Politico’s superficial coverage talks about Cohen running for Congress to represent NY-12. That’s true. Where they went wrong was when they started in about how he would be taking on Jerry Nadler. That’s not the case. According the staffers in Mayor Eric Adams’ office, riven with corruption, Nadler is "retiring." It’s about as blue a district as you’ll find anywhere— D+34 PVI encompassing the Upper West side, the Upper East Side and Midtown.
It’s the smallest district in America— and one of the wealthiest, with median household income of $116,070, up there with Ro Khanna’s, Zoe Lofgren’s, Jennifer Wexton’s, George Santos’, Eric Swalwell’s, Kevin Mullin’s, Tom Kean’s, Mikie Sherrill’s, Antony D’Esposito’s, Nancy Pelosi’s, Don Beyer’s and Jamie Raskin’s.
“Cohen,” wrote Andrew Zhang, “would run as a Democrat for New York’s 12th congressional district, he confirmed to Politico, which is currently held by Rep. Jerry Nadler. But any run to topple the 31-year incumbent would be difficult, given Nadler’s longtime status in the area and deep support among powerful Jewish communities in his district.” Wow… that sure isn’t someone who graduated from journalism school. The rest of the nonsense article is about what a crooked lawyer Cohen was and how he was disbarred. Not a word about the hideously corrupt Eric Adams and his plans.
New York Magazine’s Margaret Hartmann didn’t do much better… but a little better. “Even if they don’t buy into his whole resistance-hero shtick,” she wrote, “most Democrats like today’s Michael Cohen, the repentant ex-con, better than the man they were introduced to during the 2016 campaign as Donald Trump’s attorney and attack dog. But does that mean they want him to represent them in Congress? Cohen thinks they might. Or at least, he’s going to pretend he does in the hope that it will further his career as a media personality. Trump’s ‘fixer’ turned foe told Semafor that he’s considering a run for Congress as a Democrat.
“I am interested, and there’s a multitude of folks encouraging me to run,” Cohen told the outlet in a phone interview.
This is ridiculous in and of itself. Cohen pleaded guilty to tax evasion, bank fraud, lying to Congress, and other crimes related to hush-money payments made on Trump’s behalf and was sentenced to three years in prison in 2018. Since then, he’s turned hating Trump into a second career, writing a book, launching a podcast called Mea Culpa, and doing countless media appearances. (Ironically, this may be undermining Cohen’s value as a key witness in the Manhattan DA’s case against Trump, as New York’s Ankush Khardori explained.) Legally, convicted felons can serve in Congress, but it seems like voters’ criteria for making someone their representative should be higher than “Well, he’s no longer actively committing crimes.”
What makes Cohen’s potential run particularly ludicrous is that he’d be mounting a primary challenge against Representative Jerry Nadler, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee… So Cohen is thinking of challenging an extremely powerful House Democrat who just demonstrated his own anti-Trump bona fides as well as his ability to defeat another formidable representative.
Good luck! Cohen better hope his political talents are stronger than his skills as a lawyer.
So she seems to have also missed the very strong rumors about Nadler being pushed out by by New York's most corrupt mayoral administration in decades. Or maybe she’s in on the hush-hush nature. If it’s true, Cohen won’t be the candidate anyway. It’ll be one of the most crowded primaries imaginable. The primary I'm most excited about, though, is the one that gets rid of Adams, perhaps with Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso, Assemblymember Yuh-Line Niou, state Senator Jessica Ramos, state Sen. Zellnor Myrie or Public Advocate Jumaane Williams.
Unrelated: I’ve been moaning about conservative Democrat Jim Gaughran, a former state senator with a shitty record, running against Nick LaLota (NY-01, the Suffolk County district). Well… good news on that front: Nancy Goroff, the candidate in 2020, is planning to run as well. Again on the rumor front, there’s a lot of talk about redistricting, which will be decided on by the state Court of Appeals in September. So… NY-01 may wind up looking very different than it looks now. LaLota doesn’t live in the district— he lives in Andrew Garbarino’s district but he’s selling his house so he can buy one in NY-01. If I were him, I’d wait a month and see if there is going to be redistricting, although it will be months before anyone knows for sure what the lines will be. I’d guess they’ll wind up packing as many Long Island Republicans as they can into one district (NY-02) and making NY-01 and NY-03 much bluer. But no one knows, and I mean NO ONE.