BUFFALO—American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten regrets campaigning for Governor Andrew Cuomo's running mate in last year’s elections, she told Capital during a union convention on Saturday.
Weingarten, former president of New York City’s United Federation of Teachers, voiced a last-minute robocall supporting current lieutenant governor Hochul last September when the former Buffalo congresswoman faced what appeared to be a serious challenge from an anti-Cuomo insurgent candidate, Tim Wu, in the Democratic primary. (Wu, a Fordham University law professor, ran with Zephyr Teachout, whose surprisingly strong challenge to Cuomo led to an unflattering result for the governor.)
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“Look, Kathy Hochul as a congresswoman was a terrific congresswoman,” Weingarten said, after addressing more than 2,000 New York State United Teachers members who gathered in Buffalo for their annual convention. “And on balance, she would have been, and she should be, a terrific lieutenant governor. But what’s happened is that actions speak louder than words.
“In seeing what we’ve seen, I’m really disappointed, and I regret what she’s done, and I regret actually making it clear that she was terrific beforehand,” Weingarten said, when asked directly whether she regretted doing the robocall."
Hochul was a terrific congresswoman?
What the hell is Weingarten talking about?
Hochul was a congresswoman for less than one term.
She won a special election on May 25, 2011 to fill Representative Chris Lee's seat after he resigned from Congress.
She lost her re-election bid in November 2012.
She was a congresswoman for a little over a year.
After that, she became a bank lobbyist.
Yeah, a bank lobbyist.
Weingarten is so full of crap when she says she supported Hochul because she was a terrifc congresswoman.
She supported Hochul because this was a back alley way of supporting Cuomo.
Not that Cuomo cared because, as he said right in front of Weingarten at a Forbes forum months before the election, he planned to "break" public schools as soon as he was re-elected.
He's followed through on that promise and Weingarten is complicit in his crimes against public schools and public school teachers.
We've let her have it before over this, but she kept defending the robocalls.
I guess that defense, given the virulence with which Cuomo has gone after teachers, has even started to sound hollow in her own ears.
She's trying to walk back the robocall now, but she fools few with her jive.
Weingarten supported Hochul as a way to support Cuomo.
That was true then and it's still true now, no matter how she tries to spin it.
And I regret being a member of AFT. I eat excretement every day thanks to you Randi Weingarten. You have destroyed my career. Your primary expertise lies in the area of double speak. Any teacher who has an ounce of faith in you is seriously misguided.
ReplyDeleteThursday night I asked Randi this same question at a dinner event in Syracuse. Her response was to throw NYSUT under the bus;
ReplyDelete"I made one robocall after nysut ignored their own policy of staying neutral. Locals were endorsing candidates and this was a way to balance the playing field. "
My response was it was one too many.
Randi Weingarten is a fraud...the tide has turned against the privatization movement, against Cuomo, and Weingarten is being deceptive as she tries to distance herself, falsely, from her true intentions.
ReplyDeleteI would look forward to the day when she is taken out in handcuffs. Perhaps she sees the writing on the wall with Skelos, Christie, and moving closer to Cuomo, and she wants to be one f the "good guys", who only associated with the "bad guys" when they appeared to look like "good guys" before they were expose as "bad guys".
I hope the handcuffs around her wrists are extra tight so she isn't confused that they are actually handcuffs. And I hope if she is arrested for her crimes in complicity with the fraudulent and destructive actions against public education, that she never ses the light of day ever again.
Randi Weingarten is a tyrant, and deserves to be treated as one.
Sorry for the typos...
DeleteDon't be so quick to say the tide has turned against privatizers. It hasn't. Basically the only real success in our column at this point are the opt out numbers. That's great but as yet it hasn't been translated into a secure win back of territory. Beyond that, we continue to lose. Or tempo, heat, and rhetoric have kicked up, and that's great, but only visible inside our bubble. Privatizers and their money have gone nowhere. They are still very bloated with money, still very much at the gates. We can't use the rhetoric of victory at this point. At this point I would say our side has simply begun to stick its head up and take a look at the battlefield. An honest assessment at this point would say that we are still very much losing....but we are growing conscious of how they are kicking our asses.
ReplyDeleteWeingrovel is so full of crap I don't know why she even bothers saying anything, When you have to lie about your previous lies because everyone knows you were lying then what makes anyone think for a second that she's not lying now? She is a very cynical human with a sordid view of humanity. To think that she can work full time against the very people she claims to represent then lie about what she's doing and believe people are so stupid and gullible that it will be o.k. is the vilest worldview imaginable.
ReplyDeleteIn the article Weingarten says after we "strike" (what strike?) we need to "collaborate" with the people attacking public education. This has been her modus operandi for years. See my post:
ReplyDeleteTurning "Collaboration" Into a Bad Word
http://goo.gl/7Ts4MS