Andrew Cuomo has done very well politically, as attorney general, by holding himself apart from the Albany muck. Soon, barring a serious career reversal, he’ll be in it.
What happens then? Will the capital’s notorious dysfunction and defiantly reform-proof Legislature have the same toxic effect on his approval ratings as it had on Eliot Spitzer’s and David Paterson’s?
Can a Governor Cuomo be, of all things, likable?
“We keep getting excited about a new governor and expecting him to be our buddy, and then we’re disappointed when it doesn’t work out that way,” said Assemblyman Richard Gottfried, who was elected in 1970 and has seen eight governors come and go.
“I think legislators like to forget chief executives almost never have a warm-and-fuzzy relationship with their legislative body. If you read the Federalist Papers, the executive and the legislature are not supposed to be pals.”
“It is like déjà vu,” said historian Fred Siegel. “Hillary Clinton came into New York on a white horse. Eliot Spitzer came in on a white horse. We’ve seen people come in on a white horse and leave muddy.”
Circumstances will not make things easy for the next governor. The state’s economy is in tatters, and with the Legislature negotiating the budget with a lame-duck Governor Paterson, there’s not much incentive for lawmakers to make the painful decisions needed to plug the $9.2 billion deficit.
The choices aren’t simply whether to cut spending or raise taxes. It’s likely this year’s budget will include both of those unpopular steps, along with a few billion dollars’ worth of borrowing. Add a possible credit downgrading for the state and a handful of union contracts set to expire, and it becomes hard to see how the next governor will have anything but bad news to deliver to the public.
Perhaps more importantly, he will be presented with the same choice as his predecessors: He can be liked in Albany, or he can pursue a popular agenda that means fights with various interest groups that have proven time and again that when they do battle with the governor, the governor loses.
The chairman of New York’s Democratic Party, Jay Jacobs, tried to be optimistic about the chances of success for his party’s presumptive nominee. Mr. Cuomo might be able to handle the state’s problems, Mr. Jacobs said, because he’ll build upon his friendships with many of the people currently in Albany, something Mr. Spitzer lacked and Mr. Paterson never was able to use effectively.
“He comes with the understanding that he has to be an agent of change,” Mr. Jacobs said. “He simply can’t play the insider game. There’s a way to bring about change without personally offending the existing establishment there.”
Mr. Jacobs said Mr. Cuomo will have an aggressive agenda but not, as he has had in the past, an aggressive demeanor. “He won’t need to be a steamroller,” he said. “That is not what he is going to do.”
“What others have lacked in warmth, he has been able to project,” Mr. Jacobs said. He added that Mr. Cuomo can “on the one hand come across as serious and committed to an issue, while on the other hand not have to be abrasive about it and contentious about it.”
Former mayor Ed Koch famously battled Mr. Cuomo’s father, Mario, in a series of mayoral and gubernatorial elections and debates. He said he’s come to consider the younger Cuomo a friend.
“At the last Alfred E. Smith dinner, I was on the dais and so was Andrew Cuomo, and he came over to me,” Mr. Koch said. “We’re longtime acquaintances and friends. I would say we’re good friends today. He came over to me, and I said, ‘Andrew, the way you’re handling your office and not making yourself into a television or news hound and letting the press come to you and being very subdued’—and clearly he is—I said, ‘It must be your father. Keep taking his advice.’ He laughed and said, ‘It’s not my father; it’s my mother.’”
apaybarah@observer.com
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