Photo: AFP
Former New York Governor David Paterson threw his support behind fellow former Governor Andrew Cuomo in his bid to secure the Democratic primary on June 24th to run for New York City mayor. The endorsement is a key seal of approval, as State Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani is breathing down Cuomo’s neck in the polls. It also comes on the heels on an endorsement by former Mayor Mike Bloomberg. Will the endorsements help Cuomo finally put away the Socialist upstart and sway voters that his experience in New York politics count for more than Mamdani’s youthful exuberance? Paterson believes so; he appeared on 710 WOR’s Mendte in the Morning program to explain why he threw his support behind Cuomo, even though the two have had their differences in the past.
“Right now, the issue is bigger than my criticism,” Paterson told host Larry Mendte. “It’s the fact that there seems to be some movement in the Democratic party toward the left- like the far left- and I really don’t want to see that happen, so that’s why the New York County leader Keith Wright and I yesterday endorsed Governor Cuomo, and we’ve all known each other since we were in our twenties, so things get worked out.”
Although he has been critical of Cuomo’s handling of the nursing home deaths during the Covid crisis, Paterson reasoned why he is still willing to endorse Cuomo: “We all have our difficulties in politics, and his is that he never says that he is wrong- he just never says it. So, it wasn’t that I changed my position on what he did; it was that I didn’t think that he handled the media well at all during that time, and that’s why it’s dogged him for five years.”
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