NY Governor Andrew Cuomo is not having a good time lately. On the eve of his bid for a second term, the man who came into office and quickly scored progressive points by getting marriage equality through the NY legislature, and got the SAFE Act into law after Sandy Hook is now reaping a harvest of well-deserved negative headlines. The man who promised to clean up corruption in Albany is now seen as empowering it and using it to further his own ends. Promises to reform campaign finance, redistricting, and working to get real Democrats in control of the State Senate have all gone by the boards. Being socially liberal on a couple of high profile issues is not enough to obscure his corporatist agenda, or his dictatorial style of governance. And lately, the press has been having a field day.
More below the Orange Omnilepticon.
The proximity of election day to Halloween gave Capital District alternative weekly Metroland an excuse to put the "Govermonster" on the cover, stealing candy from trick or treaters. The cover blurb reads "Taking from the masses to feed the 1 percent, and other tales of horror from Andrew Cuomo's first term." Inside, the profile piece by Ali Hibbs is headlined "Corruption. Cronyism. Conservatism. Scary Andrew Cuomo Stories To Tell In The Dark." It's a summary of Cuomo's first term as governor, and it's not pretty. This anecdote that starts it off captures the tone of Cuomo's reign.
"I [Allen Roskoff, president of the Jim Owles Liberal Democratic Club] was recently at Cuomo’s book-signing at Barnes and Noble in New York,” he recalls. “And there were maybe 50, 60, 70 people who got there about four o’clock and waited for two or three hours until they were able to approach him to talk to him, to get him to sign the book and talk about issues that are near and dear to our hearts such as economic issues, fracking and clemency.”
While they were waiting, says Roskoff, “About 50 people got in front of us. The VIPs. And who are those VIPs? Lobbyists, realtors, developers and people who have made large contributions to Andrew Cuomo. The 1 percent, those with the inside track, who got there 15 minutes before he was ready to sign—they went right up front and they got free books. And the people who came there to discuss the issues, the ordinary people, we had to wait three or four hours and we bought our own books. And his campaign doesn’t even understand that they did something wrong by again having the two-tier system—the one percent and everybody else. And that is how this government is run.”
(BTW - This is
how sales of Cuomo's book are going.)
The rest of the article looks at how Cuomo's creation of a special Moreland Act commission in 2013 to investigate legislative corruption got derailed by the Governor when it started getting too close to his office. There's the issue of fracking, which Cuomo has refused to take a position on (until after the election) - but it has come out that the governor's office delayed and edited a federal report to play down risks. Further issues include his attacks on public education, the intolerance for potential rivals (he doesn't play well with others), the pay to play culture infesting his office, and how he stumbled in the primary season where Zephyr Teachout got a surprisingly large share of the vote.
Read the whole thing - it gives an condensed overview of Cuomo's first term. There's plenty more to look at, though.
There's a big story in the New York Times which details how an earlier Moreland Commission report was skewed to protect the Governor's role in contributing to the failures of the Long Island Power Authority to cope with Superstorm Sandy.
A review by The New York Times of hundreds of documents and emails shows that for months before the hurricane hit, the governor’s office ignored pleas from the authority to let it fill staff vacancies that were to hamstring it in digging out from the storm, including an executive to oversee communications with a jittery, frustrated public.
Afterward, aides to Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat, insisted that all news releases be run past the governor’s office, which caused prolonged delays in getting out messages about when and where electricity would be restored.
Even the report’s main recommendation, to privatize the authority, was misleading: Some commissioners disagreed, but the governor’s office changed the report to read as though the panel had been unanimous.
“The license they took to manipulate things was really something,” said Peter Bradford, a member of the post-hurricane commission.
WAMC Northeast Public Radio has a report on
New York's joke of a campaign finance 'reform'.
The pilot public campaign financing program was limited to just the state Comptroller’s race as part of a state budget deal.
It was widely condemned at the time by reform groups as fatally flawed. Blair Horner of the New York Public Interest Research Group called it “cynical.”
“The governor and the legislative leaders have concocted a public financing system which is designed to fail,” Horner said at the time. “There’s no two ways about it.”
Republican Comptroller candidate Bob Antonacci attempted to use the system - but failed to meet the contribution threshold to qualify for funds. Current Comptroller Tom DiNapoli, a Democrat who has been at odds with Cuomo almost from the start, is thought by some to have been set up by Cuomo deliberately; he declined to participate in the farce.
He said he was “excluded” from the discussions that created the plan, and that it came too late in the election cycle and seemed unworkable.
“They changed the rules on me and on this race three and a half years into the election cycle,” DiNapoli said. “It really wasn’t done in a fair way.”
Construction of a
new Tappan Zee Bridge is getting controversial as Cuomo's administration has sought 'creative' use of Clean Water funds for the project.
The state is now being sued, WAMC reports.
Riverkeeper, Waterkeeper Alliance, and Environmental Advocates of New York Monday filed a lawsuit in State Supreme Court in Albany against New York State officials, seeking to ensure that federal Clean Water Act funds will not be used in building the new Tappan Zee Bridge or for future projects. Marc Yaggi is executive director of Waterkeeper Alliance.
“This attempted diversion of funds is bad for our country. It has the potential to set a dangerous national precedent,” says Yaggi. “If New York gets away with this overreach, the state will be creating a blueprint for other states to raid clean Water Act funds.”
Meanwhile, Cuomo has also made clear
his attitude about public education. If reelected, "
he promises"
...he would work hard to bust up “one of the only remaining public monopolies,” he said, referring to public education, and said that he likes charter schools because they introduce competition into the K-12 education world. He also said he wants to change teacher evaluation systems to increase more incentives and more sanctions in order to “make it a more rigorous evaluation system.” He was quoted as saying:
“I believe these kinds of changes are probably the single best thing that I can do as governor that’s going to matter long-term to break what is in essence one of the only remaining public monopolies — and that’s what this is, it’s a public monopoly.”
Also from
the Washington Post, some reaction:
...Billy Easton, executive director of the Alliance for Quality Education, a community-based organization that supports high-quality public education, said in a statement:
“Gov. Cuomo has laid clear plans to expand his frontal assault on our public schools through high stakes testing, starving our public schools and privatization. It’s not that shocking when you look at the enormous pile of cash he has raked in from the Wall Street billionaires who are investing in charter schools. He is rewarding his financial backers at a devastating cost to our children.”
The New York State United Teachers union President Karen Magee issued a statement saying:
“Public education is for the public good. It is not a monopoly. It is the centerpiece of our democracy and what makes our nation great. Reclaiming the promise of public education should be our singular focus. The governor’s comments are an unfortunate distraction from the serious conversation we must have in this state about addressing poverty, funding and real solutions that ensure that every child receives fair and equal to a high quality education.”
NYSUT went so far as to reach out to Cuomo's opponent, Rob Astorino, saying in part.
Gov. Cuomo’s remarks disrespect teachers, parents and the democratically elected school boards who ensure local schools are the farthest thing possible from a “monopoly.” We thank Rob Astorino for acknowledging that New York State has one of the finest teaching forces in the nation. Teachers’ commitment to fair evaluations that improve learning — instead of playing “gotcha” — is clear, consistent and on the record. We are dedicated to working with parents and elected leaders to ensure that every child receives a high quality education in a strong public school.
Cuomo's remarks have unleashed
a firestorm of protests.
Cuomo is clearly on board with the school privatization campaign, and is not going out of his way to win the hearts of working people either. While the Civil Service Employee Association, a union for state workers, is no fan of Cuomo challenger Astorino, they have no love for Cuomo's corporate agenda either.
...An endorsement would be a surprise given [CSEA President Danny] Donohue’s comments at a January rally.
“The state’s open for business,” Donohue said at the time. “Monkey business — and it’s Mario’s son Andrew, and he’s the biggest monkey that we’ve got.”
The polls still show Andrew Cuomo with a comfortable lead over Rob Astorino despite his rising unfavorables - but
Howie Hawkins may end up getting
a sizable protest vote, which would have the effect of ensuring the Green Party a slot on the ballot line in upcoming New York elections. Hawkins definitely has
a progressive agenda:
Hawkins' platform includes a call for a $15 hourly minimum wage rate, a ban on hydrofracking, using government money to hire unemployed workers for public projects, a single-payer healthcare program, rejecting the Common Core teaching standards (and the federal money that came with them), refiguring school aid to give more help to poorer districts and raising taxes on the richest New Yorkers.
Andrew Cuomo is the poster child for so much that is wrong with the Democratic Party establishment; corporatist, entitled, and arrogant. He and Chris Christie are two sides of the same coin. The difference is that Christie is in a party that rewards being a thug; Andrew Cuomo is stuck with the Democratic Party brand because of his family name and his long history as a privileged insider.
For Christie, being a dick is a feature, not a bug. Cuomo wishes he could get away with what Christie gets celebrated for. Perhaps it's why,
as David Nir wrote up earlier, Cuomo is more comfortable with a Republican controlled State Senate, and
also as Nir wrote up, why he's happy with Kathy Hochul as a running mate.
With a Governor like Andrew Cuomo, one wonders why NY Republicans bother running a candidate at all.
UPDATE: In comments, Audio Guy mentioned plans to vote for Hawkins and the Green Party because the Working Families Party sold out to Cuomo. The problem with that is, Cuomo is stabbing the WFP in the back even though they endorsed him. As I replied,
They figured by endorsing him over Teachout, they stood a better chance of getting a better position on the ballot. Parties in NY State get ranked for the next election by the number of votes they got. Because the Working Families Party came so close to endorsing Teachout over Cuomo, he set up the Womens Equality Party to draw votes away from them. He's deliberately doing what he can to weaken progressive politics in New York for his real constituency - the Wealthy Families/Wall Street Party and Andrew Cuomo.
So, vote for Hawkins by all means - but if you can throw votes to the WFP down ballot, that won't hurt.
It's another way of giving Cuomo some pushback - and by all means let's stop him now before he goes further.