With only 13 days left before the New York City mayoral election, former governor Andrew Cuomo is partnering with some of the same influencers who helped President Donald Trump win the White House last year.
Over the last week, right-wing creators like Logan Paul, the former vlogger turned podcaster and WWE wrestler, and Emily Austin, an influencer and sports commentator, have published content featuring Cuomo as a guest on their shows. The appearances have marked a new investment by Cuomo’s team into cultivating attention online as a means of competing against the social media-savvy Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani. But instead of trying to cleave off Mamdani’s online support, Cuomo appears to be trying to siphon off support from Sliwa.
“It’s a desperate swing,” one Democratic strategist who spoke to WIRED under the condition of anonymity to speak candidly without involving the firm where they work. “The clear desire to align himself with power at all costs, wherever that power might be, is one of the reasons he’s getting rejected so hard online. It’s a misunderstanding of the moment.”
The Cuomo campaign’s decision to attach itself to the online right comes after new polling has shown that if GOP nominee Curtis Sliwa were to drop out, the race between Cuomo and Mamdani would be tighter. Cuomo, a registered Democrat, is running in the Independent lane after failing to beat Mamdani in the Democratic primary.
The Cuomo campaign did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
“I’m sure his consultants are giving him advice that’s like ‘you need traction online,’ and they want to get it at all cost,” the strategist tells WIRED. “It’s that same kind of consultancy brain where they think they need to go big and get attention without understanding that the attention Zohran is getting is not paid for. It’s coming from creators who believe in him and see his vision as their vision.”
Cuomo’s collabs with conservative influencers comes days after the former governor’s campaign brought on pro-Israel creator Zach Sage Fox to run his “social media campaign,” according to a recent post from Fox on X. According to Fox’s LinkedIn account, he’s the chief executive officer of a company called Fat Camp Films which describes itself as “the production arm for viral internet hubs,” including @fuckjerry and LADBible, two massive social media brands and Instagram accounts that aggregate viral content from across the internet.
On the Fat Camp Films website, the company touts Fox’s work with Mike Bloomberg’s 2020 presidential campaign which flooded social media with pro-Bloomberg memes at the time, becoming one of the first political campaigns to officially partner with the parent company of meme pages like fuckjerry.
