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The buzz among New Yorkers who are already looking ahead to the mayoral election seems to be focused on the one person who has never even formally said he wants the job. Yet, recent polls would indicate that disgraced former Governor Andrew Cuomo is the front-runner to nab the job come November. Is Andrew Cuomo running, and if so, what should he do- or not do? Hank Sheinkopf is a longtime Democratic political consultant; he appeared on 710 WOR’s Mendte in the Morning program to discuss Cuomo’s chances of becoming Hizzoner, starting with how the press is handling the hints he might run.
“Well done to ensure that there’s less free time for him to get beaten up like a pinata,” Sheinkopf told host Larry Mendte. “Just very smart- why do you want to expose the leading candidate to anything but being the leading candidate, and they’ve done that very well and he’s been very disciplined. And the media has been less than very smart in this. I would have been at his home. I would have bothered him all night long. They kind of gave him a pass, and just because the New York Times says [he will announce he’s running], in my view and experience, doesn’t mean it's necessarily so.”
Sheinkopf says the news that Cuomo is the likely front-runner- and if or when he announces he is running- are headlines only because the media needs a story to sell: “This is leaked to them, but it was also not news. I mean, people knew that this was going to happen any day. Sherlock Holmes need not be employed here, let’s be real. The petitions are hitting the streets, there’s no legal requirement to have a formal announcement of some kind, but they allowed Cuomo to play this out and, you know, that’s what they do.”
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