It's Wednesday, you deserve a treat, like an episode of the Hell Gate Podcast! Listen here, or wherever you get your podcasts.
This week, two New York City mayoral candidates revealed some new campaign branding.
Governor Andrew Cuomo ditched his pointy-elbowed red-and-blue rectangles to debut a new, curvy, sunny logo on Monday, that references the crown of Lady Liberty (and the orange-and-blue colorway of Zohran Mamdani's logo). Cuomo's old slogan, "Experience Matters" is out, and "Building a New NYC" is in.
At the same time, Mayor Eric Adams—who has decided that, like Beyoncé, Madonna, and Prince, he is ready to become a mononym—dropped an alternate logo that he's using alongside a slightly older logo, and which echoes the hand-painted block-letter signage that has become synonymous with Mamdani's campaign.
For both scandal-scarred candidates it was an appeal to the public to—in the words of Jay-Z—"allow me to reintroduce myself." And they'd both like to reintroduce themselves as men slightly more like the mayoral frontrunner, Zohran.