Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo is back on the scene, and he hopes everyone forgot about the scandals that drove him out of office.

Cuomo launched his long-rumored run for New York City mayor on Saturday. Capitalizing on the unpopularity of current Mayor Eric Adams, Cuomo declared that the city is in dire straits because of “our political leaders, or, more precisely, the lack of intelligent action by many of our political leaders.” He has already secured the endorsement of Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) and the Staten Island Democratic Party, and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) hasn’t ruled out an endorsement either.

The Cuomo rehabilitation process started four years ago when New York Democrats tried to urge everyone to get over his scandals or put modest pressure on him to resign instead of pursuing impeachment. Given that Adams is the new enemy of New York Democrats because of his legal trouble and his friendly relationship with President Donald Trump, it will not be a surprise to see New York Democrats line up behind Cuomo once again.

Cuomo resigned from office after a report from New York Attorney General Letitia James said he sexually harassed 11 women and that he and the Executive Chamber retaliated against former employee Lindsey Boylan, who brought her accusations in December 2020. That opened the floodgates, and those accusations dogged Cuomo until he stepped down.

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Those accusations also came on the heels of the revelation that Cuomo covered up the nursing home deaths that resulted from his COVID-19 decision-making. Cuomo forced nursing homes to accept COVID-19-positive patients and prevented nursing homes from requiring negative COVID-19 tests for admission, resulting in hundreds of additional nursing home deaths. Cuomo then tried to cover up that fact by classifying nursing home deaths as hospital deaths and erasing his executive order from the Health Department’s website.

The accusations of sexual harassment and retaliation speak to Cuomo’s character, and the nursing home deaths and cover-up speak to his “lack of intelligent action” as a political leader. Cuomo will try and paint himself as a competent executive who can save New York City. Yet, he showed just a few years ago that he is incompetent and completely reckless with the lives of the very New Yorkers he says have been put in danger by Adams’s leadership.