Brooklyn’s Cobble Hill performed host on Sunday to one of many strangest sights to date within the 2025 NYC Mayor’s Race: A bipartisan slate of mayoral candidates standing along with mourning households to oppose marketing campaign frontrunner and former Gov. Andrew Cuomo over his dealing with of COVID-19 in nursing properties.
Six Democratic candidates for mayor — Metropolis Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, Metropolis Comptroller Brad Lander, Queens Meeting Member Zohran Mamdani, Brooklyn state Sen. Zellnor Myrie, Queens state Sen. Jessica Ramos and former Metropolis Comptroller Scott Stringer — joined Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa in denouncing Cuomo for actions taken whereas he was governor 5 years in the past in the course of the lethal peak of COVID-19 that they are saying allowed the lethal virus to rampage via nursing properties throughout the Empire State.
The principle problem is an govt order that Cuomo signed within the lethal spring of 2020, which permitted COVID-positive sufferers to be readmitted into nursing properties. Cuomo and his marketing campaign have maintained there is no such thing as a proof to recommend the transfer triggered any extra deaths and that the order was exploited by Cuomo’s rivals for political functions.
Nonetheless, critics imagine the maneuver contributed to fifteen,000 deaths from the virus in New York.
“Would any other issue bring us all together with the differences that we have? No,” Sliwa stated. “If you are going to forgive this man who has the blood on his hands of 15,000, if not more, every time you shake Andrew Cuomo’s hand and you forgive him and you endorse him for mayor, wipe the blood of the dead off his hand.”
“Would any other issue bring us all together with the differences that we have? No,” Sliwa stated. “If you are going to forgive this man who has the blood on his hands of 15,000, if not more, every time you shake Andrew Cuomo’s hand and you forgive him and you endorse him for mayor, wipe the blood of the dead off his hand.”Photograph by Dean Moses 
Households held pictures of their family members.Photograph by Dean Moses 
Households held pictures of their family members.Photograph by Dean Moses
Sliwa made these remarks surrounded not solely by his personal adversaries however by the relations of those that misplaced their family members in the course of the disaster. Outdoors of 128 Amity St., the Arbeeny household erected a monument to the seniors who perished throughout COVID-19 as a consequence of what many imagine was the then governor’s nursing residence order.
The memorial consisted of a hearse adorned with flowers, a cardboard wall full of the faces of those that have misplaced their lives, and even a casket representing the dying. This might be discovered standing exterior the house of 89-year-old Norman Arbeeny who perished just some days after being launched from Cobble Hill Well being Middle from COVID-19.
5 years on, as Cuomo appears to be like to make a political comeback, the household say they haven’t forgotten what they misplaced in the course of the pandemic — and that they imagine the previous governor owes them an apology.
“I would like to say that Governor Cuomo team reached out to our lawyers over a month ago, trying to broker a meeting with our family and our advocacy at his law firm. We respectfully declined because we don’t think that we should be meeting in a law office. So, we invited him to our father’s house, as we did five years ago when he was a governor, as we did four years ago, three years ago, two years ago, and one year ago. He’s been invited to our father’s house for five years,” Peter Arbeeny, son of Norman Arbeeny stated. “You need to face us and apologize. If you’re going to lead, you have to lead for all of us.”
Mayoral candidates at Sunday’s rally (l. to r.): Former Metropolis Comptroller Scott Stringer, state Sen. Jessica Ramos, Guardian Angels founder Curtis Sliwa, Queens Meeting Member Zohran Mandani and present Metropolis Comptroller Brad Lander.Photograph by Dean Moses 
The memorial consisted of a hearse adorned with flowers, a cardboard wall imbued with the faces of those that have misplaced their lives, and even a casket representing the dying.Photograph by Dean Moses 
Peter Arbeeny, son of Norman Arbeeny. Photograph by Dean Moses
Nonetheless battling with the load of their monumental loss, household after household at Sunday’s gathering shared their horror tales as they gripped the pictures of their family members and even small urns containing their ashes. Some even wept as they recalled the final moments of their dad and mom and grandparents, together with Metropolis Council Speaker Adams, who misplaced her father in the course of the pandemic.
“This is not politics for me; this is personal for me,” Adams shared. “We decided to take Dad to North Shore Hospital, and that was the last time that I looked into his beautiful eyes because they would not allow my sister and I to go into the hospital. He was admitted at the door at the outside of the parking lot in a wheelchair on March 26, 2020 and I remember looking at him and taking his hand and saying, ‘Don’t worry about it, daddy, we’re going to be back and we’re going to see you soon.’ And he looked up at me as if to say, ‘Don’t leave me.’”
Lander additionally careworn the continued heartbreak for households as they maintain memorials for these misplaced in the course of the pandemic however added that Cuomo has but to apologize to those households for his nursing residence orders.
“This is not politics for me, this is personal for me,” Adams shared. Photograph by Dean Moses 
Holding up an urn containing the ashes of their cherished one.Photograph by Dean Moses 
Some held fingers.Photograph by Dean Moses
“This is not about partisan politics, but it is about accountability. And it is not too much to ask Andrew Cuomo to meet with families,” Lander stated.
A spokesperson from Cuomo’s marketing campaign, nonetheless, said that the losses felt over the pandemic have been politically weaponized.
“More than 2 million Americans died as a result of the COVID pandemic, and our hearts break for the families of every person who lost a loved one –but unfortunately, as the DOJ IG confirmed, that pain has been weaponized and politicized for purely electoral purposes for years. Being Mayor of the greatest City in the world is a tremendous undertaking that requires experience, a proven record of accomplishment and management capacity – traits none of these extreme MAGA or fringe DSA mayoral candidates have,” Cuomo spokesperson Wealthy Azzopardi stated in an announcement.
The assertion went on to underscore that there was no empirical proof to showcase that the nursing residence admission triggered extra deaths.
“Cuomo killed my dad and mom’ one signal learn.Photograph by Dean Moses 
Some positioned their fingers on the coffin.Photograph by Dean Moses 
Some positioned their fingers on the coffin.Photograph by Dean Moses
