Cuomo Targeted By Frackers

Not only does Sheriff Andy have an angry legislature looking to stick a shiv in him, he's got the business interests that happily backed him the first time around asking him what he's done for them lately:

State GOP Chairman Ed Cox plans an all-out-attack on Gov. Cuomo for “caving in to environmental Luddites’’ by refusing to approve “fracking’’ for natural gas in upstate’s Southern Tier, The Post has learned.

Cox, in what is expected to be the toughest GOP attack yet on Cuomo, will claim that the governor’s nearly three-year-long refusal to authorize natural-gas drilling is a “metaphor for indecision and Cuomo’s general refusal to face up to the real challenges facing the state,’’ said a source close to Cox.

Cox will charge that Cuomo’s “dithering’’ on fracking is directly responsible for preventing the return of prosperity to hundreds of thousands of people living in the economically hard-pressed and, significantly, Republican-oriented Binghamton region — even as thousands of drilling-related jobs have been created right across the border in Pennsylvania.

Cox’s attack will be delivered a day after the Nov. 5 elections, at a meeting of the state’s Independent Oil and Gas Association, which says Cuomo’s indecision has badly damaged many of its member companies.

Something else to watch as Cuomo gears up for re-election - the business interests that gave him all that money first time around are pissed he has "dithered" on the fracking issue.

He doesn't help himself with anti-frackers either, who target him for protests the way the anti-horse carriage people targeted Christine Quinn.

Cuomo has sat on the issue for three years, saying it is being studied by his administration and he won't make a decision until they are done studying the issue.


But many political observers think Cuomo simply doesn't want to make a decision on an issue that is sure to piss off a large group of people no matter what he decides.

And so, Hamlet on the Hudson Jr. continues to dither on the fracking.

There are more and more sinkholes around Sheriff Andy these days that show a weakened governor - that Cuomo doesn't have the guts to say one way or the other what he wants to do on this issue is just another sign of that.