The Case Against Cuomo
The corrupt New York
governor’s progressive reputation is a carefully stage-managed illusion.
Since Trump’s election, New
York governor Andrew Cuomo, the son of popular former governor Mario Cuomo, has
positioned himself as a leader of the #Resistance.
When Trump withdrew from the
Paris Accords, Cuomo announced that he was joining with other blue-state
governors “to sustain and strengthen existing climate programs . . .
and implement new programs to reduce carbon emissions.” When Trump decided not
to extend Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) in September, Cuomo
urged his constituents to call their representatives and demand support for the
DREAM Act.
Cuomo recruited Bernie Sanders
to stand beside him as he unveiled his Excelsior
Scholarship to New York public colleges, which Sanders called “revolutionary,”
and he regularly reminds voters of his fights to legalize gay marriage
equality, raise the age of criminal liability, and increase the state minimum
wage.
New Yorkers get regular email
notifications from Cuomo touting these moves and expressing the governor’s
outrage at Trump’s misdeeds. But Andrew Cuomo is no Berniecrat. He’s merely
figured out how to manipulate New York state’s opaque, oligarchical political
system to give himself a left-liberal sheen without risking his connections to
his richest donors.
Cuomo’s Three-Card Monte Trick
What Cuomo’s emails don’t
mention are the range of progressive and social-democratic bills that would
effectively shield vulnerable New Yorkers from the worst excesses of the Trump
government, but have died at various stages of the legislative process.
For example, the NY Climate
Change and Community Protection Act (endorsed
by over one hundred labor, community, and environmental groups) would
institute strict emissions controls, publicly invest in renewable energy
sources, and create an estimated one hundred thousand jobs — it’s the
most ambitious climate change law in the entire United States. This bill,
and many others, including the New
York Health Act (which would establish single-payer health care) and the
New York Liberty Act (a state sanctuary law which would protect New Yorkers
from deportation), have passed the New York State Assembly multiple times but
failed to become law.
And though the New York State
Assembly passes some of the most left-wing bills in the country, their failure
to become law is a central part of the Cuomo story and illustrates why New York
progressives love to hate their governor. On paper, New York is a solidly blue
state. Over 60 percent of voters chose Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama in the
past three presidential elections, and the lower house of the state legislature
has a solid Democratic majority. But a corrupt system of bipartisan collusion
ensures Republican control of the upper chamber — and Cuomo encourages
and benefits from this manufactured partisan split.
It’s an open secret in Albany
that Cuomo is committed to maintaining Republican control of the state senate,
where creative redistricting deliberately gives the upstate GOP minority an
advantage. The governor could have used his veto power over districting maps in
2012, or used some of his vast campaign resources to elect a stronger
Democratic majority in the upper chamber. Instead he has carefully maintained
this structural barrier to the passage of progressive bills.
But gerrymandering alone isn’t
enough to give the Republicans effective power over Albany’s agenda. For that,
we can thank the Independent Democratic Conference (IDC), a group of eight
Democratic senators who broke away from the Democratic caucus to forge a
power-sharing agreement with Republicans. In 2012, after Democrats claimed a
slim majority in the upper house, four of those Democrats — Jeffery Klein,
Diane Savino, David Valesky, and David Carlucci — agreed to caucus with the
Republicans, giving the GOP the majority. Since then, the IDC has doubled in
size and remained loyal to the Republicans.
This arrangement benefits all
the key political players — above all, Cuomo and his presidential ambitions.
Senate Republicans can control
redistricting and enjoy the perks and resources of majority status, including
the ability to control New York state’s over $150 billion budget. IDC members
get pork for their districts, stipends for chairing committees, bigger budgets,
expanded staff and access to big centrist Democratic donors (such as charter
schools, real
estate interests, and hedge funds). Cuomo continues to cut spending and
prevent tax increases (particularly on high incomes and property taxes) to
appease donors, and casts himself as a moderate progressive who gets things
done. Meanwhile, Democrats in the Assembly and Senate can take strong left-liberal
positions on a number of social-democratic bills, like single payer, knowing
full well that the Senate majority leader will never allow it the leave
committee for a floor vote.
The Assembly blames the
Senate. Democratic senators blame the IDC. The IDC blames the Democrats and the
Republicans. And Cuomo is spared the need to veto popular social-democratic
bills like single payer, which would tarnish his image with Democratic primary
voters. This carefully choreographed blame game stymies all attempts by progressive
activists to pass reforms. Meanwhile, millions of New Yorkers, including women,
people of color, school children, low-income families, and the uninsured and
under-insured suffer under Trump’s policies.
The Real Andrew Cuomo
Thanks to this bipartisan
run-around, many of Cuomo’s key victories have been far more hollow than they
might seem. For example, the Excelsior Scholarship program — already criticized
for its extremely strict courseload
and grade requirements and its “last-dollar” structure, requiring
students to use all federal grants and scholarships toward tuition before state
help kicks in — was made even worse by Republican meddling: the GOP added
provisions requiring four years of state residency after graduation, or else
the tuition scholarship reverts to a loan.
Republicans in 2017 also
watered down the Raise the Age law, which was written to bring all sixteen- and
seventeen-year-olds accused of crimes to family courts rather than criminal
courts. But the final Raise the Age bill only redirected misdemeanor cases to
family court, while nonviolent felony cases would go to a “youth section” of
regular criminal court. Those accused of violent felonies will go through
regular criminal courts and thus face the litany of abuses to which the
criminal justice system exposes minors. This failure to “raise the age right”
was heavily
criticized by juvenile justice advocates and black state senators.
Perhaps in his presidential
run Cuomo will claim to have evolved on key issues, as he did when he changed
his stance on fracking. Following the cues of fellow would-be presidential
frontrunners, Cuomo came out in favor of a national
Medicare for All — but if Cuomo really wanted accessible medical care,
the ultra-blue state where he actually has power would already have passed the
New York Health Act.
Indeed, while Cuomo might
blame the Republican senate or IDC for the bill’s failure, he has bragged elsewhere
about his ability to create bipartisan coalitions to pass his pet projects. In
Cuomo’s 2014 political memoir, All Things Possible: Setbacks and Success
in Politics and Life — itself a focus of controversy thanks to its huge
cash advance from the publisher and dismal sales, resulting
in a personal profit of about $250 per book — he discussed his skilled
and effective maneuvering to pass gay marriage in 2011. Cuomo convinced the
reluctant Senate leader at the time to release the bill to a floor vote and
made sure he had sufficient Republican Senate support. On health care,
meanwhile, he’s chosen not to use political capital to be a bold progressive
leader. Cuomo’s timid posture speaks volumes about his actual political
positioning.
The case against Cuomo lies
not only in his association with the unpopular centrist wing of the Democratic
Party, but also in how he governs. Despite claiming a mandate to clean up
Albany, Cuomo functions as “an old school political boss, who exploits and
worsens the most dysfunctional components of NY state politics to make it
worse” according to Bill Samuels, a former friend of the Cuomo family and
founder of Effective NY, which advocates for reform of Albany.
His “three men in a room”
style of state governance perpetuates the oligarchical tendencies of New York
government. He created and quickly shut down a high-powered anti-corruption
body, the Moreland Commission, in 2013 when it became clear that he might
be implicated in the commission’s own inquiries. This became a major
talking point for his 2014 primary challenger, Zephyr Teachout, who surprised
observers by claiming over 35 percent of the primary vote on a “shoestring
budget” and with no institutional support. And just like Hillary Clinton in
2016, Cuomo had a clear
enthusiasm problem, winning votes but little excitement or energy.
Those who vote for Democrats
should avoid repeating the mistakes of Hillary Clinton’s overly confident 2016
campaign. Despite his posturing to the contrary, Andrew Cuomo follows the worst
aspects of the Clinton playbook. According to January 2018 campaign filings,
Governor Cuomo has over $30 million in campaign funds, relying heavily on large
donors. A New York Times analysis of his most recent filing shows
that only 0.2
percent of his donors give less than $200 – testimony to the complete
absence of grassroots excitement or support for Cuomo.
In contrast, the average
contribution was $4,800, with large corporations and real estate interests
providing donations well above $100,000. These real estate donations occurred
through the LLC loophole in NY campaign law, a law that Cuomo himself has
denounced as “egregious.” This
contrasts not only with Bernie Sanders’s extremely successful small donor fundraising
experience, but also the recent moves by mainstream
Democrats to rely more on smaller grassroots donations.
We are currently about a year
away from when candidates will declare their presidential intentions, and Cuomo
will likely continue positioning himself as the #Resistance leader America
needs, as he did in his speech to the New York City Women’s March, and as he
implied by staging his photo-op with Bernie Sanders. But if we want to see what
New York’s governor really thinks of the insurgent left, we should heed his own
words in the concluding chapter of his 2014 memoir. Cuomo rejected economic
populism within the Democratic party as the impulse of an “extreme left” that
seeks to “punitively [raise] taxes on the rich and [transfer] the money to the
poor.” He equated supporters of left redistributive measures — “fueled by
emotion and truly outraged at the unfairness of the system” — with Tea Party
extremists, holding views regarded as foolhardly by sensible, moderate New
Yorkers. He dismissed Occupy Wall Street and its “incendiary, divisive”
rhetoric, seeking to demonize the very wealthy.
No amount of woke-washing can
hide what Cuomo really is: another uninspiring “socially liberal, fiscally
conservative” Clinton leftover.
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