Streetsies 2025: The Losers of the Year

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If you want to talk about losers, this year had 'em in bunches, thanks to a mayoral campaign that featured three: a former governor, a Council Speaker and incumbent who all lost to a backbencher from Albany.

Yet, amazingly, only one of those vanquished souls ended up as nominees for Streetsblog's Biggest Losers of 2025 award, part of our ongoing end-of-year Streetsie Awards. Let's meet former Gov. Andrew Cuomo and the other finalists (and don't forget to vote):

Ingrid Lewis-Martin and The Argentos

What’s the cost of fame? Thanks to Ingrid Lewis-Martin alleged corruption, we’re closer to having an answer.

After an initial indictment shortly before Christmas 2024, a second set of charges dropped eight months later alleging that Lewis-Martin took various bribes from the family that owns Broadway Stages in Greenpoint in exchange for nixing a long-planned redesign of dangerous McGuinness Boulevard. The bribes? Prosecutors allege that Lewis-Martin received $2,500, almost $11,000 in catering services, and, astonishingly, a cameo on "Godfather of Harlem," which films at the sound stage. The 13 seconds of screen time with Forest Whitaker earned Martin $806 in scale — and a second trip in cuffs to the Manhattan Criminal Courthouse.

The costly cameo was arranged by Tony and Gina Argento, the owners of the aforementioned Broadway Stages. The siblings were mainstays of politics in North Brooklyn, thanks in part to large and frequent political donations and Gina's membership on Community Board 1.

The Argentos' business and real estate holdings are located just off dangerous and busy McGuinness Boulevard. The Argentos have long campaigned against redesigning the highway-like thoroughfare, arguing it would make it harder for their truckers to get around. And it worked; Streetsblog chronicled how proposal after proposal from the Department of Transportation was either watered down or outright nixed because of the Argentos' opposition. But after a beloved teacher, Matthew Jensen, was killed by a hit-and-run driver on McGuinness in 2021, then-Mayor Bill de Blasio promised he would act.

The Argentos went to work, too. They bankrolled opponents of the street redesign — and called in favors from pols they've supported over the years, including Lewis-Martin and county Democratic boss Rodneyse Bichotte (never mind that McGuinness is miles from her district or that the local elected officials in Greenpoint supported the redesign).

For a brief time, it seemed to work, as DOT again watered-down its plans. But it backfired when the Manhattan District Attorney and Department of Investigation claimed the Argentos paid off Lewis-Martin, Adams's closest confidant.

Going to such lengths to stop a bike lane that you'd risk jail time? It's a plot line so ready-made for television you'd think they'd be filming it on an Argento sound stage. And that makes the siblings, collectively, nominees for Streetsblog's biggest loser of 2025.

Andrew Cuomo

Four years ago, Andrew Cuomo resigned as governor in disgrace. Yet in 2024, after the election of Donald Trump and the implosion of Mayor Adams's administration, the door suddenly seemed to swing open for a revival.

Cuomo jumped into the Democratic primary — but strangely didn't really run. He skipped forums. He would leave all-important church sermons on Sundays without shaking hands, even though he long courted older Black voters.

And even though the 2024 presidential race was dominated by voter anger over prices, Cuomo focused his campaign on crime (the city is on pace for just 300 murders this year) and presenting himself as the only competent candidate (despite having to resign his last post).

Then there was the housing plan that was at least partially drafted by ChatGPT, which the Cuomo campaign blamed on a one-armed adviser. And there was Cuomo — who tried to deflect responsibility for running the MTA onto City Hall — claiming that City Hall should take a bigger role in running the MTA. And there was Andrew Cuomo driving around Manhattan in a Dodge Charger, getting caught making an illegal right-on-red, even though voters he needed to connect with were on the subways. Cuomo would get just 36 percent in the first round of ranked voting in the June primary.

But he stayed in the race. But the general election polls didn't move. So he went dark: one on October morning, Cuomo went on right-wing talk radio host Sid Rosenberg's show and suggested that Zohran Mamdani would cheer another 9/11. By November, he'd lost ... again.

When Cuomo first won the governorship in 2011, The Post's front page declared "SON RISE." It's hard to think of anything more fitting than, "SON SET." And that makes him a candidate for Streetsblog's biggest hater and loser of 2025.

Congestion pricing critics

It's hard to think of a crew that has been louder, more wrong, or more disingenuous than the critics of congestion pricing. They predicted an apocalypse and the exact opposite happened. Traffic dropped by 11 percent in the Central Business District, even when including trips on the untolled FDR Drive and West Side Highway. Air pollution dropped an astounding 22 percent in the tolling zone — and declined broadly across the entire metro area. Subway ridership is up. Notorious express bus commutes got faster. A recent study by the Economic Development Corporation found that pedestrian foot traffic was up in Lower Manhattan as was employment and the number of leisure trips.

But over at The New York Post, it seems the success of congestion pricing has taken a ... toll ... of its own: The paper's latest front page broadside ran under the headline "CAR AND JIVER: Hochul's congestion con fails to slash traffic AND drives up retail prices in the city." Streetsblog Deputy Maestro (and fellow ex-Postie) David Meyer sliced through those front page claims like a hot knife through bullshit.

There's a bigger issue here: The Post's insistence on describing the toll — which it once endorsed — as a con is simply not accurate. First of all, the toll was explicitly ordered up by state lawmakers in 2019, which means the MTA implementing it cannot be a "con" because it literally is the law. And the MTA has been spending the money in the way that state lawmakers and the governor agreed to spend the money. So that's not a con.

Sean Duffy

What a year for Secretary of Transportation Sean "Two-Stop" Duffy: He described the subway system as a crime-ridden "shithole." He threatened to pull funding for the MTA unless it improved policing on the subways (which is a nifty threat considering that the feds don't fund MTA operations. Then Duffy tried to prove his point (we guess?) by riding the subway with Mayor Adams for just two stops — and they ended up rearranging the itinerary to avoid reporters (and MTA executives) who had camped out to ask Duffy some tough questions. Duffy was also totally mystified by how to use the Metrocard (and still had the nerve to insult the subways, but we digress!).

This rhetorical combat between New York and the Trump administration — with Duffy serving as proxy — spilled into virtually every facet of transportation policy. Washington ordered the state to shut down congestion pricing and the White House celebrated by posting a photoshopped image of Trump on the cover of Time Magazine wearing a crown. That meme gifted to Gov. Hochul some political antimatter that became one of her greatest moments of the year.

Meanwhile, Duffy flailed, especially after lawyers for the U.S. Department of Justice embarrassingly made public a memo revealing that Duffy didn't have a case. And through it all, the tolling cameras have remained on.

Beyond New York, Duffy's attempts to reorient the national transportation policy to reward places with high birthrates was mocked by MTA Chairman Janno Lieber as "conception pricing." Then there was Duffy's bid to focus federal funding on expanding roads despite the reams of research that show that it only induces more traffic and quickly results in them being once again overwhelmed. Duffy's team has even gone out of its way to tie up the 34th Street busway.

"Road Rules" isn't just a show for Duffy, it's a way of life.

Randy Mastro

The biggest and most controversial revival on Broadway this year took center stage — at City Hall. Randy Mastro, once a top aide to Mayor Rudy Giuliani, finally got his second tour in municipal service and used it to become a shadow mayor, while the actual mayor racked up frequent flyer miles.

He used this authority to basically stop any pro-urbanist momentum in the Adams administration: He blocked bus lanes. He imposed the 15-mph speed limit on electric bicycles, even though the real danger is mopeds that can go far faster. (And, please, now do cars.) He reversed the Adams administration policy to undercut the future development of badly needed senior housing in Nolita so wealthy New Yorkers can keep squatting on a city-owned lot. He put the kibosh on plans to meter a few dozen parking spots on the Upper West Side. And, under his watch, the administration agreed to rip out a bike lane installed on Bedford Avenue in Brooklyn.

Nostalgia is one of the oldest moves in showbiz (Broadway even did "Back to the Future," for god's sake). But not even Doc Brown could find a way to make Mastro fit into the present.

Now it's time for you to vote! Polls will remain open until tomorrow, Dec. 31, at 11:59 p.m. (And remember, all our end-of-year Streetsies coverage is archived here.) And if the ballot doesn't appear below, please refresh your browser: