Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand is reportedly telling donors to her 2024 re-election campaign that former Gov. Andrew Cuomo is planning to run against her.
According to a Daily Beast report culled from unnamed sources, Gillibrand earned Cuomo”™s ire in 2021 when she joined Sen. Chuck Schumer in calling for him to resign following a flurry of sexual harassment accusations leveled against him. Cuomo still holds a $9.2 million campaign war chest that was originally planned for a 2022 re-election campaign; in comparison, Gillibrand has $5 million for her re-election campaign.
Cuomo always denied the accusations against him, and he was never incurred criminal charges. But with Cuomo”™s former lieutenant governor, Kathy Hochul, elected governor in her own right last year and Schumer snagging re-election in 2022, Gillibrand”™s Senate seat is the only high-level New York seat available for a comeback-bound Cuomo in the coming year.
“Winning an election would be a vindication of the voters that he was right and everyone else was wrong,” said an unnamed former Cuomo administration official. “Winning the governorship would be the ultimate brass ring, but I think he would look at almost any seat where he has a real chance of winning as an opportunity to reestablish himself.”
