He had lost the Democratic mayoral primary in New York. Overnight, labor unions and party leaders abandoned him for his opponent. His campaign headquarters emptied as his own allies urged him to quit the race.

But he would not concede. He stayed on the ballot through November, convinced he could win.

The year was 1977, and the candidate was Mario M. Cuomo, a young, relatively unknown New York secretary of state, who had been defeated in the Democratic mayoral primary and in a runoff 10 days later by Edward I. Koch, a congressman from Greenwich Village. Mr. Cuomo then ran as a Liberal and on a smaller third-party line, and lost again to Mr. Koch in November.

Now, 48 years later, a startlingly similar political drama is unfolding in a New York mayoral race, but with a different Cuomo: Andrew, the oldest son of Mario.

Andrew, like his father, lost the Democratic primary for New York City mayor. Andrew, like his father, was urged to quit the race. Andrew, like his father, is pushing ahead and, defying polls, running in the general election, this time against Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani, who, like Mr. Koch, was the choice of Democratic primary voters.

And Andrew Cuomo, who was a college student and a close adviser to his father during the 1977 campaign, is convinced that he can win this November. Mario Cuomo had also told associates he thought he could win, and it was relatively close in the end, as Mr. Cuomo narrowed a huge polling deficit to fall to Mr. Koch by 9 points.

“There is a lesson here: not to give up,” said Tonio Burgos, who was a senior adviser to Mario Cuomo in 1977 and remains a close friend of Andrew Cuomo’s. “We almost won in ’77. He’s not going to give up. That’s what is driving him. And, by the way, he’s not wrong.”

As a political matter, it is questionable that Andrew Cuomo can win this race, particularly as long as Mayor Eric Adams; Curtis Sliwa, a Republican; and Jim Walden, an independent, remain in the contest. But his campaign is emerging as the latest and perhaps ultimate chapter in a complicated relationship between father and son that has been woven into New York politics for a half-century, continuing even after Mario Cuomo’s death in 2015 at the age of 82, on the same day his son was inaugurated for his second term as governor.

Andrew Cuomo — who has always been competitive with his father, as apt to reproach him as to honor him — is trying to accomplish what his father could not: winning the mayoralty after losing his party’s nomination.

Mario Cuomo was just 45 when he lost in 1977, and the lessons he drew from the contest arguably prepared him to become a three-term New York governor and a national Democratic leader.

“It was during those months where Mario became the person who ultimately became governor,” said Al Gordon, who worked as a campaign aide to Mario Cuomo and served as the New York Democratic Party chairman in the early 1990s. On the night Mr. Cuomo lost the general election, he was interrupted by supporters chanting “Cuomo for governor” as he tried to answer questions from reporters.

Andrew Cuomo was no less influenced by his front-row view of his father’s defeat after helping him navigate one of the most competitive mayoral races in the city’s history, a chaotic scrum involving a cast of larger-than-life New York figures.

That experience would help to forge their political alliance, setting the stage for the key role Andrew would play in his father’s successful run for governor in 1982, and at his side once he took office.

“It was such an intense experience on every level that it was just a very intensive education,” Mr. Cuomo said in an interview. “You’re watching these debates. You’re watching these forums. Different people, different styles, different strategies, different tactics. You learn about the press. You learn about how reporters are operating.”

But unlike Mario Cuomo, who in 1977 had a lifetime of political possibilities ahead of him, this may be the last real race for Andrew Cuomo. He will be 67 on Election Day. He is making a run for redemption after being forced to step down as governor in the face of sexual harassment allegations, which he has denied. Should he lose, it is hard to imagine this Cuomo having another chapter in public life.

“Andrew has nothing else to do, you know?” said Michael J. Del Giudice, who served as a senior aide to Mario Cuomo when he was governor. “He feels he has to go for it, and he’s not looking good as a result of it. And hopefully he comes out of it in at least OK shape. If he loses, I don’t know what he does.”

Adviser, Counselor and Enforcer

The crowded Democratic mayoral primary of 1977 bore some similarities to the contest now convulsing New York. Mayor Abraham D. Beame, a Democrat, was struggling and, like Mayor Adams today, seemingly destined to be a one-term mayor.

Mario Cuomo announced his candidacy on May 10, 1977, relenting to pressure from Gov. Hugh L. Carey, who wanted an ally in City Hall.

Mr. Cuomo stepped into the race with a speech that lamented the health of the city — a telling preview of the rhetoric now deployed by his son.

“The evidence of the present administration’s failures is all around us — on every filthy and violent street in Brownsville, every pothole on Queens streets, in every abandoned apartment on the Grand Concourse, in the open drug markets of Harlem and in the halls of high schools, where safety is as much sought after as education,” he said.

Even then, as a 19-year-old Fordham University student, Andrew was at his father’s side, always an outsize presence, the influential adviser, ready to take on the kind of street fighting that defined urban politics — scampering up telephone poles to pull down “Koch for Mayor” signs and replace them with Cuomo signs.

Mr. Cuomo was a shepherd and enforcer who kept an eye on people jostling for a place in his father’s sphere of influence. “He intimidated me,” said Harold Holzer, who joined the Cuomo campaign during the runoff after working for a rival, Bella S. Abzug, and remains friends with the younger Mr. Cuomo today.

One afternoon during the runoff, a man tried to block Ken Sunshine, a public relations executive who was then working for Ms. Abzug, from the Cuomo campaign office near Times Square. Ms. Abzug, who finished fourth in the primary, was contemplating endorsing Mr. Cuomo in the runoff.

“Who the hell are you?” Mr. Sunshine recalled the man saying to him.

“Well, who the hell are you?” Mr. Sunshine said he responded.

“His name was Andrew Cuomo,” Mr. Sunshine said. “We thought he was the security guy.” (Mr. Cuomo said he did not recall the encounter).

Michael Dowd, Mr. Cuomo’s campaign manager, recounted a meeting with father and son that degenerated into a shouting match over campaign strategy.

“The next thing I know, Andrew is getting up and ready to fight me,” Mr. Dowd said. “He was 19 years old. Mario turned to him and said, ‘Andrew, sit down.’”

Asked about the episode, Mr. Cuomo said that as a rule, he would intervene when he sensed that his father was getting angry. “He had some temper,” he said. “I used to kid that I had to protect other people from him.”

Andrew Cuomo earned a reputation for playing a ruthless game of politics. In the closing days of the runoff, posters appeared in parts of New York reading “Vote for Cuomo, not the homo,” part of a whisper campaign suggesting that Mr. Koch was secretly gay. Mr. Koch, until his death, blamed Mario and Andrew Cuomo for the signs.

Both Cuomos said it was not true. Mr. Koch was in fact gay, though he denied it at the time.

‘Make Dad a Winner’

The election of 1977 took place against the backdrop of one of the most tumultuous periods in the city’s history. New York was emerging from a debilitating fiscal crisis. It was the year of a daylong blackout and the deadly shooting spree by David Berkowitz, the “Son of Sam” serial killer. Mario Cuomo, the reluctant candidate, struggled from the start.

“It was his first real race, and his campaign was amateurish,” Andrew Cuomo wrote in his memoir, “All Things Possible,” published in 2014. “The people he found to run it were political junkies with good intentions and poor execution. He micromanaged decisions — agonizing over the wording of a press release. He was a nervous and brittle candidate.”

The Democratic nomination was settled in two stages: A multicandidate primary and a runoff between the top two contenders. Mr. Cuomo came in a close second to Mr. Koch in the first round, before heading to a defeat in the runoff.

That night, Sept. 19, 1977, as defeat became certain, Mr. Cuomo turned to his mother and made a promise, according to New York magazine: “We’ll make Dad a winner.”

His father believed he could still become mayor despite failing to capture the primary, which in New York — an overwhelmingly Democratic city — is tantamount to winning the general election. Others thought differently. Mr. Carey summoned Mr. Cuomo to the Upper East Side townhouse of Robert F. Wagner Jr., the former mayor, and told him it was time to step aside, according to one person present.

But after a stormy meeting, Mr. Cuomo defied Mr. Carey and announced he would run in the general election on the Liberal and Neighborhood Preservation Party ballot lines.

Mr. Carey promptly endorsed Mr. Koch, who would go on to win the first of his three terms as mayor.

As Mario Cuomo kept fighting, and as many of his allies fled for the Koch campaign, Mr. Cuomo needed Andrew more than ever. His responsibilities included running the Bronx — and, more important, he went home every night to talk about the campaign with his father.

Of all the five children of Mario and Matilda Cuomo, Andrew, the second oldest, had the greatest aptitude for politics: Accordingly, he was the subject of his father’s attention, approval and, at times, withering criticism. “He’s with me all day long, and that has really been a blessing,” Mario Cuomo told the journalist Nat Hentoff.

Andrew was there for the big strategic decisions, the victories and setbacks, the crises and betrayals. That was the training ground that helped mold him both as a political operative and as the candidate he is today.

And Andrew, by his account, loved it all.

“I had campaign fever,” he wrote in his memoir.

The legacy of 1977

There are plenty of parallels between these two Cuomo mayoral campaigns, and reminders of the many lessons Andrew Cuomo drew from 1977. (And some, his friends now say, that he failed to take).

Both Mario and Andrew presented themselves as cures for a city that they portrayed as plagued by crime and disorder. Both offered themselves as experienced government managers running against opponents with little record of accomplishment.

Mario Cuomo was criticized for refusing to get out into neighborhoods and shake hands. Andrew Cuomo faced the same criticism.

In staying in the race, both noted that a relatively small share of the electorate participated in the primaries. And both saw a path to victory by appealing to Republicans.

The polls in the 1977 race, at times, got close enough to worry the Koch camp. “The real story of the mayoral election is not so much that Edward I. Koch won but that his margin of victory was so small,” Mr. Koch’s pollsters, Douglas E. Schoen and Mark J. Penn, wrote in an opinion piece for The New York Times the week after the election.

That might have been the biggest lesson Andrew Cuomo took from his father’s general election loss. “He did very well — shockingly,” he said.

But there is one key difference between these two situations: the candidates.

“Andrew is not as popular as his father was,” said George Arzt, a longtime political consultant who covered the 1977 mayoral race for The New York Post, adding, “I don’t think Andrew carries the same kind of gravitas that his father did.”

The loss in 1977 increased Mario Cuomo’s stature. Governor Carey selected him as a running mate when he sought re-election the following year. That gave Mr. Cuomo the platform to run for governor in 1982. Among the people he defeated that year was Mr. Koch.

Mario Cuomo was an admired figure during most of his years in public life: a compelling advocate of liberal causes who could dominate a room when he stepped up to a podium for a debate or speech. He defied public opinion in running as an opponent of the death penalty, cultivating the perception that he was putting principle over politics.

Andrew Cuomo has had his moments of acclaim. He rebuilt LaGuardia Airport and opened Moynihan Train Hall. His daily briefings in the early days of the Covid pandemic drew loyal viewers across the nation. But his style as governor — belittling, hectoring and, in the view of even his friends, bordering on bullying — left him with a long list of enemies and critics, and many of his allies abandoned him during the sexual harassment scandal that led to his resignation in 2021.

He received just 36 percent of the first-round vote in the Democratic mayoral primary, far behind Mr. Mamdani, who received close to 44 percent. By the final round of counting, he had lost to Mr. Mamdani by nearly 13 percentage points. But so far, Mario Cuomo’s son is pushing ahead.

“Andrew’s in it,” said Mr. Holzer, the Mario Cuomo aide. “I am not going to be presumptuous enough to say he’s learned the lessons of either ’77 or the recent mayoral primary. But he’s out there. I don’t think he would have done this unless he thought he had a real chance.”

Kitty Bennett contributed research.