New York
Cuomo Wins Backing of 2 Major Unions That Once Pushed Him to Resign
Two influential New York City labor unions that backed Mayor Eric Adams in 2021 switched their support on Monday to former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, reflecting his growing dominance as the race for mayor accelerates.
The coveted endorsements came from the Hotel and Gaming Trades Council and Local 32BJ of the Service Employees International Union, which represents building workers. Together, the unions have more than 125,000 members, and they typically spend millions of dollars supporting their chosen candidates.
Both unions have a contentious history with Mr. Cuomo. They worked with him to pass a statewide increase to the minimum wage and other policies as governor, but later called for his resignation in 2021 amid mounting sexual harassment accusations. (Mr. Cuomo, who resigned, denies any wrongdoing.)
Now, they have concluded that Mr. Adams is fading politically and Mr. Cuomo is on an increasingly direct path to City Hall. And like much of the city’s Democratic establishment, the unions appear more interested in making amends than antagonizing a famously sharp-elbowed leader who could soon have influence over city contracts and other union priorities.
In a joint endorsement on Monday, the union leaders praised Mr. Cuomo as a steady supporter of working New Yorkers and the kind of leader who could stand up to President Trump as he threatens to withhold federal funding from cities like New York and undermine labor rights.
“As Andrew Cuomo said when he recently addressed our members, when we need him in a fight, he will be in the foxhole with us until the end,” said Rich Maroko, the head of the hotel and casino union.
Mr. Maroko did not address his change of heart since four years ago, when he said that Mr. Cuomo was not fit to be governor. He did, however, acknowledge that Mr. Cuomo could be an important ally as the union negotiates a new citywide hotel contract.
The endorsement was as much a boon to Mr. Cuomo, 67, as it was a blow to his rivals. With just over two months to the primary, they urgently need fresh momentum to chip away at his steady lead in public opinion polling and had hoped the unions might help.
As Mr. Cuomo rolled out his newest supporters, his rivals were lampooning a rare blunder by his campaign, which posted a housing plan that included garbled passages and appeared to draw, at least in part, on material collected by ChatGPT, news that was first reported by Hell Gate, a local news site.
“I did the hard work to pass city laws that will create 120,000 new housing units,” Adrienne Adams, the City Council speaker and another candidate in the Democratic primary for mayor, wrote on X. “Andrew Cuomo asked ChatGPT what his housing policy should be. Guess someone does need on-the-job training.”
The campaign made more sloppy mistakes on Monday when it announced the union endorsements. Its news release misspelled the names of Mr. Maroko and Manny Pastreich, the president of 32BJ, in bold-faced type summarizing the news.
Still, it was hard for other candidates to entirely sidestep the sting of losing out on the support of two unions known in New York City for their political influence.
In 2021, the hotel and building workers’ unions were at the heart of a working-class coalition that helped propel Mr. Adams to victory, and they have worked closely with his administration.
This time, though, both unions concluded that Mr. Adams had no path to re-election. After courting Mr. Trump’s help to shake federal corruption charges, Mr. Adams decided to skip the Democratic primary and run as a political independent this fall.
The unions considered other Democrats, including Ms. Adams and Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist running a distant second behind Mr. Cuomo. But the candidates evidently failed to convince the labor leaders they could win.
Other unions have reached different decisions. The union representing public defenders, museum staff members and academics endorsed Mr. Mamdani, State Senator Jessica Ramos and Brad Lander, the city comptroller, in a joint endorsement. Ms. Ramos, the chairwoman of the State Senate’s Labor Committee, also has the support of some teamster groups.
Other large unions remain undecided and could still shake up the race, including District Council 37, the city’s largest public employees union, and Local 1199 of the S.E.I.U, which represents health care workers. The longtime leader of the latter group, George Gresham, is said to personally support endorsing Mr. Cuomo but is facing a broader revolt within his union.
So far, Mr. Cuomo has consolidated the largest bloc of union support. He won earlier endorsements from unions representing New York City’s carpenters, electrical workers, painters and operating engineers.
The groups typically point to Mr. Cuomo’s long track record and moderate, pro-labor and pro-immigrant stances as governor to explain their support.
Mr. Cuomo thanked the unions that backed him on Monday, saying they had been “failed by their government for too long.”
“Without a strong middle and working class, no city can survive — let alone thrive — and right now, we are dangerously close to losing them,” he said.
new video loaded: How Mamdani Has Evolved in the Mayoral Race
By Nicholas Fandos, Claire Hogan, Nikolay Nikolov and Leila Medina
October 23, 2025
It was more than an hour into last week’s critical three-way debate for mayor of New York City, and somehow, former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo had yet to say the name of the race’s front-runner.
He called him “the assemblyman” and a miniature version of former Mayor Bill de Blasio. But he shied away from saying a name that he had repeatedly butchered on the campaign trail.
“Mr. Mandani”
Andrew Cuomo in a campaign video.
And on the debate stage.
Andrew Cuomo during a Democratic primary debate in June.
“Mr. Mandami”
His pronunciation was so notably off that, during a Democratic primary debate in June, the assemblyman himself, Zohran Mamdani, called him out on it.
Zohran Mamdani during the same debate.
“M–A–M–D–A–N–I”
Mr. Cuomo is not alone.
For various reasons, legitimate and perhaps otherwise, Mr. Mamdani’s first and last name have become the subject of rather adventurous, even creative, displays of linguistic fumbling.
Curtis Sliwa, the Republican candidate, struggled with his name at the first debate of the general election last week, calling him “Zor-han.”
Curtis Sliwa in the first general election debate.
“Zorhan Mandami”
Letitia James, the New York state attorney general and a key political ally, botched his name at a major campaign rally in Washington Heights this month, enthusiastically shouting “Mandami” as he came onstage.
Letitia James at a Mamdani campaign rally.
“Zohran Mandami”
For Mr. Mamdani, having his name botched is not new. He said in an interview that mispronunciations were common growing up as an immigrant in Manhattan.
“It happened quite a lot,” he said. “But frankly, I don’t begrudge anyone who tries and gets it wrong. The effort means everything to me.”
Asked about any mnemonic tricks he recommends to help people pronounce it, Mr. Mamdani laughed.
“It’s pretty phonetic honestly,” he said.
“Zohran Mamdani”
Zohran Mamdani at a debate during the primary.
Mr. Mamdani, who is running to become the city’s first Muslim mayor, said that some people like Mr. Cuomo were intentionally mispronouncing his name or refusing to make an effort to say it correctly.
“Those who go out of their way to mispronounce it — that’s not a mistake, that’s a message,” he said.
His supporters have embraced the issue as a rallying cry against Mr. Cuomo, turning the audio clip of Mr. Mamdani correcting him into a viral song online. Mr. Mamdani also said that his mother has started to sign emails with “Momdani” — a nod to her pride in being his mother that might also help with the pronunciation.
Mr. de Blasio, the former mayor, is another Mamdani ally who admitted that he had stumbled over his name.
“Zorhan Mamdani”
“I think I’m in the ballpark now, but it did take me a while,” Mr. de Blasio said, adding: “I think it’s just to the American English ear, the construct is a little counterintuitive. It takes some practice to get the cadence of it right.”
Mr. Sliwa said in an interview that he was trying to do better: “It’ll take time. It’s not intentional.”
Mr. Sliwa, whose last name is pronounced SLEE-WUH, said he understood Mr. Mamdani’s pain.
“Out of 46 years that I’ve been the guy who founded the Guardian Angels, I’d say about 33 years of that time, my name was constantly mispronounced,” he said. “I don’t take offense to it.”
President Trump’s failed efforts to say Mr. Mamdani’s name might be viewed less benevolently, since the president has repeatedly attacked the candidate and threatened to arrest him.
President Donald J. Trump speaking to reporters on Air Force One this week.
“Mandami”
His press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, used an even more outlandish pronunciation, merging parts of his first and last name.
Karoline Leavitt at a press briefing in July.
“Zamdami”
While some pronunciation mistakes might be deliberate, several linguistics experts told The New York Times that both Mr. Mamdani’s first and last name feature letter arrangements and vowel sounds that are not common in English, and it was not a surprise that some people struggled with them.
“Languages differ from one another as to what sequences of sounds are frequent, or even possible to pronounce, and they also differ as to what spellings or letters are associated with what pronunciations,” said Gillian Gallagher, a professor of linguistics at New York University.
There are hundreds more words in English with the sequence “nd” than with “md,” Ms. Gallagher said, adding that these clusters of consonants can lead to speech processes that result in mistakes. One, known as assimilation, involves morphing the second “M” in Mr. Mamdani’s last name into an “N,” making it sound like “Mandani.”
Another, known as substitution, leads speakers to replace the “N” in Mamdani with another “M.”
Whoopi Goldberg, the television host, on “The View.”
“Zohran Mamdami”
Those patterns of speech can be difficult to avoid.
“Mamdani has an ‘M’ next to a ‘D’, and that’s hard for English speakers,” said Professor Laurel MacKenzie, a co-director of the NYU Sociolinguistics Lab.
“Our tongues are just not used to making that specific sequence of sounds.”
The softer “Ahn” sound in both Mr. Mamdani’s first and last name can also be challenging. Frequently, “Zohran” has been pronounced with a screeching “Zohr-ANNE.” That miscue is the result of vowels being pronounced differently in Americanized English, said Suzanne van der Feest, an associate research professor at the Graduate Center at the City University of New York.
Carl Heastie, speaker of the New York State Assembly, at an event where he endorsed Mr. Mamdani.
“Zohr–ANNE”
“That is somebody who speaks mainly English and is just making it into American English vowels,” Ms. van der Feest said.
“It’s an example of how spelling is interfering with how someone’s name is pronounced.”
John Samuelsen, the international president of the Transport Workers Union, said his pronunciation of Mr. Mamdani’s first name feels like a “very common outer-borough way of pronouncing Zohran.” He also noted that he avoids saying Mr. Mamdani’s last name, because “I’m afraid I’m going to mess it up.”
John Samuelsen at a Mamdani campaign rally.
“Zohr–ANNE”
Mr. Mamdani said he once visited a mosque in Manhattan for Friday prayers during the campaign and asked the group to raise their hand if they had ever heard someone consistently mispronounce their name. Most people in the room raised their hands.
“It’s something countless immigrants have experienced,” he said. “When people mock or intentionally distort someone’s name, it’s a way of saying someone doesn’t belong here.”
Mr. Mamdani said he took pride in his name. His mother picked his first name, which means “the first star in the sky.” His father picked his middle name, Kwame, to honor Kwame Nkrumah, the first president of Ghana, who fought for independence.
“Andrew Cuomo never struggles with names like John Catsimatidis,” Mr. Mamdani said in reference to the Greek billionaire grocer. “But somehow Mamdani is too difficult. It’s an issue of prejudice.”
Others have expressed frustration over Mr. Cuomo’s errors, including the journalist Anand Giridharadas, who corrected Mr. Cuomo on MSNBC this week: “This is a very big, diverse city you want to lead. We should get the names right.”
Mr. Cuomo sometimes gets it right.
Andrew Cuomo in a video posted to his campaign’s TikTok account.
“Zohran Mamdani”
Rich Azzopardi, a spokesman for Mr. Cuomo, said that the former governor’s name was often botched, too. Indeed, Como, like the Italian lake, is a common mispronunciation for Cuomo, which is pronounced KWO-MO.
“It’s unintentional and he should get over it — people mangle ‘Cuomo’ all the time and you don’t hear us whine about it,” Mr. Azzopardi said.
Ms. MacKenzie and others were quick to note, though, that pronouncing difficult names correctly is not an insurmountable challenge. Practice and a concerted effort to ask people how they pronounce their names helps. That’s particularly the case in New York City, with such a rich array of immigrant communities from across the world.
“We all learned how to say ‘Daenerys Targaryen’ when we were all into ‘Game of Thrones,’” Ms. MacKenzie said.
“We can learn hard names. We can do it. We can figure out how the spellings map to the sounds. We can all get there. We just have to practice.”
new video loaded: The Evolution of New York City Benches
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