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.
