Out Of Public Eye, Andrew Cuomo Plans His Vengeance

Andrew Cuomo experienced many personal slights during the election season.

First he had to grovel for the Working Families Party nomination.

Then he had to face a primary challenge by Fordham Professor Zephyr Teachout that saw her win 34% of the vote on Primary Day.

He beat his GOP opponent by 13 points on Election Day - but only after outraising said opponent 9 to 1 in campaign funds (Cuomo raised $45 million for the race, his opponent Rob Astorino raised $5 million.)

In addition, Astorino got no help from the Republican Governors Association in the race and little-to-no help from the state GOP, which seemed to have a secret pact with Governor Cuomo that they wouldn't help Astorino out if he wouldn't help Democrats win back the State Senate.

In the end, Cuomo won re-election, but with vote turnout at historic lows and with the lowest vote totals of any gubernatorial candidate in New York State since FDR in 1930 - not exactly a victory to crow over.

Since his re-election, Cuomo has stayed out of the public eye, as reported by Ross Barkan at the Observer:

Gov. Andrew Cuomo has not held a single public event since winning re-election on November 4, returning to a schedule Albany watchers know well–minimizing opportunities for the press to scrutinize him and ensuring that the public is unaware of exactly where their governor is going or what he is doing.

For a governor who avoided the campaign trail when he could and openly resents the news media, a 10-day quiet stretch–interspersed with one radio interview–is not much of a surprise.

...

With election season over, it’s now business-as-usual for an executive notoriously indifferent to transparency. While Mayor Bill de Blasio, who at times has had a testy relationship with the media, continues to hold several press briefings a week and distribute a relatively detailed public schedule, Cuomo watchers are left to wonder what “Governor Cuomo is in the New York City area” really means.

...

“It’s not unusual for politicians to pare back especially when they are trying to assess a changed political landscape,” said David Birdsell, the dean of the Baruch College School of Public Affairs. “A lot of people are looking around, trying to figure out what’s going on.”

...


“It’s a missed opportunity to unveil the positive agenda he was criticized for lacking the entire campaign,” argued one Cuomo observer. “It would have been a great chance to begin restoring his favorability rating. Instead, it reinforced his negative perceptions about his obsession with secrecy.”

Mr. Cuomo’s office did not return a request for comment.

People are wondering what Cuomo has been doing since the election.

I'm not wondering what he's doing - I know exactly what he's doing.

@CuomoWatch He's back in his darkened room, planning vengeance against all who slighted him during the election season.
— realitybasededucator (@perdidostschool) November 15, 2014

There you have it - Don Andrew M. Cuomo at work post-Election Day, getting ready to settle all Family business.

He's already threatened the public school system with destruction and teachers with sanctions.

You can bet other individuals and groups he feels slighted him are going to be targeted as well.

And if he doesn't like the Mafia reference, too freaking bad.

He ought to stop acting like an organized crime goon surrounded by other organized crime goons:

Why Did NYSUT Endorse The Pro-Charter, Pro-Voucher Jeff Klein?

 From State of Politics:

Independent Democratic Conference Leader Jeff Klein on Friday touted his endorsement from the New York State United Teachers union.

“I’m honored to have the endorsement of NYSUT, whose membership works hard each and every day on everything from shaping young minds in our public schools to educating adults in our colleges and universities. I’m committed to being a voice for our educators in Albany,” Klein said in a statement released this afternoon.

Klein faces former city Councilman Oliver Koppell in a Democratic primary next month.
NYSUT announced its slate of endorsements in the Legislature this week, but declined to endorse in the race for governor.

“Those who earn endorsements are friends of public education and labor,” NYSUT President Karen Magee said. “Over the last two years, they earned our support by advocating effectively for our public schools, colleges and healthcare institutions; listening intently to the concerns and aspirations of our members, and voting consistently the right way.”

Let's leave aside that you can't turn your back on State Senator Klein without getting a knife in it.

Let's leave aside that he's a mob-connected politician who belongs in prison, not the state senate.

Let's leave aside that he's been a good friend to Governor Cuomo, ensuring Cuomo got his tax cuts for the 1% and other Wall Street budget priorities.

All those things are bad enough.

But this is a guy who is pro-charter school, pro-voucher, and pro-APPR, a guy who's a favorite of StudentsFirstNY and other education reform groups, a guy who was one of only two Senate Dems who voted a few years ago to end seniority protections for teachers.

If NYSUT leaders had their rank-and-file members interests at heart, they would have turned on Klein and endorsed his opponent, Oliver Koppell.

Instead they endorsed the pro-charter, pro-voucher, pro-APPR guy with the mob ties and education reform bona fides.

Your NYSUT leaders in action

Maybe some of Klein's organized crime friends made them an offer they couldn't refuse?

Independent Democrat Jeff Klein Is Mobbed Up

Old timey corruption, Carlo Gambino-style!

State Senator Jeff Klein took a $10,000 campaign donation from a mafia-linked realty company–the same firm he rents his district office space from. 

The Bronx pol’s July filing shows that the Hutchinson Metro Center, an affiliate of Simone Development–formerly known as Hutch Realty Partners–kicked in the five figures in June. The donation brings the real estate group’s total contribution to Mr. Klein’s operation to a whopping $93,850 since 2006.

Two principals of the company, Michael Contillo and Joseph Deglomini, were indicted in the 1990s of tax evasion, racketeering, and conspiring to raid the pension funds of building trade unions with the help of organized crime.

Mr. Klein relocated his official district office to the Hutchinson Center in 2011. A spokeswoman for the senator said that the move was based on the site’s central location in the Bronx- and Westchester-spanning district.

“Senator’s Klein’s district office is located in the expansive Hutchinson Metro Center complex, as are a number of city agencies including the New York City Housing Authority the City’s 911 call center, federal agencies and prominent New York institutions,” said spokeswoman Candice Giove. “Senator Klein’s district office lease, like all of Senate leases and lease renewals, was subject to procurement and vendor review by the State Senate and was reviewed and signed off on by both the Attorney General and New York State Comptroller.”

...

The New York Post has previously noted Mr. Klein had rented space and received donations from the mob-tied firm.

Ms. Giove did not immediately respond to requests for comment specifically about Mr. Klein’s acceptance of campaign funds from a mafia-affiliated organization. 

...

According to the Daily News, Hutch Realty Partners purchased 10 acres of land–immediately adjacent to their center where Mr. Klein’s district office is located–from the state for a total of $5.5 million between 2001 and 2005, when the New York Police Department was interested in constructing a call center on the plot. After an extended fight, the city agreed to buy the land from the company for $46 million.

The senator’s camp said he had no input with the state, the city, or Hutch Realty Partners at any time during the land dealings.

My favorite part of that story?

The sentence that reads:

Ms. Giove did not immediately respond to requests for comment specifically about Mr. Klein’s acceptance of campaign funds from a mafia-affiliated organization.

That's just a fabulous sentence.

In fact, the whole story is just great from start to finish - Klein takes almost $100K from mob associates, they make almost $40 million on land next to Klein's office that they first bought from the state for $5.5 million then sold to the city for $46 million, but Klein says he didn't help in the least with any of it.

Sure you didn't, Jeff.

Is there anybody in Albany political circles who isn't a fucking crook?

Cuomo To Hire Outside Debt Collectors For State Business

Ah, yes - here's the reform Little Andy Cuomo was talking about:

In these hard times, New York’s future governor, Andrew M. Cuomo, has made a point of standing alongside consumers who are down on their luck. As attorney general, he conducted a statewide crackdown on debt collectors who ran afoul of consumer protection laws, and his office encouraged consumers with their own tales of woe to contact it.

“Too often consumers find themselves in over their heads,” reads one section of the attorney general’s Web site. “If you are one of those consumers, you may be feeling overwhelmed trying to make ends meet while paying off your bills. You may be experiencing calls from people demanding that you pay a certain debt.”

So, it may come as a jolt to learn that the office of the attorney general, consisting of the state’s chief lawyers, also does a brisk business collecting debts from consumers who owe money to many state agencies and authorities — returning about $100 million a year to the state’s coffers.

And it may come as an even bigger jolt to learn that New York State is seriously looking at handing over responsibility for some collection activity to outside bill collectors who, like many of those prosecuted by Mr. Cuomo over the last four years, would be chasing profits above and beyond the return of taxpayer money.

The outreach to private debt collection companies began last May, according to the New York State Division of the Budget’s Web site, and the division could award a contract any day.

New York State “did terrific work in going after debt collectors, and now they’re going to hire these same people and have no control over what they’re going to do?” said Johnson Tyler, a lawyer who works with the indigent for South Brooklyn Legal Services.

...

The industry, though, has regularly found itself a target of investigation. Spying an opportunity midway through his term as attorney general to burnish his credentials as the consumer’s champion, Mr. Cuomo directed his staff to take on the bad actors in the private collection business aggressively.

At last count, 14 debt collection enterprises had been put out of business by Mr. Cuomo’s office, including one whose chief official was a gun-toting felon and another who singled out servicemen, threatening their families and calling their commanders. The office also helped obtain criminal convictions against a dozen or so of the worst offenders, people who intimidated consumers by posing as law enforcement officers and even one man who continued to run his debt collection business from inside a federal prison.

At least six more debt collection companies signed agreements promising to mend their ways. Along the way, the attorney general’s SWAT team also shut down or sued affiliated law firms, process servers and debt consolidators whose services turned out to be shams.

“At a time when New York families are already struggling with unprecedented levels of debt, unscrupulous collection agencies add salt to an open wound,” Mr. Cuomo said in May 2009, after taking on the debt collectors.

What gives, Little Andy?

First you go after these crooks as attorney general, now you hire these same crooks to collect money when you're governor?

You must want that money for the state pretty badly!

Heck, if you want the state money that much, why not go all the way and skip right past the unscrupulous private debt collectors and just hire Gambino and Genevose crime family associates to get the money for you?

I can see it all now.

"Hey, tax deadbeat - give us Cuomo's money or we'll break your legs..."