How Wrong Is Andrew Cuomo? Let's Count the Ways

More on Cuomo's corruption problem — or one of them — here.

 by Thomas Neuburger

Andrew Cuomo takes money from rich people, sneers at principled rivals, says taxes on rich people aren’t politically possible, and then implements left policies only if he can get rich people to approve them first.
—Lyta Gold's partial summing-up of Andrew Cuomo (see below for more)

Andrew is vindictive. He wants to punish people. And he gets joy out of that.
—A Democratic strategist, quoted in New York Magazine

…a hands-on manager who prefers vise-grip control…
—Anna Gronewold, Politico
 
Last week I scratched the surface of what's wrong with nominating New York's Democratic governor Andrew Cuomo as a substitute for Joe Biden in the November race for president (see, "Political Retaliation: Cuomo Proposes Kicking Third Parties Off the NY Ballot").

But there's so much more that's wrong with Cuomo. Yes, he's a mean-spirited man who loves to retaliate against his enemies, but he also stands for nothing more than the interests of the rich and his own aggrandizement. And as his stint as governor shows, he's so hates progressive policies that he empowered New York's Republican Party in order to neuter Democrats who were to his left. And he's corrupt.

That's a terrible combination. Imagine what Andrew Cuomo would be like as president — stabbing progressives in the back while smiling on MSNBC and CNN, gratefully accepting their loving praise and the generosity of the wealthy he serves. Worse, he'd be much more effective at causing damage than even the barely competent Trump, because whatever else Cuomo is, he's also competent.

The best go-to piece on all that Cuomo has going against him was written by Lyta Gold and published in Current Affairs under the title "Stop Trying to Make Andrew Cuomo Happen."  It's well worth the fifteen minutes or so it will take to read it. The writing is sparkly and the research is solid and complete.

Here's a taste. Under the subhead "Andrew Cuomo is a garbage person," Gold offers this list (I've shortened it in the interest of your time and added some bolded emphasis):

Andrew Cuomo is a liar and effectively a Republican. When Cuomo was first inaugurated in 2011, he was supposedly stymied by a difficult, intractable Republican state Senate. Technically, the New York Senate was majority Democratic, but a group of conservative Democrats known as the Independent Democratic Conference (IDC) broke away to caucus with the Republicans, essentially becoming Republicans in all but name. (So basically, they acted like conservative Democrats everywhere, only this time they were super obvious about it.) You may be familiar with one of the IDC’s chief strategists: Lis Smith, top advisor for the failed Buttigieg campaign. For his part, Cuomo claims he had nothing to do with the IDC. This is a lie. According to sources cited in a Politico report, “[Cuomo] and his staff were active in ‘nudging’ [the IDC] along behind the scenes.” The sources also claimed that Cuomo wanted to “ensur[e] that Republicans had control over the agenda in the Senate, so that he wouldn’t be handing over power to New York City Democrats.” ... When asked about the IDC, Cuomo still pretends he had nothing to do with them. He defines himself as a progressive, and specifically as “an effective progressive. A competent progressive, an accomplished progressive. Progressive not just in words, progressive in actions.” Now, “progressive” is a slippery term with many meanings, but I don’t think “letting Republicans do whatever they want while pretending you WOULD pass legislation that would save people’s lives, if only you COULD” is any kind of progress.

Andrew Cuomo doesn’t give a shit about gay people. In one of his often-touted accomplishments, Andrew Cuomo legalized gay marriage in New York State in 2011. As per the Atlantic profile, the bill had long been sponsored by openly gay congressman Danny O’Donnell, but Cuomo wanted it to be sponsored by “his team” instead. According to O’Donnell, Cuomo’s chief of staff threatened him over O’Donnell’s unwillingness to give up the bill. “You’ll never work again,” the chief of staff is reported to have said. “I’ll make it my mission in life to destroy you.” In the end, O’Donnell surrendered the marriage equality bill he’d been fighting to pass for over a decade, while Cuomo signed it and was acclaimed an LGBTQ rights champion. O’Donnell told Dovere: “It’s only about getting [Cuomo] credit. He only cares about credit.” The Human Rights Campaign (HRC), among other LGBTQ organizations, endorsed Cuomo’s gubernatorial re-election campaigns, and the HRC made him a speaker at their 2019 New York gala. (The organization has a talent for supporting powerful people over the interests of actual LGBTQ people: see here and here.) Pramila Jayapal, a left-leaning congresswoman from Washington and the sponsor of the Medicare for All bill in the House, says that “most of Cuomo’s progressive accomplishments, such as gay marriage, are what [New York’s] big donors want anyway.” It’s pretty obvious that you’re not “progressive” if you’re bullying gay politicians into letting you take credit for their work, and only doing the work in the first place because the local rich people said you could.

Andrew Cuomo doesn’t give a shit about women or reproductive justice. With the help of the IDC, the Republican-controlled state Senate shot down critical reproductive health initiatives for years. ... This, by the way, didn’t stop the IDC from stealing reproductive justice valor in 2017, when they issued mailers claiming that Planned Parenthood endorsed several IDC candidates. This was a lie, and Planned Parenthood had to tell them to stop. Shortly after the IDC’s defeat in the 2018 midterms, Cuomo signed both reproductive health bills into law and—you guessed it—proudly took credit, while simultaneously reassuring conservatives that the RHA “does little more than codify Roe v. Wade into state law.” At the signing ceremony for the RHA, Cuomo wore a pink tie and gave an award to Sarah Weddington, the lawyer who argued the Roe case before the Supreme Court. Politico quotes her as saying, with irony, “The governor’s tie indicates the depth of his sincerity.”

Andrew Cuomo really, really does not give a fuck about women. Cuomo was supported in his gubernatorial re-election campaigns—the first against attorney and activist Zephyr Teachout in 2014, the second against actress and activist Cynthia Nixon in 2018—by the Women’s Equality Party. “Wow!” you might think. “The Women’s Equality Party supported Andrew Cuomo against two women candidates? He must be great on women’s issues.” You would be wrong. The Women’s Equality Party (W.E.P.) supports Cuomo because he founded them in 2014 when he was running against Zephyr Teachout. As Ginia Bellafante reports in a blistering New York Times article, the Women’s Equality Party is something like “a political shell company,” that has a history of endorsing more conservative male candidates over left-leaning female candidates. ...

Andrew Cuomo doesn’t care about the people of Queens. When Amazon flirted with headquartering itself in Queens, Cuomo bowed and scraped in order to get their business. He even jokingly offered to change his name to “Amazon Cuomo” in exchange for the new headquarters. While Amazon promised the creation of 25,000 new jobs, they would pretty much all have been white-collar jobs, offered mainly to educated out-of-staters and not the immigrant, working-class residents of most of Queens. The mega-corporation would also have been granted an obscene $3 billion in tax breaks just for deigning to destroy the borough. Thankfully, local activists in alliance with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other New York Democrats tanked the Amazon deal and saved Queens. In typical Cuomo fashion, he loudly blamed the “small group [of] politicians [who] put their own narrow political interests above their community,” and then got sneaky, contacting Jeff Bezos directly to beg Amazon to reconsider. When it comes to kinks, to each their own, but personally I can’t imagine anything less sexually appealing than a public official who once begged the richest man on earth for table scraps. A few months ago, Amazon decided it would move into Manhattan’s ritzy Hudson Yards neighborhood anyway without needing to be bribed by tax breaks first, just as AOC predicted would happen. Queens is safe, and the most annoying neighborhood in Manhattan is getting another corporate headquarters, all despite Andrew Cuomo’s best efforts.

Andrew Cuomo doesn’t take leftist ideas seriously, and he doesn’t like to do things that might be hard. If you’re looking for Cuomo’s other accomplishments, they might seem somewhat impressive…on the surface. He worked with Bernie Sanders to help bring a $15 minimum wage and paid family leave to New York, along with (means-tested) free public college. ... The problem is that Cuomo’s progressive commitments are minimal at best. He favors policies that he believes are doable, but not the ones he’s already decided can’t be done. ... Cuomo received a “hero’s welcome” for the $15 minimum wage bill, but he isn’t willing to stick his neck out on anything difficult or really meaningful, especially not if it scares off rich people. He blames his blinkered imagination and lack of political courage on voters themselves. ...[Yet] Polls show that a majority of voters actually favor bold policy proposals such as Medicare for All and a Green New Deal, and public opinion may shift even further given the twin realities of the pandemic and subsequent economic collapse. But in praising Joe Biden, who opposes both Medicare for All and a Green New Deal, Cuomo mocks leftist ideas: “[Biden] knows what he’s talking about, he’s experienced, he is relatable, he knows how to get things done, he wants to get things done, he’s not blowing smoke, he’s not a blue-sky puffer…He’s not, ‘Health care for all, Social Security for all! Everything for all!’” Ah yes, that impossible pie-in-the-sky ambition of everyone having Social Security.

Andrew Cuomo is a constant thief of progressive valor. In fact, Cuomo is only willing to undertake bold policy as long as someone else does the difficult work of popularizing it first. Jayapal describes Cuomo as “a politician’s politician. He is not a movement politician; he’s not the person who comes up with the bold ideas first and does the work to push it forward…You can be a politician’s politician and tough to move on an issue until you see a public out there that’s clamoring. You still deserve credit for getting it done, but where were you when an issue was not popular?” We can see the proof of this in Cuomo’s reaction to Cynthia Nixon, his 2018 leftist primary challenger. During the primary, Cuomo moved left to fend off Nixon’s candidacy. Once he won, many of her policies made their way into his new “Justice Agenda,” including legalizing marijuana, the above mentioned Reproductive Health Act, a Green New Deal for New York State, a middle-class tax cut, and banning corporate campaign contributions. When Cuomo released the proposals in December 2018, he “compared himself to FDR, and said ‘Now is the time to lead.’” Nixon has noted with amusement that she successfully pushed Cuomo left, but he’s failed to acknowledge her influence on his agenda. In fact, in a recent press conference, he took an unnecessary shot at her, laughing at the very idea of her—a former actress who starred in a show about S-E-X!!!—as governor of New York during the coronavirus crisis. Andrew Cuomo is a cynic who stole a woman candidate’s work and took the credit for it.

Andrew Cuomo believes in nothing except his own legacy and making sure rich people keep their money. If you ask Cuomo, however, he’ll insist on his progressive credentials. When his record is criticized, he blames “the professional left” whom he describes as members of “‘the greatest scam in history. What does it mean, ‘professional left’? Basically, a sham set of groups that are fronts for labor unions…They were all with Cynthia Nixon, the professional left.’” ... [P]ollster and Albany insider Steve Greenberg described Cuomo’s appeal to Politico as “a progressive who gets things done.” But what does it really mean to “get things done?” Are progressive policies, as Cuomo has claimed on multiple occasions, really at risk of driving a significant number of rich people out of the state? There is some evidence that rich people are leaving New York, but even Forbes admits that the problem is as much “costly living expenses [and] crumbling infrastructure” as the tax rate. The real obstacle to progressive policies in New York, according to Bill Lipton, executive director of the Working Families Party, is Andrew Cuomo. “I tried to work with the guy for eight years, because we’re the WFP—we’re not the Green Party. We’re trying to actually get stuff done…The truth is Cuomo has no policy or values base at all. What he cares about is keeping taxes low on his donors.” ...

Andrew Cuomo is beholden to rich people. The source of Cuomo’s petty feud with New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio is not, as most people think, the New York City subway. The badly-needed subway upgrades were definitely a source of tension: “Cuomo argued that the city owned the subway and that Mayor Bill de Blasio needed to pay for half of the repairs. De Blasio pinned the blame on the Metropolitan Transit Authority, a state agency controlled, for all practical purposes, by Cuomo.” But the battle may also have been over de Blasio’s universal pre-kindergarten plan, which is paid for by a “millionaire’s tax” on the richest residents in the state. Cuomo, according to a former adviser quoted in New York Magazine, was furious about the tax. “He told the mayor, ‘We’re going to give you pre-K. It may take a while. We may have to bang you around a little bit. But you’re getting pre-K. Now, understand my politics, Bill. I just fought off this millionaire’s tax. I need the business community right now because I’ve got to get an on-time budget.’” De Blasio partly agrees with that interpretation of events, saying, “I was struck by [Cuomo’s] unwillingness to tax the wealthy, and I felt he was not willing to challenge some powerful interests in this state.” However, de Blasio added that the deeper issue was Cuomo’s support for the IDC and the Republicans, saying Cuomo broke “the promise he made to help us win a Democratic State Senate and over the years, he aided and abetted the IDC and the Republicans, and that to me was a real breaking point.” ...

In fact Andrew Cuomo isn’t just beholden to rich people; he’s outright been bought. The matter of LLCs came up a lot during the primary against Nixon—in New York State, LLCs are a method that corporate entities use to launder their campaign contributions, somewhat like Super PACs. New York Magazine states that “Cuomo rakes in money from corporate, hedge fund, and real estate interests,” and quotes a “Cuomo insider,” who said, “‘… The governor is acutely aware that it’s not just about the dollars to spend. It’s the perception. ‘You want to run against me? You better be prepared.’ And it says to the world, ‘I have access to really deep pockets.’’” During the primary, Cynthia Nixon refused to raise money from LLCs, and lost the election to her better-funded opponent. Andrew Cuomo takes money from rich people, sneers at principled rivals, says taxes on rich people aren’t politically possible, and then implements left policies only if he can get rich people to approve them first. What a progressive hero. ...

The list ends with this cheery set of quotes:

Andrew Cuomo is an asshole. Here is a list of things people have said about Andrew Cuomo in profile pieces ranging from the sympathetic to the fawning to the respectfully critical at worst:

• “What comes up most in talking about Cuomo is how people hate him.” The Atlantic
• “The differences between the Cuomos are huge: Mario would blow up in a rage, while Andrew tends to bide his time for revenge…” The Atlantic
• “Even when there is good news, Cuomo’s scheming breeds suspicion from reporters, activists, and other politicians.” The Atlantic
• “‘Is he a son of a bitch at times? Yeah.’” New York Magazine (2014 profile)
• “And when he’s criticized, his first reaction—often deployed through surrogates or staffers—is to belittle or intimidate.” New York Magazine
• “‘Andrew is vindictive,’ a Democratic strategist says. ‘He wants to punish people. And he gets joy out of that.’” New York Magazine
• “…a hands-on manager who prefers vise-grip control…” Politico
• “One Northeast-based political consultant, a longtime fixture at the National Governors Association event, says he remembers meetings in previous years when Cuomo entered and exited sessions without a word to anyone. When Cuomo does publicly interact with other governors, the events are often carefully timed and monitored on his own home turf.” Politico
• “…a governor who finds it distasteful to interact with the unpredictable masses and his fellow politicians…” Politico
• “It’s sometimes said of certain politicians that they love humanity but hate people; Andrew Cuomo does not appear especially fond of either. He is the uncommon elected official with a streak of misanthropy. Cuomo rarely sees ordinary people, and they rarely see him, except in television commercials. ‘Andrew doesn’t like meeting with voters,’ someone who is familiar with his campaigns told me. ‘He’ll do parades, but that’s about it.’” The New Yorker

And he's also corrupt. (See here and here as well.)

Andrew Cuomo — Collecting the Worst of What Democratic Leaders Could Offer into One Media-Made Candidate

There you have it, or some part of it — there's actually a whole lot more.

If you're looking for a Biden replacement who isn't Sanders, hasn't received a single vote in the primary, is as vindictive as Trump and twice as controlling (and effective), Andrew Cuomo is happy to have your support.

And if the DNC, God forbid, actually does swap out Biden for Cuomo, God help us all, whether he wins or loses.
 

Is There Any Way To Measure If Cuomo Is More Corrupt Than Christie Or Christie Is More Corrupt Than Cuomo?

Andrew Cuomo and real estate donors (clockwise from left) Joseph Moinian, Jerry Speyer, Daniel Tishman, Andrew Farkas

You shouldn't have been surprised by Bill Rashbaum's stunning revelations about Andrew Cuomo's ethics problems. Ken and I have been warning readers for years that Cuomo is nothing like his father, Mario Cuomo, a pawn of the powerful and wealthy and an avatar of the Republican wing of the Democratic Party. And his corruption is nothing new to anyone who's been paying attention.

Catherine Austin Fitts is a Wall Street bankster type. She was managing director of Dillon, Read, aand worked for George H.W. Bush as Assistant Secretary of Housing and as Federal Housing Commissioner at Bush's Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). After Clinton beat Bush, he appointed Cuomo Assistant Secretary and, when he was reelected in 1996, Secretary of that department; he impressed Fitts-- as a criminal. She wrote a fascinating column-- HUD is Being Run as a Criminal Enterprise-- that should be more widely read as Democrats prepare to go to the polls to chose between Cuomo/Hochul and Teachout/Wu September 9.

One of the chief beneficiaries of Cuomo’s ascendancy to Secretary and the subsequent cancellation of the loan sales were the developers, owners and managers of apartment buildings that were subsidized by HUD and often financed through FHA and Ginnie Mae. Ginnie Mae is the HUD unit which guarantees securities issued to finance pools of mortgages insured by FHA. Many of these apartment buildings had been originally financed through tax shelter syndications.

The largest HUD subsidized portfolio at the time was the one owned by Insignia, chaired by Andrew Farkas. On September 5, 2006, as Andrew Cuomo was running for the democratic nomination for Attorney General of New York, Wayne Barrett published "Andrew Cuomo’s $2 Million Man" in the Village Voice.  Barrett reported that Cuomo’s compensation from Farkas’s company, Island Capital, in 2004 and 2005 totaled $1.2 million and that Farkas family members and business associates had donated $800,000 to Cuomo’s campaigns since he left HUD. Barrett describes Cuomo’s role as Secretary of HUD in approving an-out-of-court settlement with Insignia (regarding litigation alleging a HUD subsidy being improperly used to pay kickbacks) shortly before Insignia’s sale to AIMCO (Apartment Investment And Managing Company) in 1998.

With Insignia valuations reflecting the benefits of its settlement of the kickback litigation, the cancellation of the HUD loan sales and related policies increasing the private value of HUD subsidized portfolios, Farkas sold out to AIMCO in 1998 for $910 million, described by his attorney as a "fantastic price."

A question that remains unanswered is whether the price of the Insignia sale to AIMCO in 1998 was simply fantastic or whether-- given the pattern of events around it-- it was inflated with government resources and decisions arranged in a criminal manner.

This question raises a second question-- whether the $2 million that Farkas and his network have paid to Cuomo and his campaigns since then represent a kickback from the Insignia sale to AIMCO and whether Cuomo’s compensation is simply fantastic or something more.

…Why did HUD finances melt down under Cuomo’s leadership and what, if anything, does that have to do with the billions flowing to large HUD landlords from the government and the stock market, and the millions now flowing back to Andrew Cuomo and his campaigns years later?

…In 1997, members of my team working with HUD (now led by Cuomo) asked me to authorize Hamilton helping HUD to prepare its next budget using assumptions on the multifamily portfolio that were known to be false. For example, we were to presume that HUD’s apartment portfolio would not be impacted by welfare reform legislation that had been enacted the year before. As federal data indicated that high concentrations of tenants in privately-owned HUD-subsidized housing in large urban areas were getting federal welfare and/or food stamp subsidies, this made no sense. Our assessment was that the combined assumptions that HUD wished to use would make it easier for private owners to displace tenants in a way that would leave the tenants out in the cold without vouchers, while appropriations were preserved to fund project-based subsidies for HUD landlords.

At one point, the Hamilton team leader for our work with HUD came over to my house to try to persuade me that we should help HUD do this. He said that if we did not help HUD with the budget, he was concerned that we would be fired. We agreed that HUD was probably going to persuade the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) that they could trust the budget, because Hamilton helped prepare it; hence, my concern that our involvement would be used to perpetuate a fraudulent budget. I asked him to define the value of our contract in terms of an acceptable level of children going homeless or dying. How many children should we help be forced to the streets so that we could keep our contract?  Suddenly, he stopped and said something like, "Why am I doing this? So what if we lose our contract? We have better things to do in our life than be a party to murder." To which I replied, "Now you have it."

I tell this story to remind the reader that we have become a society where the most dangerous serial killers who stalk our land kill with a pen and not with a sword. The most important unanswered question about Andrew Cuomo’s time at HUD goes beyond how or why he and his agency engineered gains into Andrew Farkas, John Ervin and so many other private pockets. The more important question is how many people went without basic necessities because Cuomo diverted resources away from honest taxpayers and the people that HUD was created to serve. How many children in New York and around the country went homeless or worse because vouchers or job training were not available?


This is the most important unanswered question… [A] growing number of investors around the world who do not want to be exposed to the banana republic style corruption now perceived to be epidemic in the United States.


New York is the center of the financial markets in the United States. The health of these markets depends on investors’ faith in the integrity of their governance. The perception that the lead New York regulator is a politician who exploits the power of his or her office for personal ambition and finances will impact the flow and pricing of capital throughout the United States.


My recommendation, to both New Yorkers and members of the US financial and legal establishment concerned with America’s ability to attract capital in global markets, is that they ensure that the unanswered questions relating to Andrew Cuomo’s dealings with Andrew Farkas and Insignia and any other HUD-related 
special interests that have financed him and his campaigns be investigated and answered before Andrew Cuomo is permitted to hold public office again.

My recommendation is that Democratic primary voters do the right thing in September and end Cuomo's career and replace him with Zephyr Teachout.

If The Best The Corrupted Democratic Establishment Can Do For 2020 Is Andrew Cuomo...

Bernie's out on the stump-- fighting against TrumpCare across Trump Country. He did rallies recently in Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia. Tomorrow he's doing "Care Not Cuts" rallies in Kentucky and West Virginia. In announcing his 6pm event at the Northern Kentucky Convention Center in Covington, he pointed out that "McConnell’s legislation, which would throw 22 million Americans off of health insurance, would be a disaster for the country and an even worse disaster for the people of Kentucky. Under the Affordable Care Act, Kentucky has made significant progress in lowering the number of its uninsured people. Further, the expansion of Medicaid there has been of significant help in the fight against the opioid epidemic which has ravaged Kentucky."

By the way, Covington is the county seat of Kenton County, Kentucky's third most populous county. Trump won it decisively in November 59.7% to 33.7% but on primary day Kenton County was a different story. Ted Cruz won Kenton County with 2,475 votes to Trump's 1,997. And Hillary and Bernie each beat both of them. Bernie won 4,880 votes countywide-- more than Cruz and Trump combined.

And what about the site of tomorrow's second West Virginia rally in as many weeks-- Morgantown (the Morgantown Event Center at 12:30), the county seat of West Virginia's 3rd most populous county, Monongalia? In November, Trump beat Hillary 51.2% to 40.8%. But, again, the primary was a very different story. The Mon County voters wanted Bernie, not Hillary and not Trump. Primary day, 2016 in Monongalia:

• Bernie- 8,096
• Trump- 5,971
• Hillary- 4,963
• Kasich- 943
• Cruz- 851
• Rubio- 207

You-know-who woulda won.

Meanwhile... the latest crap-Democrat trial balloon is for Andrew Cuomo, one of the most corrupt politicians in America, who would be the GOP's dream-come-true opponent for Trump. If you were one of the people expecting Trump to be defeated in 2020 at least in part because of his own eye-popping corruption, write that off if Cuomo is the nominee. Progressive Democrats and the entire activist base of the Democratic Party absolutely detests Cuomo and his sleazy, money-grubbing, utterly inauthentic centrism. David Freelander termed Cuomo "a big-name politician who has long seemed an extremely unlikely national candidate-- until now, when suddenly he’s seeming like a very likely one." Democratic voters are going to cast primary ballots for this pile of crap instead of Bernie (or Elizabeth Warren)? I don't think so-- although Mark Penn and Andrew Stein might.

Freedlander is a good reporter, but, I'm sorry, this is just silly: "New Yorkers love to assume that their politicians are national figures by default, even as one by one they flame out on the big stage. For much of his career, Cuomo has looked like another in this long line: someone too nakedly ambitious, too pushy, with too messy of a personal life-- too, well, New Yorky-- to play much beyond Buffalo and the Battery. But suddenly it seems that Americans are willing to pull the lever for a muscular, messy, rough-edged leader shouting for the common man, and suddenly the governor of New York is starting to show up on a lot of people’s lists." No one likes Cuomo-- except...

“Look at his career, look at his work in New York,” said Jonathan Cowan, the president and founder of Third Way, a centrist think tank, and a former Cuomo advisor. “He is laying out a model for what it means to be a 21st-century Democrat. Our party is in a deep hole. You have to look around and say, ‘Who is succeeding? Who is doing it differently?’”

...Cuomo looks very much like someone doing the spadework to run for president. His speeches, like the one at the Hotel Trades Council headquarters, are increasingly laced with the kind of Big Themes that become the rhetorical cornerstones of presidential campaigns. He rails against Washington, contrasting the gridlock of Congress against his own relatively smooth management of the previously dysfunctional statehouse, the misplaced priorities of national Republicans against the steady progress he has made in Albany. Over the past several months, Cuomo has hired Chris Christie’s former chief of staff, a move widely seen as further burnishing his own bipartisan credentials; his aides have reached out to out-of-state donors about a possible fundraising swing later this year.

But if he runs, he’s got one big roadblock in his way first: The energy in the Democratic Party right now comes from a newly energized left. And the energized left, not to put too fine a point on it, hates Andrew Cuomo.

“The worst of the worst,” said Nomiki Konst, a Sanders delegate to the Democratic National Convention and frequent cable TV defender of the candidate who now serves on the Democratic National Committee’s Unity Commission. “Andrew Cuomo is somehow the only politician in America who still thinks neoliberalism and triangulation work, who opens up the Blue Dog playbook and says, ‘How can I use this to run for president?’”

...When he at last became the second Cuomo to serve as governor of New York, by the standards of the state, he was barely a Democrat. It was in the depths of the Tea Party’s counter-revolt against Obama’s presidency; the state’s economic outlook was disastrous and Cuomo positioned himself firmly as a man of the center. He capped property taxes and let a tax on millionaires expire. He gathered a bunch of friends in the real estate industry to run an outside spending campaign on behalf of his agenda, rallied for charter schools, slashed pensions and the state workforce. If Spitzer had come to Albany as a crusader, cleaning out the ethically compromised and ridding the state of the Republicans who could slow his agenda, Cuomo signaled from the start that he was willing to work with the powers that be, so long as their powers didn’t get in his way. In 2011, when a group of moderate Democrats announced they were leaving their party’s conference in the state Senate to form an alliance with the Republicans, Cuomo signaled his tacit approval, in part because it meant that his veto pen wasn’t the only thing keeping restive downstate liberals from having the run of the state. He undercut liberal stalwarts like Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, trying to incorporate parts of their offices’ responsibilities into his own, and leaking gossipy and embarrassing details about them to the press.

In the era of Occupy Wall Street, such machinations made Cuomo Democratic Public Enemy Number One. On MSNBC, Chris Hayes called Cuomo’s power play against a Democratic Senate, “a remarkable cynical display.” “Andrew Cuomo, Fake Democrat,” blared Salon. Over at Daily Kos, Markos Moulitsas delivered the death blow, comparing Cuomo to-- gasp!-- Joe Lieberman. In an era in which moderates were supposed to find no safe harbor save for a couple of hideouts in the Mountain West, Cuomo remained defiantly in the middle, practically delighting in how much he could troll his lefty detractors.

But in 2014, something changed: A little-known, poorly funded Constitutional law professor named Zephyr Teachout ran against Cuomo in the Democratic primary and captured a third of the vote, proof that not only was a restive progressivism already brewing in the pre-Trump, pre-Bernie era, but that the party’s liberals didn’t care much for their governor. Cuomo responded by swinging abruptly to the left.

With exactly zero authenticity. I sincerely doubt Cuomo's opportunism and posturing has convinced Freelander he's for real and, as he wrote, "progressives see a cynical exercise in box-checking... If Andrew Cuomo has a problem on his left flank, it isn’t just because he doesn’t always toe the party line; it is far more personal than that. To them, Cuomo is fundamentally dishonest, a political weathervane obsessed with his own ambition. To him, they are soft-headed naifs who don’t understand how politics works and don’t speak for the millions of workers and labor unionists who serve as the real base of the Democratic Party."

Liberals will never love him, or even learn to see him as one of them. But it’s clear that Andrew Cuomo can move an agenda forward. If he delivers on progressive priorities, can they learn to live with him? As friends and advisers of the governor’s see it, Cuomo enters the discussion of top-tier presidential contenders in a party that hasn’t just gotten used to symbolic victories; it has become comfortable with even symbolic losses. Consider climate change, or health care, or taxes, or for that matter, the way Democrats slunk back to their hideaways after winning the popular vote but losing thanks to an arcane scoring system from the 18th century.

Progressives comfort themselves with clichés now as vapid as they are well-worn-- putting points on the board, moving the needle, bending the arc-- and rest content that since they have facts and morality on their side, things are bound to go their way eventually.

Crack open Andrew Cuomo, and you won’t find Ted Kennedy. You probably won’t even find Mario Cuomo, someone who treated Albany like it was the Athenian agora. But you will find someone consumed with winning, who throttles anyone who looks like he or she might stand in the way of that winning. Is Andrew Cuomo really a warrior for social justice? Maybe, but probably not, but if you get a higher minimum wage and paid family leave and free college and gay marriage and gun control and a fracking ban and the first reversal of harsh Rockefeller-era drug laws in four decades, who cares?

Last word goes to Ben Mathis-Lilley at Slate: "[W]e can dismiss this concept without even addressing the already tiresome idea that what a Democratic voting base that has spent the past six months getting jazzed up about aggressive resistance and unapologetically liberal policies is actually fixin' to do in 2020 is nominate a moderate centrist triangulating triangulator who-- as Politico points out itself!-- lowered taxes on millionaires and has close ties to his state's most powerful corporate executives... Andrew Cuomo's approval rating in New York is 43 percent. It is not going to improve as he becomes increasingly associated in the public mind with subway mega-failures. In a Demcratic 2020 primary whose dynamics seem likely to resemble the 2016 Republican primary in many ways, he would combine the worst qualities of Jeb Bush (being an dynastic insider) with Chris Christie (being unpopular and famous for an act of brazen corruption, in his own state). If Hillary Clinton, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, and Rahm Emanuel merged into a single person, would Politico declare that person a major contender for the 2020 nomination? (Yes, probably!)"

Andrew Cuomo thinks pols are either talkers or doers -- guess which he thinks he is

The New Yorker caption for this picture is: "At close range, the Governor is a formidable presence. His speech comes in aggressive, self-confident bursts, especially when he's sizing up the state of political play, and he is relentless." I thought this was kind of funny, because just looking at the picture, I thought of some tacky horror-movie villain.

by Ken

It's about as old an argument as there is in the field of government: compromising to get stuff done vs. holding out for getting the right thing(s) done. Of course it's kind of a fake dichotomy. I think most people understand that at points in the political process, it's necessary to make compromises, and you can't just talk about "getting stuff done" without facing up to hard questions about what stuff needs to be done, and how much bad stuff you can allow to get done in order to get better stuff done.

Nevertheless, I think NYS Gov. Andrew Cuomo has made no secret of the fact that he's a "getting stuff done" kind of guy. And as much as he revered his late father, onetime three-term Gov. Mario Cuomo, and as intimately involved as he was in his father's political career, which after all blossomed pretty late for a pol, as an offshoot of his law practice and community involvement, Andrew's idea of being governor is by no means the same as his father's.

You see --


ANDREW'S MODEL FOR POLITICAL "DOING"
ISN'T HIS FATHER -- IT'S BILL CLINTON

Over the last several months, it turns out, The New Yorker's esteemed legal correspondent, Jeffrey Toobin, has been working on a profile of Andrew, which appears now in the February 16 issue, as "The Albany Chronicles: How Andrew Cuomo gets his way."

It is, as you would expect of a New Yorker profile, a very long piece. And I don't propose to get very far or deep into it. But at the start, we get some pretty sharp defining of political terms. And I thought it would be interesting just to isolate some of this.

Starting with Andrew's view of himself as a pol vs. his father.

Mario Cuomo defined his three terms as governor with oratory; Andrew Cuomo has sought to build his reputation in a different way. He made clear that his primary inspiration when it came to dealing with legislators was Bill Clinton, not his father. During Clinton’s second term, Cuomo served in his Cabinet, as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. “I was watching, and they were impeaching the guy, and he was still there every day, asking them how they were doing, trying to make deals,” Cuomo recalled, his voice bearing the hard consonants of Queens, where he grew up. “My job is to get to yes,” he said. “If I don’t make a deal, I get nothing done. If I get nothing done, I am a failure. If the objective is to make a nice speech, it means nothing.”

IN CASE YOU HAVEN'T GOTTEN THE POINT,
ANDREW BELIEVES IN DOING, NOT TALKING

Interestingly, Andrew thinks of Barack Obama as a talker, not a doer!

For better and for worse, Cuomo views his work as a series of transactions. He disdains rhetoric; he prizes results. He has had several accomplishments in his first four years. Against heavy odds, he pushed through a marriage-equality bill in the Legislature; he banned fracking; he tightened the state’s gun-control laws; he closed thirteen prisons; he started construction on the first major bridge in the state in fifty years, a replacement for the Tappan Zee, across the Hudson; and he passed four balanced budgets in a row, all on time. Deeds, not words—that might as well be the motto of Cuomo’s administration. In nearly every speech, and in many conversations, Cuomo dismisses the importance of political talk. As if adopting a typical voter’s view of President Obama, Cuomo told me, “Beautiful rhetoric, beautiful vision—I’m sold on the vision—and what happens? There was no product. There was no actualization of the vision. Now I’m more disillusioned than I was when we started. You brought me up with that beautiful language, and you got me excited and I thought it was possible and then it wasn’t.”

LET'S LOOK, FOR EXAMPLE, AT THE CORRUPTION
INQUIRY ANDREW STARTED, THEN SHUT DOWN

Jeffrey T provides us with background:

In the summer of 2013, Cuomo created what became known as the Moreland Commission, a bipartisan group of leading citizens, who were to spend up to eighteen months investigating public corruption in the state. The commission’s inquiries focussed in particular on whether the outside business activities of state legislators should be subject to tighter regulation. By early 2014, [Assembly Speaker Sheldon[ Silver and his colleagues had come to loathe the commission, and went to court to thwart its inquiries. Around the same time, Cuomo was seeking to pass his annual budget, and he hoped to do that on schedule. So, just nine months after Cuomo created the commission, he abruptly shut it down. Silver passed Cuomo’s budget; Cuomo rid Silver of the meddlesome commission.

ANDREW TELLS JEFFREY THAT HE
THINKS HE GOT THE THING JUST RIGHT

On the day after [Assembly Speaker Sheldon] Silver’s arrest, I met with Cuomo in his New York City office, on Third Avenue. I asked him about the widespread contention that the charges against Silver showed that Cuomo should have let the Moreland investigation run its course.

“They’re exactly wrong,” Cuomo said. “What happened on the Moreland Commission is they subpoenaed the outside info of the Senate and the Assembly, in a fairly aggressive way. The Senate and the Assembly join together, the Republicans and the Democrats, in a motion to quash the subpoenas. And they are successful in the lower court. And we’re stuck for, like, four months.”

Closing down Moreland, in Cuomo’s view, broke the logjam. After the shutdown, the Legislature passed modest ethics reform, which increased penalties for bribery and established a pilot program for public financing in the next state comptroller’s race. Preet Bharara, the United States Attorney in Manhattan, demanded the Moreland files and used them to make the case against Silver and, perhaps, others. “We get the legislation I wanted in the first place,” Cuomo told me. “Moreland takes the same cases and the same subpoenas and hands them to local D.A.s and to Preet.” Cuomo disclaims any responsibility for Silver’s possible misdeeds. “If Anthony Weiner shows his private parts, do you blame Obama? These are criminal acts of individual legislators. What would you have me do?”

AND YET ON THE OTHER HAND --

Each step in Cuomo’s analysis makes a kind of tactical sense. But he shut down the investigation even though the Legislature failed to make significant political reforms. Bharara and the other prosecutors obtained the commission’s files only because Bharara publicly expressed his outrage at Cuomo’s action. * Cuomo’s explanation ignored the symbolism: How could there ever be a legitimate reason, in a state long beset with corruption in its Legislature, for the governor to short-circuit his own marquee attempt to clean it up?

I DON'T MEAN TO COME TO ANY GRAND CONCLUSION

I just thought these very old issues of governance are framed pretty interestingly here.

#

Why Does Andrew Cuomo Act Like A Republican When It Really Counts Most? Follow The Money

Baby needs new shoes?

On Friday we looked at how Andrew Cuomo has been able to run to the head of the parade on popular, high-profile social issues and noisily claim leadership, while working assiduously in the political backrooms to undermine the core of progressivism-- economic equality for working families. Cuomo wants to live up to his father's unrealized potential and get elected president but, unlike his father, he's the worst kind of political opportunist, an ugly trait that knows no partisan bounds. He may wave a rainbow flag at gay marches or kick the NRA douchebags when they're down but when it comes to the great economic issues that divide progressives from conservatives and plutocrats, Andrew Cuomo knows exactly which side is buttering his bread-- and knows how to keep that butter coming.

Tom Precious of the Buffalo News reported on an analysis of the pattern of political contributions that have financed Cuomo's career and the result looks incredibly... Republican. Almost 80% of his donations come from folks giving more than $10,000 each. Virtually nothing comes from small donors. Only one percent of Cuomo donors have given less than $1,000. He's getting contributions from people who want something-- something very specific-- in return for their "investments." This isn't unique to Andrew Cuomo. It's the normal course of action for all corrupt political hacks and although it's 100% true for Republicans, it's something Democrats are usually, at least, embarrassed about.

The New York Public Interest Research Group reported this afternoon that 79 percent of the money raised by Cuomo since he took office has come from entities and individuals who have given him $10,000 or more apiece. At least 142 corporations, unions or individuals have donated at least $40,000 apiece and seven contributed between $100,000 and $500,000.

The governor, who has recently started a push for taxpayer funding for campaigns and lower contribution limits, reported Tuesday that his campaign account has more than $22 million in it.

Wall Street and corporate America are investing in Andrew Cuomo. He's their boy. Wall Street and corporate America see him as a firewall against a real populist/reformer like Elizabeth Warren. Take the Citigroup PAC, for example, They pump immense amounts of money into the political system in the hope of holding reform and consumer protection at bay. So far this year-- and the year is young-- they've given Cuomo $40,000, a nice haul. In 2012, they had two operations going to bribe-- legalistically, of course-- politicians. One spent $579,345, 53% on Republican and 47% on Democrats, and the other spent $410,002, 59% on Republicans and 41% on Democrats. The Democrats they supported were only ones with proven records of corruption, like San Diego's new right-wing New Dem congressman Juan Vargas, an insurance industry lobbyist who was widely considered the most corrupt member of the California Senate until he was kicked upstairs and went to Washington this year. They gave another $10,000 directly to the New Dem PAC and $5,000 more to New Dem chairman Joe Crowley's own operation, (JOE-PAC). The top recipients for Citigroup cash in the House all have reputations for corruption and for taking money to sell out their own constituents. Citigroup recognizes that Andrew Cuomo is just like their favorite DC politicians:

• Eric Cantor (R-VA)- $17,500
• Jeb Hensarling (R-TX)- $10,000
• Steny Hoyer (D-MD)- $10,000
• Joe Crowley (New Dem-NY)- $10,000
• Kevin McCarthy (R-CA)- $10,000
• Jim Himes (New Dem-CT)- $9,500
• Scott Garrett (R-NJ)- $9,000
• John Boehner (R-OH)- $8,500
• Spencer Bachus (R-AL)- $8,500
• Gregory Meeks (New Dem-NY)- $8,000
• Patrick Tiberi (R-OH)- $7,500
• Pete Sessions (R-TX)- $7,000
• Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV)- $6,000
• John Carney (New Dem-DE)- $6,000
• David Scott (Blue Dog/New Dem-GA)- $5,500
• Dave Camp (R-MI)- $5,000
• Randy Neugebauer (R-TX)- $5,000
• Gary Peters (New Dem-MI)- $5,000

And Citgroup was just a minor example of who's pushing Andrew Cuomo towards the White House. His biggest donor this year has been billionaire real estate developer Leonard Litwin who gave him a cool half million dollars. Litwin is one of New York's biggest political donors and annually spends over a million dollars on bribes for politicians on both sides of the aisle. Last year he gave generously to Cuomo and Romney, for example. Empire Merchants (booze distributors) also gives on both sides of the aisle, but always to the most corrupt politicians they can find-- like Debbie Wasserman Schultz (their biggest Democratic investment in Congress) and Eric Cantor (their biggest Republican investment in Congress)-- and they were Cuomo's #2 donor-- $121,600 so far this year. Also way up on Cuomo's list of big donors is Zuffa/Ultimate Fighting Productions, allegedly Mob-connected, Arab-owned, crooked to the core. They gave Cuomo $105,000 so far this year, also contributing $456,362 last year to some of DC's most corrupt politicians including Dean Heller (R-NV), John Boehner (R-OH) Miss McConnell (R-KY), Romney, and the new chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, Bob Goodlatte (R-VA). Cuomo's list of donors reads like a page of people who need strict government supervision-- from Republican real estate mogul and Herman Cain sugar daddy Peter Kalikow ($100,000) and Cablevision ($80,000) to Pepsi ($97,000) and TimeWarner ($60,800)-- but these folks aren't underwriting Cuomo because they want more government supervision of their activities.

Anybody But Cuomo? Well Almost Anybody

The 2020 presidential election is a long way off. Trump could be in prison by then-- or living in a dacha in Rublevka or perhaps the "golden ring" northeast of Moscow. The Democrats may be preparing to run against him but may have to face a more conventional Republican like Pence, Rubio, Cruz, Kasich-- is there another Bush yet?-- or even, by then, former Congressman Paul Ryan. All the excitement on the Democratic side is for Bernie and Elizabeth Warren... but don't expect the Republican wing of the Democratic Party to just role over and die; the establishment will do anything in its power to block either of them and there are a number of even-worse-than-Hillary candidates hoping to run-- from Joe Biden, Jerry Brown, Terry McAuliffe, Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, Jason Kander, Tulsi Gabbard, a Castro brother, Amy Klobuchar, Kirsten Gillibrand, Mark Warner and... believe it or not, one of the worst New Dems in Congress, rot-gut conservative p.o.c. John Delaney, has already declared he's running! Perhaps worse than any of them would be someone more corrupt than any of them, New York's horrifyingly slimy governor, Andrew Cuomo.

Writer and political activist Phillip Anderson, founder of the Albany Project, just launched a fund-raising campaign for a book he's writing about Cuomo. No one knows New York politics better than Anderson and he is absolutely certain-- as am I-- that Cuomo is definitely running for president (or vice-president). "As someone who has covered him closely for over a decade," wrote Anderson recently, "I think he'd be a terrible choice for both the nation as well as the Democratic Party, a party that is already leaving him behind. Given what I know and what I've written about him over the years, I feel compelled to sound a warning to potential primary voters about who he really is."

Anderson plans to finish his book, The Case Against Andrew Cuomo, by this time next year. He explains on his IndieGoGo.com page that his writing "has focused mainly on corruption, ethics and good governance issues as well economic and social justice." For a while he was New Media Director for the New York state Senate.

I’ve long chronicled the career of Governor Andrew Cuomo and how he has dealt with or often simply ignored many of the issues that matter greatly to New Yorkers and progressives across the country. I’ve written for years about the ethical shortcomings and scandals, the petty and vindictive feuds with progressives and progressive policy itself, the legislative cloak and dagger fights, all the progressive policy victories so often championed by Governor Cuomo that never seem to stand up to further scrutiny, and, last but hardly least, the all consuming political ambitions of a man that now wants to be the President of the United States.

All of this is why I feel compelled to write this book and share what I’ve learned over the years with all of those potential Democratic primary voters who maybe haven’t followed Andrew Cuomo as closely as I and others have. I’ve written roughly 700K words about Cuomo over the years, all with links to primary sources, and I’ve come to understand a great many things about the man. What I can tell you is that I feel he would be a terrible choice for the nation and an even worse choice for the Democratic Party.

Rest assured, Andrew Cuomo is definitely running for president and voters across the country deserve to know much more about who he really is as both a politician as well as someone who would seek to lead the Democratic Party forward in the post-Trump era.

...I have no desire whatsoever to write a hit piece. This has been true for all my years of covering Cuomo. I believe the objective facts clearly support my thesis that Cuomo is the wrong candidate at the wrong time for the wrong party. I intend to make the case against Cuomo with facts, not hyperbole, not conspiracy theories, not with bullsh*t. When the governor and his crew come after this book, and they most certainly will, they will have to engage with it on the merits of the case, not on the fact that it is anyway unfair or speculative or factually incorrect.

...The Case Against Andrew Cuomo is also more than just a book. It will also be a living, continuously updated resource on the web with links, audio and video, and commentary as it happens. The site, anybodybutcuomo.com, is nothing but a splash page at the moment, but that will change in the coming weeks and months. A large part of this effort is to build an accessible and genuinely useful resource for potential voters but also for journalists as well. I’ll be putting my many years of experience running online campaigns to build out the site but also a social media element that will put accurate, actionable and shareable information in the hands of citizens across the country.

Andrew Cuomo-- The Anti-Progressive Running For President In Progressive Clothes

For many non-New Yorkers the video above might have been their first look at 2016 presidential hopeful, NY Governor Andrew Cuomo. He sounds like a passionate progressive, taking on the extremist gun nuts and the NRA, right? Yes, but "sounds" is the key word in that sentence. Andrew Cuomo is anything but a progressive, passionate or not. He's figured out how to make high profile social issues-- like marriage equality and gun laws-- work for him but where it really matters most, Cuomo is another Wall Street-owned political hack serving the interests of the one percent, not the interests of ordinary working families. He's kind of the mirror image of the old time conservative Southern politician who crushed the aspirations of working families while yelling "Nigger! Nigger!" to make them feel he was on their side where it really counted.

Cuomo hopes the tactic will take him all the way to the White House. New York progressives shudder at the prospect. BuzzFeed's Blake Zeff perceptively describes it as "sheer political brilliance... it reflects a seemingly superhuman mastery of legislative politics, a consuming political drive, and a pattern of trying to score points on the Democratic left-- key to a primary-- through so-called 'cultural' issues, while operating as an economic moderate. "

Which brings us to the governor's ever-running, finely-tuned political antenna.

As some have mentioned, Cuomo surely could have acted on gun safety earlier in his career, working to, say, tighten the interpretation of the assault weapons ban as Attorney General, or push for reform in his first few years as governor; this wasn't a societal problem newly brought to attention last month. But Cuomo saw the news stories, seized on a political moment to score big time attention, and envisioned the headline he wanted on his resume.

When he declared his state would be-- must be-- the first to do something on guns post-Newtown (and would have "the toughest assault weapons in the nation"), this was less the passionate pronouncement of a lifelong gun safety crusader, than the move of a political chess prodigy.

Of course, such motivation isn't unique to Andrew Cuomo. Politicians often strive to leave no crisis unexploited, and others like Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley (and, of course, the White House) are also rushing to get something done on guns now.

Which is sort of the point: Any commentary suggesting that Cuomo's push for gun safety reform is "bold" misses the fact that there is little but political upside to this battle. Not only is Cuomo's stance currently the de facto position for Democratic presidential aspirants, but every statewide elected official in blue New York holds similar views on the issue. What passes for the opposition in Cuomo's state, much like the opposition to marriage equality, is weak and disorganized.

The governor is a canny political player who picks his targets carefully and aggressively-- and an issue with significant national attention, massive support in his home state, and a lethargic opponent, is political catnip, especially if you can influence legislators to act.

And here again, Cuomo excels without parallel. The conditions making gun safety a smart call for the governor were largely in place under his successors, but they couldn't move the Republican state senate to support legislation (or in some cases, put it to a vote). Cuomo found a way around that.

By tacitly supporting a controversial power arrangement whereby a handful of Democratic state senators abandoned the elected Democratic majority to swing control of the senate to the Republicans (in exchange for resources and co-equal authority), Cuomo set up his ideal arrangement.

Rather than a powerful Democratic majority (as the voters had elected) that could provide real checks on him, Cuomo now had a loose, decentralized state senate power structure that was far easier for him to control. In fact, he announced that he would only publicly support the governing coalition's legitimacy to the extent it acted on his top ten policy priorities, and would withhold or offer this support on a piecemeal, case-by-case basis.

Even more appetizing for him, Cuomo no longer had to worry about a united Democratic assembly and senate pushing him to act on liberal priorities that pushed him out of his comfort zone. By definition, a hybrid Republican-Democratic coalition is not going to present Cuomo with legislation that pushes him too far left or too far right (in fact, for all the gun safety reforms in this latest package, there are also conservative measures, like increased penalties). For a self-styled "consensus" guy, Goldilocks herself couldn't have asked for better.

But for this odd arrangement to work, the coalition would need to prove it could get stuff done. The breakaway Democrats had explicitly and counter-intuitively stated that they were forming the new structure to better ensure a "progressive agenda." And many observers of Albany politics, including yours truly, noted that the guns package was the first test of their credibility-- and one they could not afford to lose.

Here, Cuomo cleverly leveraged the circumstances of this arrangement to his every advantage. First, when the fate of the package was not yet certain, he benefited from the pressure placed on the coalition to pass its first test; the greater the stakes were for the volatile senate leadership to get something done, the more likely the governor was to get his package voted on and passed. Then, when the deal was done, Cuomo allies were able to credibly point to the success of the controversial coalition in passing guns reform, as proof that it was a legitimate governing structure.

Which means the convenient arrangement can continue, and Cuomo can move on to the next item on his priority list, and again pressure the coalition to get it done. (Rinse, wash, repeat.)

But what exactly are his priorities? Once again, his decision to pursue the guns issue is instructive.

His recent rhetoric aside, Cuomo has staked out a relatively conservative record on economic issues, from cutting programs cherished by many in his own party and battling public workers, to eschewing progressive taxation and moving to silence Occupy Wall Street protestors. Such an agenda has helped Cuomo win favor with the well-heeled business and donor community in New York, influential conservative editorial pages, and Republicans, all adding up to very high approval ratings in New York.

But there's been some political cost to this economic conservatism for Cuomo: a backlash from liberals, with MSNBC's Chris Hayes calling him out for his tacit endorsement of the Republican power grab in the senate, and Daily Kos's Markos Moulitsas declaring he looks forward to crushing Cuomo in the 2016 presidential primary.

Cuomo's approach to balancing two competing interests-- piling up points to advance in a Democratic primary for president, while steering to the center in key areas (and carefully avoiding antagonizing monied interests who fund campaigns and influence elite opinion)-- has consisted of aggressive advocacy of "cultural" or "social" progressive causes, while downplaying economic ones. He has explained this practice by saying he's "a progressive who's broke" (a pronouncement which fails to explain why he opposed higher taxes on the rich).

Former New York Assemblyman Richard Brodsky has described the approach as, "a 'progr-actionary' or a 'con-iberal,' where you take the two prongs of the progressive agenda, the focus on the economic health of the middle class and the poor, and the liberation of people who've been historically oppressed, and you dump one in its entirety and you seize the other in a very high-profile move."

Marriage equality fit neatly into this matrix. Not only did wealthy people not mind this crusade, many of them actually supported it (and of course, some were themselves gay).

Similarly, guns is another issue right in the Cuomo wheelhouse. Unlike, say, a millionaire's tax (a policy he strongly opposed before acquiescing on a compromise), it's an issue that does not upend the economic status quo.

For Cuomo, the play here is to get the acclaim of being called a "progressive dreamboat" by reporters and commentators who fail to appreciate that liberalism is about more than cultural issues (and to reach voters less focused on economic justice). Just how successful this will be depends in part on the mood and positioning of the national Democratic party.

As Independent Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders has explained, "[d]espite such terminology as 'fiscal cliff' and 'debt ceiling,' the great debate taking place in Washington now has relatively little to do with financial issues. It is all about ideology. It is all about economic winners and losers in American society. It is all about the power of Big Money. It is all about the soul of America. In America today, we have the most unequal distribution of wealth and income of any major country on earth, and more inequality than at any time period since 1928. The top 1 percent owns 42 percent of the financial wealth of the nation, while, incredibly, the bottom 60 percent own only 2.3 percent. One family, the Walton family of Wal-Mart, owns more wealth than the bottom 40 percent of Americans. In terms of income distribution in 2010, the last study done on this issue, the top 1 percent earned 93 percent of all new income while the bottom 99 percent shared the remaining 7 percent."

And Andrew Cuomo-- and plenty of "centrist" Democrats-- are on the wrong side of the barricades in the one overarching war that transcends the progressive social agenda. He's be much better suited to an Ed Rendell kind of slot on MSNBC.

Andrew Cuomo-- The Richard M. Nixon Of The Democratic Party?

2 crooks- Cuomo and Klein, a perfect match

If your gut tells you that Andrew Cuomo is a sleazy transactional careerist who has no problem living in a corrupt political environment and making it work for him... give your gut a pat on the back. This morning, the NY Times' top political investigative reporter, Bill Rashbaum, along with colleagues Susanne Craig and Tom Kaplan, explained how Cuomo hobbled state ethics investigations. Corrupt is the nature of conservativism. It always was and always will be. Don't ever mix Andrew Cuomo up with his dad.

With Albany rocked by a seemingly endless barrage of scandals and arrests, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo set up a high-powered commission last summer to root out corruption in state politics. It was barely two months old when its investigators, hunting for violations of campaign-finance laws, issued a subpoena to a media-buying firm that had placed millions of dollars’ worth of advertisements for the New York State Democratic Party.

The investigators did not realize that the firm, Buying Time, also counted Mr. Cuomo among its clients, having bought the airtime for his campaign when he ran for governor in 2010.

Word that the subpoena had been served quickly reached Mr. Cuomo’s most senior aide, Lawrence S. Schwartz. He called one of the commission’s three co-chairs, William J. Fitzpatrick, the district attorney in Syracuse.

“This is wrong,” Mr. Schwartz said, according to Mr. Fitzpatrick, whose account was corroborated by three other people told about the call at the time. He said the firm worked for the governor, and issued a simple directive:

“Pull it back.”

The subpoena was swiftly withdrawn. The panel’s chief investigator explained why in an email to the two other co-chairs later that afternoon.

“They apparently produced ads for the governor,” she wrote.

The pulled-back subpoena was the most flagrant example of how the commission, established with great ceremony by Mr. Cuomo in July 2013, was hobbled almost from the outset by demands from the governor’s office.

While the governor now maintains he had every right to monitor and direct the work of a commission he had created, many commissioners and investigators saw the demands as politically motivated interference that hamstrung an undertaking that the governor had publicly vowed would be independent.

Remember Nixon's Saturday Night Massacre (1973), the straw the broke the camel's back in the then-unfolding Watergate scandal? Attorney General Elliot Richardson had appointed Archibald Cox as an independent special prosecutor to investigate Watergate and when Cox proved too independent and too competent, Nixon demanded Richardson fire Cox. Richardson resigned instead. Nixon then turned to Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus and gave him the same directive. Ruckelshaus resigned as well and Nixon then turned to a young far right ideologue in the Department who was already known as a mindless zombie to do the task. Robert Bork, later rejected for the Supreme Court because of it, fired Cox. Apparently there were no Richardsons or Ruckelshauses in the Cuomo scandal, just Borks.

The commission developed a list of promising targets, including a lawmaker suspected of using campaign funds to support a girlfriend in another state and pay tanning-salon bills. The panel also highlighted activities that it saw as politically odious but perfectly legal, like exploiting a loophole to bundle enormous campaign contributions.

But a three-month examination by the New York Times found that the governor’s office deeply compromised the panel’s work, objecting whenever the commission focused on groups with ties to Mr. Cuomo or on issues that might reflect poorly on him.

Ultimately, Mr. Cuomo abruptly disbanded the commission halfway through what he had indicated would be an 18-month life. And now, as the Democratic governor seeks a second term in November, federal prosecutors are investigating the roles of Mr. Cuomo and his aides in the panel’s shutdown and are pursuing its unfinished business.

Before its demise, Mr. Cuomo’s aides repeatedly pressured the commission, many of whose members and staff thought they had been given a once-in-a-career chance at cleaning up Albany. As a result, the panel’s brief existence-- and the writing and editing of its sole creation, a report of its preliminary findings-- was marred by infighting, arguments and accusations. Things got so bad that investigators believed a Cuomo appointee was monitoring their communications without their knowledge. Resignations further crippled the commission. In the end, the governor got the Legislature to agree to a package of ethics reforms far less ambitious than those the commission had recommended-- a result Mr. Cuomo hailed as proof of the panel’s success.

...Mr. Cuomo said early on that the commission would be “totally independent” and free to pursue wrongdoing anywhere in state government, including in his own office. “Anything they want to look at, they can look at-- me, the lieutenant governor, the attorney general, the comptroller, any senator, any assemblyman,” he said last August.

...Yet, The Times found that the governor’s office interfered with the commission when it was looking into groups that were politically close to him. In fact, the commission never tried to investigate his administration.

Beyond that, Mr. Cuomo’s office said, the commission needed the governor’s guiding hand because it was, simply, a mess: Its staff was plagued by “relationship issues” and was “mired in discord.” The commissioners, whom he earlier called some of New York’s sharpest governmental and legal minds, “did not understand the budget or legislative process or how state government worked,” the statement said. Their subpoenas often had “no logic or basis,” and those that touched on the governor’s supporters were more for show than for legitimate investigative purposes, the statement said.

Cuomo has put himself forward as the natural candidate of the Republican wing of the Democratic Party if Hillary stumbles or decides not to run. What a cruel ending of the already frayed relationship between progressives and the Democratic Party that would be!

UPDATE

And Rachel Maddow takes a swing at the developing scandal: