‘A politician out of the womb’: Andrew Giuliani models himself in father’s shoes, announces bid for NY governor

While many New Yorkers have had it with Governor Andrew Cuomo’s political scandals, others aren’t so sure the answer is another political dynasty — though some are lapping up the idea of a Giuliani vs Cuomo match in Albany.

Andrew Giuliani, the 35-year-old son of iconic Republican politician and former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, is feeling the hereditary stirring of politics in his blood, he told Fox News on Tuesday, promising to challenge lifelong Democrat Cuomo’s unshakeable grip on state power from the right and “fight” to bring New York “from the precipice of ruin to the shining state on the hill once again.”

Officially announcing his candidacy as a Republican for the governorship, Giuliani has made it clear he hopes to knock Cuomo out of any chance at a fourth term and punish him for his alleged wrongdoings amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Giuliani’s father famously took credit for turning the peep-show-strewn wilds of Gotham City into a literal tourist Disneyworld, cracking down on crime and serving as the nation’s beloved “America’s mayor” following the 9/11 terror attacks – before finally pulling off a third act as former president Donald Trump’s larger-than-life legal advisor in recent years.

“I’m a politician out of the womb. It’s in my DNA,” the younger Giuliani told the New York Post, as he outlined his pro-business, pro-police, pro-school choice platform and insisted his candidacy would make the race “one of the epic showdowns in the state’s history.”

Judging by his bombastic rhetoric, the young Republican will also be channelling his dad’s fierce reputation for fighting the Mafia in the New York courts, where he made his name before answering the political ‘calling’ that subsequently defined his career.

Andrew Giuliani doesn’t lack for confidence, pointing out that, growing up, he was literally raised by wolves – political wolves, that is – while his dad was sitting in the big chair. While he has never run for public office, Giuliani appeared confident that both his childhood experience and a stint as a White House aide to former president Trump made him not only qualified, but more likely to beat scandal-plagued incumbent Democrat Andrew Cuomo – himself the scion of a New York political family. Cuomo patriarch Mario was denied a fourth term when Republican George Pataki landed in the governor’s mansion in the 1990s.

Giuliani isn’t the only Republican angling for the governorship. With Cuomo bumbling into a sexual harassment scandal while singing his own praises and selling a memoir even as his Health Department was allegedly covering up Covid-19 deaths in nursing homes, others have stepped into the fray. Republican Rep. Lee Zeldin has also announced his candidacy for the role, and Rob Astorino, a former Westchester County Executive and failed gubernatorial candidate from 2014 also plans to give it another go.

Given Zeldin’s and Astorino’s seniority and political connections, Giuliani’s star name may not attract the sure-thing energy with which the party faithful might otherwise anoint the young would-be “change agent.”

Should Giuliani secure the Republican Party’s backing, he’d still have to knock out Cuomo at the polls, where the lifetime Democrat has been considered a shoo-in – though most of the state’s recent gubernatorial contests have included hail-Mary campaigns from unlikely candidates demanding a more progressive regime in Albany. Most recently, that role went to ‘Sex and the City’ actress Cynthia Nixon, who primaried Cuomo as a Democrat.

While Andrew Giuliani is clearly excited about doing battle against his deep-pocketed foe, the thought of a battle between two loud rich political families vying for the governor’s chair in Albany didn’t exactly win hearts and minds on social media.

Many rolled their eyes to see Giuliani trading on his brand so crassly, though others pointed out that Cuomo himself has never been one to shrink back from self-promotion, name-based or otherwise, adding that shouldn’t be a disqualifier.

While the younger Giuliani may be patterning his life along the lines of his dad’s, Andrew Giuliani will have to get his campaign in gear, starting by overcoming the shadow of an ongoing FBI investigation against his dad – who, in this case, is being probed by investigators rather than doing the probing himself. But then again, Cuomo is personally under two state investigations, so he's hardly in a position to preach.

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