Andrew Cuomo’s plans sounded uncharacteristically grand for a governor who’d avoided hyper-partisanship during his two terms in office. | Getty Images New York Democrats still waiting for Cuomo’s help

Gov. Andrew Cuomo stood last June with Nancy Pelosi and said he would do whatever it took to defeat Republican incumbents in competitive House races across New York.

Many of those Democratic candidates are still waiting for him to show up.


Cuomo’s 2017 pronouncement came before he found himself in an unexpectedly heated primary with Cynthia Nixon. In the more than 15 months since he announced the effort to help House Democratic candidates, and with just seven weeks to go until the general election, much of what he promised has yet to materialize. Democrats working on House races this year said they'd forgotten Cuomo had even made the promise.

The governor held a few campaign rallies where he's taken a noticeably light touch on the incumbents and done little fundraising. When he held a rally Tuesday in New York City with labor unions and argued New York needed to elect a blue Congress to stop President Donald Trump, it was one of only a handful of rallies he’s done for Democrats across the state in the past year.

Back in June of 2017, he suggested he’d be relentless in pursuit of a Democratic House.

“I charge Congressmen [John] Faso and [Chris] Collins with violating their office to represent the people of the state of New York,” the governor said then, referring to two Republican congressmen. “Our message to Leader Pelosi is this: We stand to fight with you and the fight to take back America starts in New York and it starts today."

Cuomo’s plans sounded uncharacteristically grand for a governor who’d avoided hyper-partisanship during his two terms in office.

“To become hyper-political, I think, violates your oath of office,” he said at the 2016 Democratic National Convention.

But the governor, rumored to be eyeing a 2020 run for the White House, attributed his renewed fervor to the battle against Trump.

He dubbed his initiative “New York Fights Back,” and said it would be run through the state Democratic Party. His aides talked about raising and spending millions of dollars for ads, organizing and personal appearances — all on behalf of Democrats looking to unseat Republicans in some of the nation’s most contested districts.

Yet through the end of July, the most recent date for which federal spending reports are available, the state party, controlled by the governor, hasn’t reported making any direct contributions to any of the Democratic House candidates in this cycle. Its federal committee filings showed no independent expenditures, and no coordinated expenditures.

In addition to Faso and Collins, Cuomo said he would target Reps. Lee Zeldin (NY-1), Elise Stefanik (NY-21), Claudia Tenney (NY-22) and Tom Reed (NY-23) — all Republicans seen as vulnerable in 2018. Now, in a year when Democrats are expected to turn out in huge numbers, other seats are seen as long-shot pickups too: Another district on Long Island, held by Pete King (NY-2), and the seat currently held by Dan Donovan (NY-11) on Staten Island.

“New York is going to be a pivot point for House Democrats, you know, it’s hard to get to 23 seats without picking up a few in New York,” said Steve Israel, the former chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. “There are already a bunch of red to blue districts in New York. When you look at the extraordinary — the nuclear energy that Democrats generated in the primary this past week, it tells you that New York is ready and able to put Democrats over the top."

But to the extent that the governor has done anything, it’s mostly been small potatoes. In mid-August, Cuomo formed a federal Political Action Committee called “Cuomo NY Take Back the House,” which has so far made a series of $2,700 donations, the maximum individual limit, to a string of House Democratic candidates, including Perry Gershon, Liuba Grechen Shirley, Max Rose, Antonio Delgado, Tedra Cobb, Anthony Brindisi, Tracy Mitrano, Dana Balter, Joe Morelle and Nate McMurray.

Those donations represent a relatively minor financial commitment for a governor known as one of the country’s best fundraisers. Combined, they add up to the amount of money Cuomo spent every 80 minutes in the final weeks of this year’s gubernatorial primary.

One campaign manager for a House Democratic candidate said the campaign had had no contact so far with the state party or the governor’s campaign. A senior campaign official for another campaign told POLITICO the campaign had had minimal contact with state party officials so far, but is hopeful there will be more.

In July, the New York Daily News cited a source saying the state party was working with the DCCC to set up field offices and launch multi-million dollar digital, mail and TV campaigns. As for TV ads, state party officials said they hadn’t made those ad buys yet, but would not rule them out in the future.

“For eight years it’s been a lot of sound and fury and it hasn’t signified very much,” said New York Working Families Party Executive Director Bill Lipton, a frequent Cuomo critic. “It’s been a lot of rallies and press releases, and nothing of real significance."

State party officials, speaking on background, told POLITICO that the party and Cuomo see every Republican-held seat as a potential pickup, but are focusing their efforts in five key districts, and said they had helped place roughly 25 staff members in the field around the state. They disagreed with the idea that Democrats feel Cuomo has not delivered on his promise, and said the governor’s primary reelection effort, in which his campaign committee and the state party spent millions of dollars, had helped create a massive voter turnout infrastructure that will help the House Democratic candidates in the midterms.

Officials also said the state party has been doing some direct mail and digital advertising on behalf of House candidates and pointed to mailers paid for by the state party that were critical of Tenney and supportive of Brindisi, her Democratic challenger, as well as two mailers that had gone out in support of Delgado and Rose. The officials said a mailer has gone out in support of Gershon, and more would be sent in the coming weeks.

They said these efforts have added up to hundreds of thousands of dollars.

"Unlike others, Gov. Cuomo and the State Party prove our program with results on election day, not bluster," said Cuomo campaign spokeswoman Abbey Collins in an emailed statement. "The Governor launched an aggressive coordinated campaign over a year ago and has laid a robust infrastructure to take back the House and State Senate to fight back against Donald Trump and Washington Republicans. As we head towards November, we will continue to build on the State Party’s dynamic field, data and mail program and ramp up fundraising and advertising efforts. There is no more urgent task ahead than defeating Trump and Democrats have never been more energized and united to win the day."

One Brindisi mailer went out in August, and others were sent in September, a party official said, while declining to give further details about the amount spent on ads for each candidate, or the number of households those mailers had been sent to. But as of the party’s most recent filing, which captured transactions only through July, there had not been many signs of an uptick in party activity. In a report filed last month, the committee reported making $1.2 million in total disbursements this year. That’s not radically different from the $764,000 it reported during the same time period in 2016 or the $1.4 million it reported in 2014.

In each of these years, these totals include a significant share of money that does not appear to have gone entirely toward activities like helping congressional candidates. This year, for example, the spending included $721,000 in operating expenditures that were allocated to non-federal purposes. With that money taken out of the equation, the party only had $504,000 in spending identified as “federal disbursements,” compared to $446,000 at the same point in 2016 and $930,000 in 2014.

It’s not like the candidates couldn’t use the help.

Delgado, the Democrat running for the seat held by Faso, a Republican, in New York’s 19th District, which is often discussed as the likeliest possible pickup for Democrats, has raised roughly $2.8 million for his bid.

So far, outside groups have spent about $321,000 in support of his candidacy. While Faso has raised about $2.3 million, Delgado’s been on the business end of more than $1.8 million in outside spending against him, including a flurry of attack ads from the National Republican Congressional Committee which is running ads highlighting rap songs Delgado wrote.

The same dynamic holds in another seat seen as a possible pickup, in New York’s 22nd congressional district, where Brindisi is challenging Tenney, the incumbent. So far, outside groups have spent $2.3 million against Brindisi, compared to $1.5 million in spending against Tenney. Outside groups have spent just $10 in support of Brindisi’s candidacy.

The Democratic Committee’s relative inactivity in general has caused consternation among the party’s activist wing for years. In the nearly eight years since Cuomo took office, the committee’s federal account has raised only $1.3 million from individual donors. The comparable entity in Massachusetts has raised $5.6 million during that time, and the one in Florida, with a population close to New York’s, raised $6.5 million.

And the state account in New York has rarely spent money on behalf of any Democrats, except for the governor, unless the Democrats transfer it money first.

When Cuomo first announced his congressional push last year, several party committee members were caught by surprise. In response, they drafted a resolution that would force the party’s leadership to submit spending plans to committee members, but this was blocked and did not receive a vote.

State party officials told POLITICO they were actively planning fundraisers for the House Democratic candidates, but so far, Cuomo's held one, for Anthony Brindisi. He’s held events where he cross-endorsed Rose, the candidate challenging Donovan in New York’s 11th Congressional District, and Grechen Shirley and Gershon, the two Democrats challenging Long Island Republican incumbents King and Zeldin.

But even in backing Shirley, Cuomo’s remarks on King were less than lethal.

"This is more the situation he is in," Cuomo said of King. "He has a leadership that has sworn allegiance to the president that is anti-New York and I don't believe situationally he can change it."

With two months left before the midterm elections, it’s possible Cuomo will pick up the pace. But if he stayed minimally involved in pivotal House races, it wouldn’t be the first time.

When Democrats lost control of the House in 2014, Israel, then DCCC chairman, took Cuomo to task for his non-involvement, in an interview with The New York Times.

“We had conversations several months ago with the governor’s staff about helping to organize and coordinate a campaign and I didn’t see the fruition to those conversations,” he said then.

This time around, though, Israel said Cuomo has been stepping up.

"He’s fundraising, he’s mobilizing, he’s recruiting," Israel said. "He’s been as engaged and devoted as I've ever seen."

Edward-Isaac Dovere contributed to this report.