Fox News anchor Sean Hannity delivered a scathing postmortem of Andrew Cuomo’s failed political comeback on Tuesday night, criticizing the former New York governor’s campaign as “lackluster” and disconnected from voters immediately after Fox News projected Zohran Mamdani as the next mayor of New York City.
“The Fox News decision desk can now project New York City has elected Democrat Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani to be its next mayor,” Hannity announced during live coverage of the election. “Now he will become the first Muslim mayor of the city and its youngest in more than a century.”
The longtime Fox anchor said Mamdani’s victory came as no surprise. “I don’t know why people are waking up in the last two and a half weeks,” he said. “I think they should have woke up after the primary where he handily defeated Andrew Cuomo.”
Cuomo, who resigned from the governorship in 2021 amid scandal, had sought a political revival by running as an independent against Mamdani, a progressive state assemblyman. But his campaign struggled to gain traction in a city increasingly defined by left-wing politics and deep voter fatigue with establishment Democrats.
Hannity, a frequent critic of Democratic leadership in New York, said Cuomo’s missteps were evident from the outset. “I thought that Andrew ran a lackluster campaign,” he told Fox co-anchor Bill Hemmer. “I think taking 10 days off after Labor Day is unthinkable if you’re a candidate. I think he spent way too much time out in the Hamptons and he didn’t have a message that resonated and still had a hangover or hatred for the time he was governor. That all worked against him.”
The comments underscored how far Cuomo has fallen since his days as one of the most powerful Democrats in the country. Once considered a potential presidential contender, Cuomo’s reputation was tarnished by allegations of misconduct and mismanagement during the COVID-19 pandemic. His independent bid for mayor, once touted as a test of his political resilience, now appears to have cemented his decline.
For Hannity, Cuomo’s defeat also reflected a larger shift within the Democratic Party — one that favors candidates like Mamdani, who champion aggressive progressive policies that appeal to younger, urban voters. Mamdani, a self-described democratic socialist, ran on a platform that included expanding affordable housing, reforming police practices, and increasing social spending.
Conservatives have long warned that such policies could worsen the city’s economic struggles and accelerate the exodus of residents and businesses. Hannity’s critique of Cuomo’s failed effort carried a broader message: that even the party’s former establishment figures can no longer compete in a Democratic landscape dominated by ideological extremes.
While Cuomo’s time in the Hamptons became a symbol, for Hannity, of political complacency, his broader criticism pointed to what many Republicans see as the Democratic Party’s growing disconnect from working-class voters. “He didn’t have a message that resonated,” Hannity said — a judgment that, in his view, applies far beyond one candidate or one city.
With Mamdani’s win, New York enters a new political era — one defined less by the old guard of Cuomo and Bloomberg and more by the rising influence of the progressive left. For critics like Hannity, that shift may only deepen the divisions that have already transformed the nation’s largest city into a political battleground.
[READ MORE: Trump Responds To Election Result]
