Thursday, November 20, 2014

Cuomo Has No Political Juice To Destroy Public Schools Or Teachers

I wrote a post a while back explaining why I think Andrew Cuomo can be stopped when he attempts to carry out his threat to destroy public schools.

Yesterday, some fine reporting at Capital NY backs that up with hard data:

ALBANY—He was re-elected comfortably, but Governor Andrew Cuomo won his second term with the support of a smaller percentage of his state’s residents than any other governor in the country.

A Capital analysis shows that just over an eighth of adult New Yorkers came to the polls for Cuomo, a Democrat who defeated Republican Rob Astorino by a 13-point margin. That means Cuomo drew a smaller percentage of his constituents than New York City mayor Bill de Blasio in 2013, less than his three victorious ticket-mates and less than 35 other American governors and governors-elect.

And on a night when a Republican wave swept the G.O.P. into control of the U.S. Senate and helped the party gain three House seats in New York, returns show Cuomo performed worse than Democratic congressional candidates around the state.

Read the entire Capital NY piece by Bill Mahoney.

It shows just how weak Andrew Cuomo is as he embarks upon his second term and demonstrates that if the teachers unions decide to fight him on his anti-public school/anti-teacher agenda, he can be beaten.

Cuomo has no well of support to draw from this term - especially for a controversial agenda like "destroying" public schools.

5 comments:

  1. I bet you he still screws every teacher and student over.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I bet he tries, yes. Which is why I'm trying to remind people, over and over, that this ain't 2010.

      Delete
  2. I don't know if anyone has noticed, but he kind of just does what he wants and gets away with it.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It's true - and it will continue to happen until it doesn't. He's gotten a comeuppance before - 2002, for example. And he slunk off under a rock for a while to lick his wounds. He can beaten here too, if people realize he's not very popular and he doesn't have the political support to carry out this large scale destruction.

      Delete
    2. Cuomo and Chris Christie need to just go away. If these two represent the future of the democrat and republican parties then America is in very, very deep trouble. Their style of leadership is to bully and steamroll anyone who presents a dissenting opinion. In talking to members of the NYS legislature, it is plainly obvious that whatever "fear" existed during Cuomo's 1st term (on the part of Albany politicos) has been replaced with disdain. Cuomo's margin of victory and piss-poor performance against Zephyr Teachout in the primary point to his flaws. There is a philosophy in Albany (as exemplified in the behavior of Cuomo, Tisch and King) that THEY know best. That's going to change moving forward. I have faith that the next 4 years will be marked by a push-back of epic proportions that will once and for all, expose the corruption and "back room" wheeling and dealing of the "Sheriff Andy" years and by Tisch and King who have all taught us why it is so important to question and challenge authority.

      Delete