Cuomo’s election loss reveals onetime kingmaker NYC unions now toothless ‘paper tigers’

The biggest loser in the Democratic primary race for mayor besides Andrew Cuomo is New York’s weakened labor movement.

Cuomo’s Big Labor muscles were exposed as nothing but “paper tigers” without bite, according to longtime political strategists and even people active in the union movement.

“Clearly, the support of some of the largest NYC unions for Cuomo, which he very prominently showcased in the debates and elsewhere, did not do much for the former governor (nor for the unions themselves),” Johsua Freeman, a labor historian and professor at the CUNY Graduate Center, wrote to The Post.

“Also, the membership in some unions is less mobilized and engaged in political action than in earlier years.

“In some respects, the impressive DSA field operation has moved into the void,” Freeman said, referring to the Democratic Socialists of America party that includes primary-race winner Zohran Mamdani.

Mamdani and his army of thousands of passionate volunteers — including many DSA members — outworked the network of unions that Cuomo relied upon to get out the vote.

It turned out Mamdani didn’t need the unions, and it’s clear from the results that at least some rank-and-file union members defied their leadership and voted for the two-term Queens state assemblyman — just as many union households voted for Republican President Trump last year.

The city’s 8-1 matching funds for small donations also make candidates less reliant on union cash, Freeman noted, while others pointed to large funding from “independent” Super PACs backing candidates as making labor unions less relevant.

“The unions were paper tigers,” a veteran labor associate said. “Their get-out-the-vote operations are diminished. They’ve been living off past success.”

Cuomo was endorsed by the heart of Big Labor — Service Employees International Union Local 1199 representing health care workers, Local 32 BJ for building workers, the Hotel Trades and Gaming Council, the firefighter unions, Teamsters Local 237 and the entire network of the hardhat construction trade unions.

“Big Labor endorsed Cuomo but did not seem particularly enthusiastic about him, certainly compared to Mamdani’s supporters’ enthusiasm level,” said CUNY political science professor John Mollenkopf.

“They also did not seem to mount a particularly strong canvassing and GOTV [Get Out The Vote], which they are capable of doing under the right circumstances,” he said of the unions.

Meanwhile, Big Labor’s membership rolls are shrinking.

Union membership in New York City has fallen in recent years: In 2024, only about 20% of all wage and salary workers in the city were union members, down from around nearly one quarter a decade ago.

Another challenge in terms of GOTV efforts is the fact that many more union members don’t reside in the city as they did decades ago — particularly in the construction trades, among uniformed officers and even in the unions with lower-paid workers, sources said.

“If you have less and less members and more and more of them live outside New York City, their ability to mobilize large groups of their members has dramatically cratered and shows no sign of slowing down,” a veteran labor insider said.

Former Gov. David Paterson, a Cuomo supporter, said, “The unions don’t work like they did years ago for a candidate.

“There was not a lot of street activity.”

It wasn’t just Cuomo who was hurt by the unions’ dwindling influence.

District Council 37, the union representing the largest number of city municipal workers, backed losing Council Speaker Adrienne Adams for mayor, though they ranked Mamdani second.

The United Federation of Teachers, whose membership was divided, sat out the race.

Transport Workers Union President John Samuelsen — who appeared at a pro-Mamdani campaign rally touting the candidate’s free-bus-fare plan days before the primary — said many labor leaders, along with the city Democratic Party establishment, made a calculated decision that Cuomo would win.

“The Democratic Party establishment got demolished,” Samuelsen said.

Unions that backed Cuomo or were neutral in the primary are now shifting to Mamdani while others are considering backing incumbent Mayor Eric Adams, who is running for re-election as an independent.

Local 32 BJ, the Hotel Trades and Gaming Council and the state Nurses’ Association have already joined Mamdani.

Some labor sources whose unions backed Cuomo took issue with criticism that they didn’t work hard and instead blamed the candidate for running a lackluster campaign.

“You need a general in charge to win,” a pro-Cuomo union insider said. “You can’t win with a ghost.”

Austin Shafran, a spokesman for HTC and 32 BJ, said unions assist but don’t run a candidate’s campaign.

“The best unions provide high-quality, supplemental support that help push good campaigns over the finish line. But core field infrastructure for citywide campaigns needs to be owned by campaigns themselves,” he said.

He said the unions did a good job in pulling out the Cuomo vote in The Bronx and southeast Queens, areas they focused on and where the ex-governor performed well.

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