Andrew Cuomo’s Plan to Win Is Not Likely, But Not Impossible

Election day is rapidly approaching, and Andrew Cuomo is losing. But the Cuomo camp still has a long-shot plan to defeat Democrat Zohran Mamdani in November. It requires several things to come together: The field must shrink, then shrink further. Then deep-pocketed donors must make a last-minute pivot to Cuomo, who will use their money to peel off part of the Democratic voter base from the front-runner.

“I am not going to blow smoke. It is a narrow path,” said Cornell Belcher, a pollster for Barack Obama’s 2008 and 2012 campaigns who recently joined Cuomo’s campaign. “But I haven’t worked for a candidate in the past decade who didn’t have a narrow path to victory.”

The polls, to be sure, are bad, showing Cuomo trailing Mamdani by an average of 19 points. The labor unions and elected