This could be the end of Andrew Cuomo
Not to jinx it. Plus, huge democratic reforms, new strikes, and historic challenges
Welcome to a Monday evening edition of Progress Report.
Thank you to everyone who tuned in live or watched the video of my interview with Michael Lange about the NYC mayoral election — we had a great turnout and people brought smart questions and comments, so I’m excited to host more of these kinds of conversations.
But to be completely honest, I can only really focus on ramping up these broadcasts and interviews if the newsletter experiences serious growth in new paid subscribers. The celebrity and politician rush to Substack has oversaturated the platform, ground new signups to a halt, and caused us to lose subscribers. So, if you’re enjoying or finding this work useful, please consider becoming a paid subscriber!
Tonight we’re running down some big news stories, including the latest in the NYC mayoral election and some very exciting ballot initiatives that would help restore our democracy.
The generational race for NYC mayor
New York Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani’s campaign for mayor may be peaking at the perfect moment.
The democratic socialist upstart from Queens took the top spot in Emerson’s new poll of likely voters in New York City, marking the first time that Mamdani has finished first in a high quality independent survey. While just one survey, it reflects several on-the-ground realities that could indicate a historic upset is in the offing.
First is the impact of the high-profile cross-endorsement with Comptroller Brad Lander, a liberal mayoral candidate who has made it his mission to finish off disgraced former Gov. Andrew Cuomo. While his campaign never quite took off as anticipated, Lander earned a flurry of media attention and public interest when he was arrested by ICE at a Manhattan immigration courthouse last week; he’s used that new spotlight to promote Mamdani’s candidacy and defend him from allegations of antisemitism (Lander is an observant Jew).
Ensconced in a solid-but-distant third place, Lander made it to the 7th round of the Emerson poll’s ranked choice runoff, after which a majority of his supporters jumped over to Mamdani and put the legislator from Astoria over the top, 52-48%.
The ranked choice aspect of this race was always going to be a problem for Cuomo, and now it looks as if state Senator Zellnor Myrie is at least tacitly throwing his support behind Mamdani. With zero shot of winning but plenty of public campaign funds to spend, Myrie, who represents parts of Brooklyn, is running anti-Cuomo ads on NYC’s most popular Black radio stations.
Early voting has also looked good for Mamdani, as we discussed in last night’s live stream. Just over 385,000 ballots were cast during the week of early voting, nearly a quarter of which came from voters who never before participated in a NYC primary. That’s exponentially more than the 3% of voters who were first-time primary participants in 2021, when Eric Adams squeaked by Kathryn Garcia after the left’s candidates largely collapsed.
That makes sense, too: young voters have come out in record numbers during early voting. Of the 385,000 ballots cast, nearly 117,000 of them came from voters ages 18-34, while voters in the 35-44 cohort added another 62,000 votes. Mamdani has dominated among young voters, which Lange thinks is good for around a 50,000-vote lead going into election day.
There’s been talk about how the heatwave currently baking NYC might impact the voter turnout on Tuesday, and for good reason: it really is oppressively hot outside, especially in neighborhoods that lack shade and tree cover. It’ll take a considerable amount of energy and effort to walk to a voting site, wait outside, and then stew in broiling gymnasiums, and for many people, there will be a decision to be made as to whether casting a vote for their preferred candidate is worth that journey into hell on earth.
That brings us back the question I’ve asked about Cuomo since even before he got into this race: who really loves this guy? Does he have a constituency beyond voters who take cues from terrified local leaders and decaying political machines? How many voters will be willing to withstand the heat for a guy who never did anything to address the issues facing their communities while in power?
It has been pitiful to watch one New York Democratic lawmaker after another tremble in Cuomo’s presence and so quickly capitulate their beliefs and reputations to endorse his vanity campaign for mayor. New Yorkers have a chance to firmly reject the cruelty, corruption, and perversion that Cuomo represents, and if they do it on Tuesday, he’ll never be able to claim that he was unfairly pushed out of politics. More than that, Democrats — locally and nationally — will have to take a long look at the ideology and energy that Mamdani harnessed and acknowledge that there is a demand for something newer and better.
Another primary from the left: The Michigan SEIU has given its endorsement to state Rep. Donovan McKinney’s primary challenge against US Rep. Shri Thanedar, a two-term Congressman who spent his way into Congress back in 2022.
The Detroit-area seat is one of the poorest in the nation, making it a strange fit for an uber-wealthy chemical engineer who has flitted between ideologies since entering public life eight years ago. McKinney is a progressive economic populist who was born and raised in the district and can speak fluently about experiencing poverty as a child in Detroit.
Rescuing democracy, one state at a time
Montana: A bipartisan group of top lawmakers and former governors are backing an innovative new attempt to cut off the spigot of corporate money into the state’s elections.
The Transparent Election Initiative plans to run a constitutional amendment in 2026 that would ban corporations from making political donations. Because the Citizens United decision legalized unlimited corporate spending on elections, the TEI would rework corporate charters for companies doing business in Montana to prohibit those outlays.
Virginia: The US Supreme Court is allowing a challenge to the state’s automatic lifetime ban on voting by former felons to proceed, rejecting a plea for intervention by Republican Attorney General Jason Miyares. The constitutional provision has been in place since 1869 and was very explicitly designed to disenfranchise Black voters.
In recent years, Democratic governors would reinstate the voting rights of large numbers of former felons each year, but that piecemeal approach has come to a screeching halt under GOP Gov. Glenn Youngkin. This case argues that only people who commit crimes that were felonies when the provision was passed in 1869 should be eligible for lifetime bans. Democrats really ought to just pledge to begin the repeal process should they win total control of state government in November.
Working for change
New York: The Trump administration does not seem particularly eager to nominate new members of the National Labor Relations Board, preferring to let the body languish with little power to help protect workers’ rights. Uninterested in allowing employers to run roughshod, legislators in New York have passed a unique bill that would give the state jurisdiction over private sector labor battles while the NLRB remains without a quorum.
It still has to be signed by Gov. Kathy Hochul, which is no guarantee, especially if businesses start to lobby against it. It’ll also likely be challenged at the US Supreme Court, though California and Massachusetts are also considering similar bills.
Colorado: Workers at 11 Safeway and Albertsons grocery stores are currently on strike after failing to reach a contract with their parent company. There are more stores expected to go on strike later this week.
While there 7,000 unionized UFCW workers at those two chains in Colorado, the union represents 65,000 grocery workers at Kroger-owned stores in California. With negotiations with Kroger going nowhere, they will hold a “practice” strike and rally in downtown LA on Friday.
Guys: They’re worried about the futures. Especially the younger ones.
Utah: Incredible news out of the Beehive State, where a true grassroots coalition of workers and community members just officially qualified a ballot initiative to repeal the legislature’s attempt to kill public sector unions.
This winter, Gov. Spencer Cox signed a new law that stripped away public sector unions’ right to bargain collectively on behalf of its members. The bill galvanized what has generally been a sleepy state labor movement, which went on to collect a record-smashing 320,000 signatures to qualify a repeal initiative. They wound up with 245,000 certified signatures — over 100K more than what’s required by Utah’s incredibly stringent new initiative law.
You can learn much more about this campaign by checking out our coverage from a few months ago:
The law will now be suspended from being implemented until voters weigh in on the referendum in November 2026.
Wait, Before You Leave!
Progress Report has raised over $7 million dollars for progressive candidates and causes, breaks national stories about corrupt politicians, and delivers incisive analysis, and goes deep into the grassroots.
None of the money we’ve raised for candidates and causes goes to producing this newsletter or all of the related projects we put out. In fact, it costs me money to do this. So, I need your help.
For just $5 a month, you can buy a premium subscription that includes:
Premium member-only newsletters with original reporting
Financing new projects and paying new reporters
Access to upcoming chats and live notes
You can also make a one-time donation to Progress Report’s GoFundMe campaign — doing so will earn you a shout-out in the next weekend edition of the newsletter!
We really need to start electing younger people.