Lindsey Boylan enjoying campaign trail for Manhattan borough president after bombshell allegations against Cuomo
Months after making bombshell allegations of sexual misconduct against Gov. Cuomo — putting her at the center of one of the biggest scandals in the state in recent memory — Lindsey Boylan is finally having fun.
She uses the word a lot when talking about her campaign for Manhattan borough president, a run that’s taken her from East River Park on the Lower East Side to an East Harlem bakery and many other spots.
“It’s fun to do the campaign,” Boylan recently told the Daily News, going on to list issues she’s been discussing like public space, municipal finance and pandemic recovery.
“That’s what I’ve spent my whole career working on and so ... the campaign has been very natural and a lot of fun,” she added.
That marks a contrast from the initial weeks of her run, after she accused Cuomo of sexual harassment.
On Dec. 13, she tweeted that he’d “harassed [her] for years,” grilling her on her work and her looks when he was her boss. In February, she elaborated on the allegations in agonizing detail, accusing him of inappropriate touching, making her uncomfortable at work and once kissing her on the lips without her consent.
That set off similar allegations from other ex-Cuomo staffers — charges that the governor has denied as the state attorney general and Assembly probe the matter.
“In December ... I felt like my body exploded all over the world,” Boylan recounted. “There was a month, February to March — that was like a snow globe, like my house was shaken, turned around, blown up. It was very hard.”
She said she held off on making calls for campaign contributions for about a month and initially thought she could compartmentalize her roles as survivor and as candidate.
But, Boylan says, she came to realize those things are intertwined.
“You’re going to need someone who’s willing to stand out on that ledge even if they’re alone because they’re representing what people want” — and not political horse-trading, she said.
“It was the most difficult time of my life, ever,” she added. “But how can I prove to people that I know something of their pain points if they don’t see me going through it myself?”
Traditionally, the job of borough president is mostly about zoning decisions and cheerleading for residents.
But Boylan envisioned an activist stance not unlike her role coming forward with the accusations against Cuomo.
She wants to fight Mayor de Blasio’s controversial “coastal resiliency” plan for East River Park, which locals say would ruin the area. Boylan is also against the proposed new Manhattan jail to help replace the complex at Rikers Island. She wants more car-free streets, and plans to push for rent relief for small businesses — traveling to Albany to make the case, if needed.
A California native, she got her start in state government in 2015. She served as vice president of the Cuomo-controlled Empire State Development Corp., working on projects with small banks and businesses.
After becoming chief of staff — a role that exposed her to the alleged misconduct from Cuomo — she left in 2018. Boylan, now 37, next made an unsuccessful Democratic primary challenge for the seat of Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-Manhattan, Brooklyn).
Leading candidates in the Manhattan borough president race include state Sen. Brad Hoylman and City Councilmen Ben Kallos and Mark Levine. Each has more campaign cash than Boylan, though that doesn’t seal her fate, noted political scientist Doug Muzzio of Baruch College.
Each of the men is rooted in a specific part of the borough — Hoylman, in and around Hell’s Kitchen; Kallos, the Upper East Side, and Levine, uptown.
There’s been no polling in the race, but Boylan arguably has wider name recognition than her rivals. That could serve her well during this debut year of ranked-choice voting, in which voters will list candidates in order of preference instead of choosing just one.
“That’s the wild card of ranked-choice voting,” Muzzio said, adding that being listed “second and third — that can make a difference.”
Boylan spent last Thursday afternoon at a protest outside City Hall calling for a stronger response to the city’s alarming rise in anti-Asian hate crimes.
After that, she went on a walking tour of the area around the federal Metropolitan Correctional Center, where residents have been complaining of fortresslike conditions obstructing walkways and making life unpleasant in general.
“Those are the kinds of issues that are the fun ones to work on,” Boylan told her guide, the head of a local tenants group. “It’s not ‘fun’ — but it’s fun to deal with.”
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