”
“They’re denying they did anything wrong. They’re suing their detractors and their accusers. I’m accepting responsibility. I paid my debt to society,” he said.
“I have this notion that everything I have done up to now has led me to this exact spot.”
For New Yorkers heading to the ballot this cycle, forgiveness is not one-size-fits-all.
Carmen Perez, 55, from West Harlem, is willing to give Cuomo another chance but isn’t crazy about the other embattled candidates.
“I’ve seen what Cuomo can do,” said Perez, who runs a program for senior citizens. “During the pandemic, he literally just took over and said, ‘This is how we’re going to do this and this is how we’re going to get through this.’”
“That’s what you want to hear from a leader during a crisis.”
When it comes to Adams, Perez is less enthusiastic. “I would hope that most people would take this opportunity and really examine why people are running and what’s the real purpose behind their running,” she said of Adams, implying the controversies around him are stickier than the ones around Cuomo.
In the case of Esther Yang, a yoga teacher from the city, none of the beleaguered candidates deserves her vote. “I think their parents did not raise them well enough,” she said.
“I’m a yoga teacher, so I believe that how you do anything is how you do everything,” Yang said, before turning specifically to Cuomo and Adams: “I believe that if you can’t get your act together for your personal life, then I don’t think you should be a mayor for your professional life.”
Weiner’s candidacy is also a nonstarter for Yang.
“I like to see how somebody’s going to be a good husband, a good father, and how they conduct their personal life,” Yang said.