A guerrilla ad campaign targeting disgraced former New York governor Andrew Cuomo and embattled New York City Mayor Eric Adams is sweeping across Brooklyn, one bus stop at a time.
Ranging from humorous alterations of local advertisements to complete replacements of commercial posters, the public interventions all drive home the same message for the city’s registered voters: Don’t vote for Cuomo, who will be on the ballot next month for the Democratic mayoral primary and is currently leading the polls; and don’t vote for Adams, who plans to run for reelection as an independent candidate in November’s general election.
The posters were created by the New York and Maine chapters of the activist collective Artists Rapid Response Team (ARRT), which produces banners, art, and signage for community causes. ARRT worked with local artist Jordan Seiler, who founded the ongoing project PublicAdCampaign, to access the bus stop ad spaces.
Right: A doctored advertisement for an injury law firm calls on New Yorkers not to vote for Adams or Cuomo.
The majority of the guerrilla ads, which ARRT began installing at bus stops last month, center on the sexual harassment and retaliation allegations that forced Cuomo to resign in 2021. These claims, which were found to be true by New York’s attorney general, are frequently addressed in signage featuring the New Yorker’s aristocratic caricature Eustace Tilley. One poster installed at a bus stop across the street from the Brooklyn Botanical Garden’s Flatbush Avenue entrance depicted the top-hatted character languidly reclining on a chaise lounge at what seems to be a psychotherapy appointment. “I keep having this recurring nightmare in which we keep electing sex criminals to higher office,” the caption reads.
Other posters consist of revisions to preexisting marketing material for the New Yorker, local injury law firms, and city agencies. At a bus stop at the corner of Fulton Mall and Bond Street in downtown Brooklyn, a photo of a couple with a newborn was doctored to include an orange text bubble that reads “Mommy! Daddy! Don’t Rank Eric or Andrew for Mayor!”
“This type of politically sensitive messaging would never be allowed even if you had the money to pay for it, as there are policies in place which dictate what can and can’t be said in public advertising spaces,” Seiler told Hyperallergic.
The collective’s ad campaign is also not the only recent public intervention with political messaging. Yesterday, May 12, street artist Winston Tseng posted a photo of an ad at an uptown bus station mocking the Trump administration’s ongoing crackdown on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion initiatives at colleges and universities.
“Many of us are horrified that we are on the brink of electing another creepy sex offender to higher office, when we have much better choices available,” a member of ARRT who asked to remain anonymous said in a statement to Hyperallergic.
Although the collective does not have a formal endorsement for a mayoral candidate, the member said that many in the group “would be pretty excited to see a Democratic Socialist candidate in office: “We actually have the power to have a wonderful mayor instead of a sex offender, and it seems so silly that we have to fight for this, but we do!”
