Applying game theory to White House / NYC Mayoral Race strategy
Life continues to imitate blog
The other day we posted something on game theory as applied to the NYC mayoral election. The idea is the each of the individual opponents to Democratic nominee Zorhan Mamdani is weak and unpopular, but if some of them could be convinced to drop out, the remaining challenger might be able to limp to the finish line, aided by a few zillion dollars in outside support. This could give a triple benefit to Republicans: a bloody nose to the Democrats in an otherwise strongly Democratic-voting city, more conservative policies, and a mayor who in taking office would be so politically weak that he’d be heavily reliant on his funders.
But then, who should drop out? It’s a game theory problem, and the usual solutions would be threats, incentives, and side payments. Eric Adams is in continual legal jeopardy which should make him susceptible to threats or incentives from that direction; on the other hand, he knows that there are some rich and powerful people who’d like him to drop out, so maybe he’s holding out for better side payments. Moving on to Andrew Cuomo, it’s not so clear how the former governor could be threatened or how he could be paid off (I guess he’s already comfortably rich?), also he seems really desperate to get back in the game. The usual trick would be for the president to offer him an ambassadorship or a minor cabinet position or something like that, but that might rile up the Republican base to be appointing a former Democrat, so then Cuomo would have to play along by openly joining forces with Trump, which would sink him in NYC politics. So, a tough needle to thread. Curtis Sliwa doesn’t seem to want to drop out, but, hey, maybe he’d jump if they offer him enough—I’m not just talking money here, maybe there’s something he’d like in the policy dimension, or they could give him control of some city agency, maybe appoint him to head the Department of Defense if that becomes available soon? Another challenge here is that if the Republicans do manage to clear the field for Cuomo, it’s risky: once he’s in office Cuomo could be a bit of a wild card, not so easy to control as Adams.
There’s also the question of whether the Republicans would prefer a Democrat running NYC so as to offer a convenient political target. I doubt that, though. Having their own person in charge would be preferable, no?
Anyway, some time after that post ran, Joshua in comments pointed to this news article, “Trump Weighs Getting Involved in New York City Mayor’s Race.”
Maybe someone in the White House is reading our blog?
Just kidding. It’s an obvious idea, and if it came to me, of course lots of political operatives would be talking about it too.
I posted the above a couple weeks ago, and then today a couple more news items came in:
The mayor’s most recent corruption charges involve some rich people who lobbied to stop a traffic-calming plan in a location where “the driver of a Rolls-Royce killed . . . a popular public-school teacher, as he was crossing the street.” The charges are being brought by the city, not the feds, so it’s not clear how Trump could help Adams directly here; on the other hand, there could be complicated three-way deal where Cuomo agrees to let the city lay off Adams and Trump agrees to keep the feds away, in exchange for Adams dropping out.
This is starting to look like one of these multi-team trades in sports involving “a player to be named later.”
Earlier I was thinking that Adams was staying in the race because he was holding out for more, or maybe Cuomo wants to keep as many anti-Mamdani candidates in the contest until the very last minute—if Cuomo were too successful at getting his rivals to drop out, he’d become more of a political target himself; as it is, he can draft behind the others a bit. But now Adams might be under more pressure to do a deal.
It also seems surprising that Cuomo is so open about teaming up with Trump, as that doesn’t seem like such a good vote-getting ploy in NYC.
Game theory supplies an explanation here. Sure, Cuomo’s ideal situation would be to get support from the national Republican party on the down-low, without NYC voters hearing about it. But he’s not sure he’ll get that support—I’m sure there are lots of Republicans who find him annoying, as well as others who’d be fine having Mamdani as a foil. Also Cuomo is looking like a loser, and Trump notoriously doesn’t like to support anyone who looks like a loser.
So maybe Cuomo’s open statement about teaming up with Trump is a commitment device, an attempt to lock in Republican support. If the public announcement leads everyone to believe that Trump is supporting Cuomo, if the statement ties the two of them together, then this increases Trump’s motivation to do what’s necessary to make sure that Cuomo wins. Presumably Cuomo would’ve preferred to do all of this behind the scenes, but sometimes it helps to make some details of the negotiation public, as that can limit everyone’s options in a way that’s ultimately favorable to you.