Reading The Tea Leaves On The Cuomo-De Blasio Dinner

The NY Post reports on two political pow-wows that took place in restaurants.

The first was between Governor Andrew Cuomo and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio:

Bitter rivals Mayor de Blasio and Gov. Cuomo broke bread during a secret sit-down at a Midtown restaurant in an attempt to mend their fractured relationship, The Post has learned.

Hizzoner and Cuomo held the peace summit Tuesday evening in a curtained-off private room in the back of Casa Lever on Park Avenue at East 53rd Street, sources said.

“It looked like a serious business meeting,” a restaurant staffer told The Post, saying there were no outward signs of acrimony but no laughs either during the tête-à-tête.

...

“Governor Cuomo has a nice setup near the back of the restaurant. He’s sort of hidden away so he can have his privacy with his guests. You can always tell he’s here because his ‘secret service’ guys are crawling all over the place,” one restaurant staffer said.

Cuomo and de Blasio were accompanied by Emma Wolfe, the mayor’s legislative director, who handles Albany matters, and Melissa DeRosa, the governor’s director of communications.

In the second tier came a meeting between wanna-be mayor Scott Stringer and real estate developer (and maybe wanna-be mayor) Don Peebles:

Real estate developer Don Peebles and city Comptroller Scott Stringer had a power breakfast at the Regency on Monday, which piqued the interest of fellow diner the Rev. Al Sharpton at a nearby table.

When he spotted the pair, who are both considered potential challengers to Mayor de Blasio in his re-election bid, “Sharpton walked over to their table to say hello, and joked that some might view their ‘secret meeting’ as a plot to take down de Blasio,” a spy said.

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Peebles, who’s reportedly worth $700 million, told The Post in August he’s giving serious thought to a run, saying, “I was a political supporter of [de Blasio] . . . I’ve lost confidence in him. It would be irresponsible of me to do nothing.”

Peebles doesn't actually spend much time in NYC and might have trouble meeting the residency requirements, so I wouldn't spend too much time worrying about him as a potential challenger if I were Bill de Blasio.

And Stringer, well, he isn't particularly good at the job he has now, so he's not exactly a serious threat to a sitting Democratic mayor either (especially since a successful opponent to de Blasio is going to have eat away at de Blasio's support with the black community and Stringer's political base is Upper West Side white people.)

But it has been rumored that Cuomo has been actively recruiting potential challengers to de Blasio for 2017 and that his "Number #1 priority" is "being anti-Bill de Blasio," so the Cuomo-De Blasio dinner is an interesting gossip tidbit.

It was reported that Cuomo won't mend fences with de Blasio until the mayor publicly apologizes for de Blasio's criticism of Cuomo back in late June/early July, and the feud between the two continued last week when Cuomo accused de Blasio of being incapable of solving the homelessness problem in the city and criticized him for working with Republican Rob Astorino on transit issues, so I dunno what the point of this was or if anything was accomplished at the dinner between the two.

But I think I may have one possibility.

Fred Dicker reported on Monday that some Democrats were criticizing Cuomo for his constant "belittling" of de Blasio, something that was undercutting Cuomo's attempts to get a challenger to run against de Blasio.

The challenger who might have the best shot to beat de Blasio in a primary, Congressman Hakeem Jeffries, was said to be having second thoughts about running because of the damage the Cuomo-de Blasio feud would do to his chances:

U S REP. Hakeem Jeffries, Gov. Cuomo’s choice to oust Mayor de Blasio, is having doubts about entering the race, as Democratic unhappiness over Cuomo’s “belittling’’ of the mayor grows, senior Democrats have told The Post.

Jeffries, whom Cuomo has encouraged directly and through intermediaries to challenge de Blasio in the 2017 primary, “is having second thoughts about running, and has begun resisting Cuomo,’’ a prominent Democratic activist with strong party ties told The Post.

The source said it was now likely Jeffries would not challenge de Blasio, despite Cuomo’s repeated entreaties and polls showing the mayor’s popularity continuing to fall.

A second highly knowledgeable source, calling the Brooklyn-based Jeffries “a very pragmatic guy,’’ said that the well-regarded two-term congressman “has got to be aware that Cuomo can’t necessarily deliver for him in the Democratic primary, especially with what’s been going on.’’

That was a reference to Cuomo’s new attacks last week on de Blasio. The governor said he, and not the mayor, knows best how to handle the city’s homeless problem, and faulted Blasio for appearing at a press conference with Westchester County Executive Rob Astorino, last year’s Republican candidate for governor.

“It’s reached a point where having Cuomo backing you in a Democratic primary could work the other way, and Jeffries must be aware of that,’’ said the second source.

“Just look at what happened with the governor in his own primary with Zephyr Teachout,’’ he continued, referring to Cuomo’s surprisingly weak showing last year, when only mustered only about 60 percent of the primary vote against Teachout, a little-known law professor, and comedian/activist Randy Credico.

Several prominent Democrats said they were “shocked’’ — a word that was repeatedly used — at Cuomo’s criticism of de Blasio for appearing in public with Astorino. The governor cited Astorino’s opposition to abortion, among other things. But that didn’t stop Cuomo from standing with Pope Francis in St. Patrick’s Cathedral in September, despite the pontiff obviously being anti-abortion.

“That was one of the most amazing statements I’ve ever heard,’’ said a prominent Democrat who has known Cuomo for years, noting that the governor in the past has claimed he was committed to cooperating with his political opponents.

“It’s like the old ugly Andrew is back, the way Andrew used to be and had promised after 2002 that he wouldn’t be anymore,’’ the source continued, referring to Cuomo’s repeated pledges of new-found humility after his defeat in the race for governor that year.

Another key Democrat — known to virtually all party activists — said prominent Democrats had become increasingly unhappy with Cuomo’s “belittling’’ of de Blasio.

“Cuomo’s MO of pretending to be high-minded while belittling de Blasio has become a tedious trick,’’ said the source.

“Since [Cuomo’s] sagging polls are in part due to people understanding he’s a nasty piece of work — Astorino’s use of ‘scorpion’ is dead-on — perhaps he should try governing and see if that works.

“De Blasio is tricky in his own way but looks like an alter boy compared to Andrew,’’ the source, who has known Cuomo for years, continued.

So, why the Cuomo dinner with de Blasio?

And who leaked the story to the Post?

My inner bullshit meter says it's in Cuomo's interests to show that he's making an effort to work with de Blasio so he can say to those critics sniping at him that "Old Ugly Andy" is back that this is not the case, he really is trying to work with de Blasio.

In the past, Cuomo had been "winning" the feud between the two, if not in polls, at least politically, because he had successfully isolated de Blasio and had the upper hand in both the political battles between the two and the media accounts of those battles.

But with Dems "sniping" both privately and publicly that Cuomo was going too far, Cuomo may have realized it was in his best interest to reach out to de Blasio and make it look like he's trying to work with him.

In the end, as with everything Cuomoesque, I wouldn't exactly trust him if I were de Blasio (in fact, I probably would have brought a food taster with me to the dinner if I had been him.)

Nonetheless, that the meeting took place and somebody felt the need to leak it to the Post is quite interesting to me.

As for the Stringer/Peebles "power" breakfast, that clearly looks like Stringer reaching out to a potential funder for a 2017 challenge to de Blasio.

Peebles played this same kind of game against former DC mayor Adrian Fenty back in the day and Peebles has already indicated he wants to see de Blasio go.

Stringer also publicly sucked up to Cuomo a few months back:

Gov. Andrew Cuomo over the weekend received some warm words from New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer.

Later today, he will be attending a roundtable discussion with U.S. Rep. Hakeem Jeffries.

Both Stringer and Jeffries just happen to be potential mayoral candidates and rivals to the incumbent, Bill de Blasio.

Stringer on Sunday singled out Cuomo for praise during an event hosted by Sen. Adriano Espaillat.

“Governor, it’s been so good having you in New York City, protecting all of us,” Stringer said.

Boy, how's that for a subtle suck-up job from Stringer?

In any case, given the job he's done as comptroller and the political realities of what it would take to defeat a sitting Democratic mayor in a primary, I think Stringer's delusional if he actually thinks he can successfully primary de Blasio.

Also would note that while Cuomo likes people to suck up to him, he also tends to treat those same people with disdain and contempt if they show weakness - and let's be frank, Stringer's "You make us all feel so safe, governor!" line oozes weakness.

In the end, I bet Cuomo still wants to find a challenger to de Blasio and knows that Jeffries is his best bet to take out his former "frenemy."

Dinner or no dinner, I doubt Cuomo's buried the hatchet with de Blasio - except maybe the proverbial one, right into de Blasio's mayorality.

Cuomo Continues To Triangulate, Destroying Schools As He Simultaneously Tries To Assuage Liberals On Economic Issues

Andrew Cuomo has governed as a triangulator since the beginning of his first term.

He mostly triangulated on social issues that appealed to lefties early on (gay marriage, for example) even as he governed as a center-right pol on economic issues (property tax cap, for example.)

But ever since that challenge from the left he got from Zephyr Teachout in 2014, coupled with his languishing job approval numbers (44% job approval last February in a Siena poll, 40% last month in a Siena poll), he's seemed more interested in triangulating on some economic issues too - especially ones that his mortal enemy, Bill de Blasio, might take some political benefit from.

Thus Cuomo, who insisted a $13 dollar an hour minimum wage was a "non-starter" in NY State when de Blasio was pushing for it, has since aligned himself with some of de Blasio's union and progressive base and pushed for a $15 dollar an hour minimum wage.

Today he upped the ante on that:

ALBANY — Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo plans to unilaterally create a $15 minimum wage for all state workers, making New York the first state to set such a high wage for a large group of public employees.

The increase, which Mr. Cuomo will announce on Tuesday, would place New York’s public employees far ahead of other states on minimum wage, and at the vanguard of a national movement to address stagnant wages for tens of millions of American workers.

Using executive authority, Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat, would gradually increase the hourly rate: State workers in New York City would earn $15 an hour by the end of 2018; state workers outside of New York City would also see wages rise, though more slowly, with rates climbing to $15 by the end of 2021. All told, some 10,000 workers would see a bump in pay, according to the governor’s office, with the vast majority of those living upstate or outside the city.

The governor’s action comes on a day when fast-food workers across the country are striking for a uniform $15 hourly wage, a movement that Mr. Cuomo has championed in New York and even as a growing number of cities have acted to raise wages. But Mr. Cuomo’s action is the first time a governor has raised wages to $15 for so many state employees

The NY Times points out some of the political motive behind today's move:

Mr. Cuomo’s action comes on the heels of several other executive actions seemingly meant to appease and please the liberal wing of his party, which has faulted the governor in the past for his working too closely with Republicans, who hold the majority in the State Senate. In addition to the increase in the minimum wage for fast-food workers in New York — which Mr. Cuomo accomplished in July via a state wage board — Mr. Cuomo has also empowered the state attorney general, Eric T. Schneiderman, to look into police-related killings. And last month, he expanded protections for transgender people, building on a 1945 state law that barred discrimination on the basis of sex.

The Times reports that this move also comes as an offshoot to negotiations with CSEA and PEF, two state worker unions who have had fraught negotiations with Cuomo in the past:

An administration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the action had not formally been announced said that Mr. Cuomo’s decision was based in part on pending negotiations with two large public-sector unions — Civil Service Employees Association and the New York State Public Employees Federation.

PEF has new leadership that some see as more Cuomo-friendly than the ousted leadership, so some of this may just be political payoff for a Cuomo ally.

But don't underestimate two others reasons why Cuomo's pushing this now.

First, it allows him to steal whatever progressive thunder de Blasio once had and relegate the mired mayor to the sidelines on yet another liberal issue (and let's note that even though 90% of the workers affected by this are outside NYC, Cuomo had his announcement in NYC today.)

Second, it allows Cuomo to continue to triangulate on another issue near and dear to his heart - the destruction of the teachers unions and public school system.

On the same day that Cuomo said he would issue an executive order raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour for state workers came this news on the education front:

In one of her most significant actions as state education commissioner, MaryEllen Elia has granted Buffalo Superintendent Kriner Cash unprecedented power to make changes at the district’s most struggling schools, bypassing the teachers union contract.

Those changes could include a longer school day and year, required teacher training and more control over staffing – all things Cash says are essential to improve student performance.

 In a 107-page ruling released Monday, Elia largely imposes Cash’s proposals with some modifications that call for giving teachers more notice of contractual changes and preference for other jobs, should they be displaced from their position. She also recommends that a committee created to assist with staffing at the receivership schools be limited to three or five people, and consist of an odd number to prevent deadlock between union and district representatives.

Those powers Elia is giving Kriner Cash to bust the Buffalo teachers union and essentially privatize "Buffalo's most struggling" public schools come courtesy of Cuomo's receivership program that was shoved through in the last state budget by the governor.

Cuomo, who last year promised to "break" the public school monopoly, has given NYSED the tools to do just that with this receivership law that allows them to take over schools and circumvent union contracts and what is happening in Buffalo is expected to happen elsewhere around the state too.

It's not an accident that even as Cuomo provides NYSED with the power to bust the teachers union he's rallying with other unions over a $15 dollar an hour minimum wage.

Cuomo, ever the pragmatist, is bending on some of his economic policies (like that $13 dollar an hour minimum wage he said couldn't happen in NY) - but this bending is so that he can continue to triangulate on other issues like his privatization/teachers union-busting agenda.

Cynical?

Sure, but that's just how this governor operates - and he learned it from the master, Bill Clinton, who was his boss back in the 1990's.

Charter School Shills With Ties To Cuomo Plan To "Bankroll" Bid To Destroy De Blasio

Anybody else think this idea came straight from Cuomo?

Ken Lovett of the Daily News reports the following:

ALBANY — Business bigwigs — some with ties to Gov. Cuomo — have begun discussing the possibility of bankrolling an early effort to go after Mayor de Blasio in hopes of further weakening him in advance of the 2017 elections, sources say.

Home Depot founder Ken Langone, who once headed a “Republicans for Cuomo” effort, had private preliminary discussions last week about the idea of putting together a group to help raise money and coordinate a public campaign designed to chip away at the mayor, sources said.

...

The idea is to capitalize on de Blasio’s weaknesses early enough to make it easier for a challenger to come forward, several said.

Langone, in discussions with several business cronies, offered to immediately pony up a significant amount of money toward the effort if the others do the same, one insider said.


Besides Langone, who did not return a call for comment, others mentioned as potentially getting involved in the effort are billionaire Paul Singer, a big-time Republican donor who helped Cuomo in the effort to legalize gay marriage in 2011, and Tudor Investment Corp. founder Paul Tudor Jones.

Several hedge-fund backers of the pro-charter school movement — which has had close ties to Cuomo — like Dan Loeb have also been mentioned as possibly being part of the effort. Singer, Jones and Loeb could not be reached for comment.

I'll remind readers that when Eva Moskowitz was at odds with Bill de Blasio over the DOE's rejection of three Success Academy co-locations, it was Andrew Cuomo himself who suggested to Moskowitz she hold a big Albany rally that he would speak at in order to weaken de Blasio.

Considering the ties the names mentioned in the Lovett column have to Cuomo, it's reasonable to think Cuomo's got a hand in this latest effort as well.

Make no mistake, the charter school shills want City Hall back 100% in their corner and they're going to do everything they can to ensure that happens.

Looks like that may be happening with Cuomo's help.

Cuomo's Offended By Topless Women In Times Square

Gov. Cuomo on topless women in Times Square: "I believe this activity is illegal. … I think it has to be stopped." pic.twitter.com/VltmQMvBQp

— Cuomo Watch (@CuomoWatch) August 19, 2015

That was Governor Cumo today, announcing on NY1  his opposition to topless women in Times Square after Mayor de Blasio had already announced his opposition to the topless women there.

This was another example of Cuomo trying to stick it to de Blasio, since Cuomo got to claim that the topless women - most of whom are painted with the American flag, btw (very patriotic - who could be against the flag?) - are bringing back the "bad old days" in New York.

Now I dunno about you, but I'm old enough to remember the "bad old days" in New York and while I'd rather not have to run a gauntlet of topless women and costumed characters on Broadway trying to get tourists to take photos with them, I gotta say, this is NOTHING like the bad old days in New York.

So it stuck in my craw when I heard this b.s. statement out of Cuomo today, even more so after CuomoWatch retweeted the infamous "Wandering Eyes" photo of the younger Andy.

More hypocrisy from Governor Andrew Cuomo.

Maybe Cuomo is offended by the topless women because he's afraid they will distract from other things?

@perdidostschool @MercyMercyf @NYGovCuomo Distracts him from focusing on corruption?

— Cuomo Watch (@CuomoWatch) August 19, 2015

Yeah, that must be it.

Scott Stringer Feels Very Safe In Andrew Cuomo's Strong Arms

Love this quote from City Comptroller Scott Stringer, sucking up to Andrew Cuomo:

Gov. Andrew Cuomo over the weekend received some warm words from New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer.

Later today, he will be attending a roundtable discussion with U.S. Rep. Hakeem Jeffries.

Both Stringer and Jeffries just happen to be potential mayoral candidates and rivals to the incumbent, Bill de Blasio.

Stringer on Sunday singled out Cuomo for praise during an event hosted by Sen. Adriano Espaillat.

“Governor, it’s been so good having you in New York City, protecting all of us,” Stringer said.

Oh thank you, Governor, I just feel so safe knowing that you superseded incompetent Mayor de Blasio in the current health crisis facing the city

Just like when you closed the subway for the snowmaggedon that wasn't without telling incompetent Mayor de Blasio and superseded incompetent Mayor de Blasio on the Ebola crisis even though incompetent Mayor de Blasio, you know, was handling it the right way without trying to spew FEAR across the city.

I get it - de Blasio's bleeding in the water, so the sharks are circling.

But Stringer's suck-up to Cuomo is extra nauseating for it's, well, nauseatingness.

Come on, man, can't you suck up to Cuomo without sounding freaking pathetic?

The NY Post's Relentless Campaign To Take Out De Blasio

The criminals/hackers who work at the NY Post scour the city daily for "quality of life" stories that can be used to politically drub Bill de Blasio as a weak, liberal mayor who has brought back the "Bad Old Days."

There are real stories that should be covered, of course, and are concerning - like the one about the 13 people shot at the house party last night.

But then there are the stories that they highlight because de Blasio is mayor and they want to make him look bad in order to weaken him and make it more likely he is seriously challenged for re-election.

Take this one about a mugging in Central Park:

A violent beggar choked a West Side man into unconsciousness in Central Park’s Ramble in a hellish mugging that underscores the famed park’s skyrocketing robbery stats.

“If you scream I’ll kill you,” were the last words the 53-year-old victim heard Thursday night as the fiend’s arm tightened around his throat and he collapsed to the ground, cops said.

Upon regaining consciousness about half an hour later, the victim, of West 57th Street, found that his wallet was gone.

His backpack, which held glasses, keys, gift cards, jewelry and cash, was also gone, cops said.

News of the brutal mugging had park-goers on edge Saturday.

“He could have died — that’s awful,” said Martin Ovalle, 38, who runs in the park at night and takes his wife and two young daughters to the Ramble on weekends.

“We are seeing a lot more now than in the past,” Ovalle agreed.

Indeed we are!

The "crime wave" in Central Park has seen crime increase from 10 incidents last year through July to 20 this year - a 50% increase!

From 10 to 20.

Notice too the hyperbole in the writing, "a violent beggar" - a "fiend" - "choked a man into unconsciousness" in a "hellish mugging" that underscores the park's "skyrocketing robbery stats."

From 10 to 20.

How many millions of people visited the park in the first seven months of the year?

There were 20 incidents, a uptick from last year's 10.

AM NY reports the following about a quality of life story in de Blasio's New York that appears to be politically motivated:

"Bathtub of a Bum"

That's how CBS2 political reporter Marcia Kramer described Columbus Circle yesterday, after publishing exclusive pictures of a shirtless and possibly homeless man lathering up in the fountain. She also published video of the same man lounging at the entrance to Central Park, bare-chested, scratching his head and perhaps wondering how the squeegee business would be in the neighborhood.

"At least he's bathing," said one Twitter user, but the quality-of-life offense was no laughing matter to Kramer, who brought the issue to Mayor de Blasio's attention at a press conference.

De Blasio tersely said that the city was paying attention to quality-of-life offenses, and NYPD commissioner Bill Bratton noted the expansion of a pilot program training up to 10,000 officers to deal with the homeless and the emotionally disturbed. The Mayor's wife, Chirlane McCray, is also heading up a mental health initiative with an emphasis on the city's most needy citizens-roadmap to come during the fall (originally, it was planned to be unveiled this summer).

De Blasio's blues.

The rub-a-dub-dub scandal is no laughing matter for de Blasio.

A small uptick in violent crime in the recent months and a campaign by one of the city's newspapers to chronicle some incidents of . . . shall we say public exposure, paired with a City Council plan to rethink the enforcement of some quality-of life offenses has created the impression of a city backsliding through liberal boneheadedness into the tough-city days gone by.

De Blasio knows that botched snowstorms and lack of public safety are a good way to become a one-term mayor.

The back story (there always is one in Gotham)

The pictures of the still unidentified man cleaning himself under Columbus' watchful gaze, it's important to note, were not taken by some random concerned citizen, but a media relations professional named Ken Frydman, who served as Rudy Giuliani's spokesman and director of media relations during Giuliani's first successful campaign for mayor.

Frydman is recycling some arguments from his old boss's heyday about a dangerous city where squeegee men run wild.

Perhaps the bather, if he really is homeless, can use help or shelter.  A concerned citizen can always call 311 to get help for a homeless person. The man probably doesn't mean to be the symbol of a pandemic.

Also, it's feels like a gazillion degrees out. Maybe he just needed to cool down.

Yeah, the video made it's way to Kramer from Giuliani's PR guy, then Kramer dutifully ran with it so that it becomes the emblem of the "NYC Unraveling" narrative.

Don't kid yourself, there's a concerted effort going on to undermine de Blasio and bring back the narrative of the "Bad Old Days," as if these kinds of incidents didn't happen under Bloomberg.

Hell, anybody remember that Sunday morning a few years ago when a motorcycle gang (including an undercover cop) terrorized a couple on the West Side Highway?

Let me refresh your memories:




The full video taken by one of the motorcycle thugs is here, but it's been disabled for embedding.

Let us imagine this incident happened during de Blasio's term - how would the Post cover it?

As another "De Blasio Returns Us To Bad Old Days" story - a gang of 50+ motorcycle thugs takes over the West Side Highway, surrounds a man and his family in a threatening way, then chases him for a couple of miles before pulling him out of his SUV and savagely beating him on the street in front of his wife and child.

The family called for help "four times" to 911 but no police arrived to help - although one undercover cop with the motorcycle gang did take part in the beat down.

How awful!

Except this story happened during Bloomberg's term as mayor, so the criminals and hacks at the Post never connected it to a larger narrative of the "City Unraveling!" that they connect every crime and quality of life story to now.

Is the increase in shootings in the city a cause for concern?

Sure and de Blasio had better be concerned and dealing with the issue or he's going to be a one term mayor.

But other crime stats remain down, despite the Post's best efforts to turn the city back into the Dinkins Years when a couple of thousand people were murdered.

And it's not like high profile crime didn't occur during Bloomberg's term - the incidents just didn't get connected to a larger narrative meant to destroy him politically as they do now under de Blasio.

As for the quality of life issues like people defecating on the street, the truth is, the city was gross during the Bloomberg Years and it remains so now during the de Blasio Years.

Or did I miss something and you could eat off the pedestrian plazas Mayor Mike stuck everywhere in Manhattan?

De Blasio Returns Fire On Cuomo

Governor Cuomo criticized Mayor de Blasio in a thinly disguised but anonymous interview with Ken Lovett last week.

Today, Bill de Blasio returned fire - only unlike Cuomo, he did it without the anonymity jive:

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio blasted Gov. Andrew Cuomo in an exclusive interview with NY1’s Errol Louis and took the governor to task for being consumed with “transactional” politics.

“What I found was he engaged in his own sense of strategies, his own political machinations and what we’ve often seen is if someone disagrees with him openly, some kind of revenge or vendetta follows,” de Blasio said of the governor.

The broadsides against Cuomo are the culmination of an increasingly tenuous relationship between the state’s top elected official and the more liberal Democrat who was elected with a wave of progressive support in the city.

...

In the interview, de Blasio knocked Cuomo for working to closely with Republican-led Senate at the expense of the Assembly, which is dominated by Democrats from New York City.

“I don’t believe the Assembly had a real working partner in the governor or the Senate in terms of getting things done for the people of this city and in many cases the people of this state,” de Blasio said.

In one stinging rejoinder during the interview, de Blasio took aim at the Cuomo administration’s habit of conducting background briefings and providing anonymous jabs at the mayor and his policies.

“And I want to hasten to say there was some interesting back and forth last week and some unnamed sources well-placed in the Cuomo administration had a few things to say. I’m here in front of you on record saying what I believe,” he said.

Good for de Blasio to finally come out and call Cuomo what he is - a transactional politician interested only in his own power and career, a vindictive manipulative scumbag and a coward for his pattern of criticizing others anonymously through background interviews and anonymous jabs.

Alas, all this was apparent last year when de Blasio was pushing Working Families Party to support Cuomo.

I understand at the time de Blasio thought he was counting up some chits that could be cashed later with Cuomo - but as many of us pointed out at the time, Cuomo is a liar and his word is worthless.

That immediately became apparent when Cuomo began wrangling out of the promises he made to WFP in exchange for their ballot nod almost immediately after he made the hostage video for them.

Still, nice to see de Blasio come out firing publicly now, and unlike Cuomo, put his name to it.

Cuomo is sufficiently weakened at this point that de Blasio sees no more reason to make believe like his "friend" Cuomo is on the same side as him or his fellow Democrats.

And this will have repercussions not only for de Blasio, who clearly will get increased hostility from Cuomo from now on (get ready to be treated like a teacher, Mr. Mayor!), but for Cuomo too:

.@gracerauh @GloriaPazmino mayor crossing a line that is hard 2 imagine retreating from. will more Dems feel emboldened to attack Cuomo now?

— Azi (@Azi) June 30, 2015

Dunno if Cuomo still harbors delusions about running as a Democrat in a future presidential race, but between the tenant activists and now de Blasio publicly calling him a Republican, that delusion ought to be put to rest for good.

Big Motivation For Cuomo During Legislative Session Was To Screw De Blasio

From Fred Dicker's NY Post column today:

Cuomo, sources in both parties said, was motivated by a desire to deny credit to de Blasio on housing (by rejecting the 421-a construction incentive proposal) and education policy (by granting him a mere one year extension of mayoral control of the schools) as well as by a commitment to some of his big-money contributors who favored aid to private schools.

Imagine that one of the primary motivations for the governor of the State of New York was to ensure that the mayor of New York City had his political agenda shunted aside, not because the governor was necessarily opposed to that agenda but simply because he wanted to deny the mayor credit.

What damage was done to Andrew Cuomo as a child that he continues to act like a petulant brat and bully throughout his adult life?

I wrote this earlier today, but it bears repeating:

It says an awful lot about Andrew Cuomo, alpha male, that a primary motivation in policy-making is remaining top dog.

Cuomo Teamed Up With Republicans Against Democrats On Rent Regulations, Charter School Policy, Money For Private Schools

Fred Dicker in the Post:

Despite public claims to the contrary, Gov. Cuomo worked behind-the-scenes with the Republican-led Senate to defeat Assembly Democrats on such key “progressive” initiatives as tenant rights and a minimum-wage hike, knowledgeable insiders have told The Post.

Cuomo, the de facto head of the state Democratic Party, defeated a range of Democrat-sponsored proposals supposedly on his agenda through a “two-against-one” strategy in which he allied with Senate Majority Leader John Flanagan (R-Suffolk) against Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie (D-Bronx), leaving Heastie no choice but to fold, the sources said.

“Throughout the negotiations, there was never any real difference between the positions of Cuomo and Flanagan. It was two against one with Cuomo pulling Flanagan’s strings to corner Heastie,” said a source with direct knowledge of the secret end-of-session deal-making.

The source said Cuomo and the Senate GOP also worked to force Heastie to accept an expansion of charter schools for New York City and additional state aid to parochial schools, proposals Heastie and the Assembly’s other leaders repeatedly opposed.

“Not that there should have been, but if there was any doubt that Senate Republicans are nothing but a tool of Cuomo to use against his fellow Democrats, there isn’t anymore,’’ the source complained.

This isn't a surprise - anyone watching closely over the past few years knew this was what Cuomo was doing and what he was going to do in the final days of the legislative session.

But it's good to get this in print, even if it's anonymously sourced in Fred Dicker's column.

I'll have more on this story later because Dicker reports that one of Cuomo's primary motivations to work with Republicans against Democrats was to screw de Blasio - just cuz', you know?

Says an awful lot about Andrew Cuomo, alpha male, that a primary motivation in policy-making is remaining top dog.

In any case, if Cuomo still harbors any national political ambitions as a Democrat, his work with Republicans against his fellow Democrats, becoming more and more naked as his governorship goes on, ought to dispel them.

He literally now is seen as "New York's Republican governor," as one tenant activist put it last week after Cuomo screwed NYC residents by siding with Senate Republicans over Assembly Dems on rent regulation.

Working Families Party Sellouts Serve Up Some Self-Serving Jive

From the "Oh, please!" file:

At the time of its annual gala last year, the Working Families Party was agonizing over whether to deny Governor Andrew Cuomo its ballot line.

Ultimately the party endorsed him. But at this year's gala, members sounded regretful.

"This unsavory alliance between our governor and a Senate Republican conference propped up by real estate and hedge fund billionaires must be broken," said W.F.P. president Bill Lipton during his remarks. "We will hold the governor accountable for the promises he made last year. We have not forgotten those hard-won commitments."

"We made a decision [to endorse him] at the time because we believed that it was more important to flip the State Senate," he elaborated later to a few reporters. "We fell short, the governor did not do what we hoped—what he said—he was going to do to help us. He's admitted that. Obviously we're deeply disappointed and frustrated with that. I think us going forward, we don't forget these things. We're committed next year to actually flipping the Senate and picking up that agenda right where it left and pressuring the governor to work with us."

One of the "promises" WFP extracted from Cuomo in return for the WFP ballot nod was that Cuomo would work toward flipping the state Senate to Democrats.

It was clear even as Cuomo was making that promise that he had no intention of keeping it and did not want Republicans to lose control of the state Senate.

Cuomo worked closely with Senate Republicans during his first term on many of his proposals, including the SAFE Act, the property tax cap, and education reforms.

There was little doubt he wanted the Senate to remain in the hands of the GOP and would do little or nothing to fulfill his promise to WFP and de Blasio (who helped seal the deal between Cuomo and WFP.)

And of course that is exactly how things played out - Cuomo did nothing to help Dems, the GOP won the Senate outright (though the sellout Dems in the IDC continued to caucus with the GOP) and Cuomo continued to work very closely with Senate Republicans this legislative session - especially on rent regulation and education reform.

Lipton and the rest of the WFP elders (and their union funders who pushed for the Cuomo nod) are full of shit when they criticize Cuomo for selling out their interests.

It was clear this would happen last year when WFP was agonizing over whether to endorse Cuomo or not and their union funders were threatening the party with dissolution if they didn't.

If they wanted to stop Cuomo from screwing them, they should have done damage to him last May by putting Zephyr Teachout on their ballot and forcing Cuomo to take on both a GOP challenger and a challenger from the left in the general election in November.

So spare me when I hear the WFP sellouts talk about holding Cuomo accountable for the promises he made to them and broke.

It's self-serving bullshit from the WFP sellouts, nothing more, and Cuomo's laughing at it and them.

What Was Really Behind The Working Families Party Deal With The Devil/Cuomo Last Year

Blake Zeff at Capital NY has an excellent analysis of the Cuomo/deBlasio/Working Families party deal a year later.

Zeff writes that WFP leaders are now rationalizing Cuomo's sticking them in the back and reneging on the promises he made to gain their ballot nod last year and avoid a third party challenge in the general election.

They're giving all sorts of reasons for why they endorsed him, but the real reason that they made the deal was this:

The party was concerned that if it did not back the governor, he would try to gut their organization. One method would be to empower a new party and convince several key union affiliates of W.F.P.—who had good relationships with the governor and depended on him for key contracts and wages—to join this new party instead. This would deplete W.F.P. of money and ground troops. And also leave its composition disconcertingly white and homogenous.  

They also feared what the toll it would take on the party during the campaign (and likely after the campaign too, given Cuomo’s reputation for vindictiveness) to have to deal with a governor's office in permanent war-room mode.

In the end, they saw the deal as a necessity, and hoped Cuomo’s promises would at least allow them to argue after the fact that they had not given away their endorsement for free.

You do a deal with the devil, you get burnt.

WFP and Bill de Blasio both got burnt.

Cuomo reneged on his promises quicker than you can say Moreland.

DeBlasio Finally Says Screw Cuomo

From the "You've Learned This Now?" file:

Mayor Bill de Blasio, who has engaged in unprecedented criticism of Governor Andrew Cuomo in recent days, suggested for the first time Sunday that he regrets working to shore up liberal support for his putative ally in the governor's race last year.

"I'm just surprised the governor is acting this way," de Blasio told reporters after an appearance at the "Celebrate Israel" parade, when asked whether he regrets backing the governor a year ago, given their recent fight over how to reform the 421-a tax break for city development projects.

"I endorsed him," said de Blasio, who served under Cuomo in the Clinton administration and has long called the governor an ally. "I worked very hard for him. I worked very hard to convince my fellow progressives that they could trust what he said. And I would think he would want to be a partner in this and I don't have any reasonable explanation for you why he's standing in the way of a reform plan that would protect the taxpayers and create a lot more affordable housing.

"I tried talking to him about it—it's not like he offered an alternative; it's not like he had a specific vision of what would be better. So I can't explain to you why he's acting the way he's acting but it sure is not based on the facts or the substance."

Too bad DeBlasio didn't realize Cuomo was going to screw him before he helped broker the Working Families Party deal (which Cuomo promptly broke) and made the Hochul calls.

I'd like to say "Nobody Could Have Known This Would Happen!" except - well...

GOP Looks To Tap Eva Moskowitz To Run In 2017

From the Wall Street Journal:

New York City Republicans have quietly begun laying the groundwork to recruit a candidate to challenge Mayor Bill de Blasio in 2017, with some promoting charter-school executive Eva Moskowitz.

A lifelong Democrat and former City Council member, Ms. Moskowitz said she was contemplating a mayoral bid—but expected to compete in the Democratic primary if she did run.

“I have concerns about the direction of the city,” said Ms. Moskowitz, who added that she thought Mr. de Blasio could be vulnerable. “The power of incumbency is always great, but it was a pretty rocky start.”

One problem for Moskowitz and the GOP - some on their team have been complimentary of de Blasio:

While GOP officials have railed publicly about Mr. de Blasio’s performance, Messrs. Catsimatidis and Lhota have been largely laudatory. That complicates the work of the party.

“He hasn’t done a bad job,” Mr. Catsimatidis said. “I’m hoping Bill de Blasio does a great job so nobody has to run against him.”

The takeaway - unless there's a major crisis or things turn very, very bad in the city, a GOP candidate will have a lot of difficulty taking out de Blasio:

George Arzt, a longtime Democratic consultant, said, “The only person who would be viable is a Bloomberg-type businessman with high ID, high recognition and a lot of money.”

“They’re not many people around who are willing to do that and who are willing to leave the shadows of corporate life to become a piñata for the press,” said Mr. Arzt, adding that history shows a challenger would need a crisis to oust an incumbent Democrat from City Hall.

“When times are bad in the city, Republicans have been able to win against the registration odds,” said Jake Menges, a GOP consultant. “An articulate, charismatic, well-known entity in philanthropy, in the financial services industry and is a well financed, self-funded candidate has a real shot.”

I dunno about you, but Moskowitz (who says she has no plans to switch parties to the GOP anyway) doesn't fit the bill of  "an articulate, charismatic, well-known entity in philanthropy, in the financial services industry who is a well financed, self-funded candidate."

I think Eva will preen in the press about running, but ultimately will not run.

She's making too much money and gets to avoid a whole lot of scrutiny where she is now.

If she decides to run for mayor, there will be a lot of attention on Success Academies, the financial record, the academic record, the attrition record that she won't be able to make go away with a lawsuit or some PR.

I don't think Moskowitz wants that.

Instead I think the charter industry will continue to bypass City Hall and push their preferred policies up in Albany where de Blasio can do nothing about them and look for someone more charter-friendly than Moskowitz who can challenge BdB in 2017.

But my bet is, Eva Moskowitz stays in the private sector pulling in $500,000+ a year and expanding her charter empire.

De Blasio Learns From His Charter School Debacle

The NY Times:

Mayor Bill de Blasio is ramping up a political campaign to promote his housing and education priorities, with an eye toward amassing a financial war chest that can compete with well-funded opponents.

Mr. de Blasio and his fund-raising team have quietly solicited large contributions in recent weeks from donors in the mayor’s inner circle, according to three people who requested anonymity to describe moves by the administration that were not yet intended to be public.

The mayor’s aim, according to these people, is to create an advertising and social media campaign that would buttress his top policy goals, such as securing more state funding for New York City public schools and advancing his affordable housing plan in neighborhoods that are wary of gentrification.

Donors are being asked to contribute to a nonprofit fund, the Campaign for One New York, that is operated by political consultants with close ties to Mr. de Blasio. The fund can accept donations that are significantly larger than those allowed within New York City’s strict campaign finance system. Last year, when the fund was also known as UPKNYC, it spent more than $2 million, mostly to promote the mayor’s signature issue of universal prekindergarten.

This year’s campaign is still in the planning stages, with many details still to be determined. But ideas on how the fund could complement City Hall’s work have circulated among Mr. de Blasio and his aides for months, according to one of the people with knowledge of the mayor’s discussions.

One motivation for the effort, the person said, is to avoid a repeat of one of Mr. de Blasio’s low points from last year, when City Hall was blindsided by charter school advocates who ran a $5 million advertising blitz attacking the mayor.

Mr. de Blasio has since conceded that his administration was caught flat-footed. The new fund-raising effort, if successful, would potentially generate millions of dollars that the mayor and his team could use to quickly respond to critics, or to jump-start their own public relations efforts.

If you're a reader of the blog, you know how much time and space I spent screaming about de Blasio's piss-poor response to the charter supporter assault last year.

They ran millions in ads slamming de Blasio, slamming public schools, and promoting charters with nary a pushback from de Blasio or his erstwhile allies (like the UFT.)

While I understand some people will see this as politics as usual, with de Blasio"amassing a financial war chest" from outside supporters to take on opponents, it's unfortunately absolutely necessary when you have the charter school operators and supporters out there ready to drop millions on a moment's notice and run attack ads 24/7.

From my perspective, de Blasio is far from perfect as mayor and there are a whole host of things I wish he would have changed in the school system already.

That said, the specter of an Eva Moskowitz-supported, hedge fundie-backed primary opponent or GOP opponent against de Blasio looms large for 2017, so it makes practical sense for de Blasio to be "amassing a financial war chest" now to handle that potentiality.

Don't think Eva Moskowitz and her backers weren't licking their lips thinking about a weakened de Blasio limping into 2017.

De Blasio's putting together a sophisticated pushback operation now will help with that problem.

Eva Moskowitz, Governor Cuomo Share Talking Points On Breaking The Public School "Monopoly"

Eliza Shapiro at Capital NY, writing about Eva Moskowitz's talk at the American Enterprise Institute touting the "success" of Success Academy:

Borrowing a line from Cuomo, Moskowitz critiqued the "monopoly of public education that clearly hasn't worked well."

Cuomo and Moakowitz don't really try and hide their coordination much, do they?

The NY Times reported that last spring, when Eva was battling over co-locations with de Blasio, Cuomo coordinated a rally with her:

It was a frigid February day in Albany, and leaders of New York City’s charter school movement were anxious. They had gone to the capital to court lawmakers, but despite a boisterous showing by parents, there seemed to be little clarity about the future of their schools.

Then, as they were preparing to head home, an intermediary called with a message: Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo wanted to meet.

To their surprise, Mr. Cuomo offered them 45 minutes of his time, in a private conference room. He told them he shared their concern about Mayor Bill de Blasio’s ambivalence toward charter schools and offered to help, according to a person who attended but did not want to be identified as having compromised the privacy of the meeting.

In the days that followed, the governor’s interest seemed to intensify. He instructed charter advocates to organize a large rally in Albany, the person said. The advocates delivered, bringing thousands of parents and students, many of them black, Hispanic, and from low-income communities, to the capital in early March, and eclipsing a pivotal rally for Mr. de Blasio taking place at virtually the same time.

The moment proved to be a turning point, laying the groundwork for a deal reached last weekend that gave New York City charter schools some of the most sweeping protections in the nation, including a right to space inside public buildings. And interviews with state and city officials as well as education leaders make it clear that far from being a mere cheerleader, the governor was a potent force at every turn, seizing on missteps by the mayor, a fellow Democrat, and driving legislation from start to finish.

Mr. Cuomo’s office declined on Wednesday to comment on his role.

As the governor worked to solidify support in Albany, his efforts were amplified by an aggressive public relations and lobbying effort financed by a group of charter school backers from the worlds of hedge funds and Wall Street, some of whom have also poured substantial sums into Mr. Cuomo’s campaign (he is up for re-election this fall). The push included a campaign-style advertising blitz that cost more than $5 million and attacked Mr. de Blasio for denying space to three charter schools.

And you can see with the rhetoric coming from Cuomo and Moskowitz that they're coordinating again as the battle over mayoral control and the charter cap looms.

It won't be long before the anti-public school, pro-charter ads start playing 24/7, kicking the official "Break The Public School Monopoly" campaign off in earnest.

Eva Moskowitz Plays Victim, Says Bill De Blasio Is Trying To "Kill Us"

From Eliza Shapiro at Capital NY:

Success Academy C.E.O. Eva Moskowitz said Tuesday she hopes to have 100 schools in her New York City charter school network within the next 10 years, and predicted another battle with the de Blasio administration over school space.

"We think it would be a contribution to get to 100 schools" Moskowitz said during an event called "Exploring the Success of Success Academy" hosted by the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C.

...

The Success network was recently awarded an additional 14 schools by the SUNY Charter Institute. That will bring the number of Success charters to 46 by 2016, with an estimated enrollment of over 36,000 students with a $165 million cost to the city by 2020.

But Moskowitz predicted another conflict over space with the de Blasio administration for those new schools.

"We are waiting to hear from the de Blasio administration about whether they are going to give us space," she said. "Most likely I won't be able to open those schools," due to what she called "pure politics."

Moskowitz criticized the mayor and his ill-fated decision to reverse co-locations for three of Moskowitz's schools earlier this year, which led to an all-out battle between New York's influential, well-financed charter school advocates and the administration.

Although the charter sector ultimately gained an advocate in Governor Andrew Cuomo and successfully lobbied for a sweeping pro-charter law passed during the last legislative session, Moskowitz said she refers to this spring as "the dark period."

Moskowitz criticized de Blasio for attempting to "throw out" three high-performing charters while "managing a sea of schools that have been failing." It was clear who Moskowitz was referring to when she said she wakes up everyday paranoid because "people are trying to kill us."

Last year Moskowitz ate de Blasio for lunch, launching five million dollars in anti-de Blasio ads, coordinating pro-charter rallies with Governor Cuomo, and eventually getting exactly what she wanted when Cuomo forced NYC to either co-locate all future charters or pick up their rent tab.

She played "victim" and she continues to play "victim" now by claiming de Blasio wants to "kill us."

That's what she does best - play victim, bask in the media glow, rally the politicians to her cause, and suck up the Wall Street contributions that roll in as a result.

When you look back at last spring, the period which Moskowitz calls her "dark period," de Blasio was the one who almost got "killed."

His polls numbers dropped after the millions in anti-de Blasio ads Eva and her charter supporters ran and Cuomo managed to cut part of de Blasio's mayoral control of schools.

Rumor has it charter advocates are looking for more of de Blasio's power to be chopped this legislative session when the mayoral control law comes back up for renewal (apparently mayoral control is only important to maintain when the mayor is pro-charter, pro-ed deform.)

De Blasio has gotten much savvier since the spring in how he handles crises - he was very calm and collected with the Ebola case and has so far managed to navigate the minefield that is the Garner case, so here's hoping he handles whatever showdown is coming with Eva and the charter operators better than he did last spring when he got rolled.

Alas, if the UFT, NYSUT and other stakeholders in the public schools don't come to his defense when the battle is joined, I don't see de Blasio putting up much of a fight against Moskowitz.

Not after they abandoned him last spring in the battle against Moskowitz and Cuomo.

In any case, the self-pitying act Eva plays is getting old considering how powerful she is, how wealthy her backers are, how much influence she has in Albany.

But she keeps playing the role over and over and over - and it keeps working.

Capital NY: King, Flanagan Say No Immediate Need To Raise Charter Cap

This is interesting, coming as it does after comments by Regents Chancellor Tisch that she wants an "aggressive" expansion of charter schools in the state:

ALBANY—Two of the state’s top education leaders say there isn’t an urgent need to raise or eliminate the state’s cap on charter schools since a third of the available charters under the limit have not yet been awarded.

Education commissioner John King and State Senator John Flanagan, a Long Island Republican who chairs the chamber’s education committee, told Capital in separate interviews that they expect policymakers to discuss the charter cap during the coming legislative session, but don’t think immediate action is necessary.

Meanwhile, even as charter groups prepare for an intense push this session for action on the cap, New York City mayor Bill de Blasio hardened his opposition to raising it, arguing during an interview Wednesday that devoting more resources to fixing problems in traditional public schools is more important than allowing an "ever-increasing number of charters."

I have little doubt King wants more charters and I'm a little surprised he didn't echo Tisch's "aggressive" stance from earlier in the week.

Same goes for Flanagan.

Perhaps they're looking to moderate the rhetoric a little bit, so as not to make it look like the whole process is rigged when the inevitable cap increase comes.

As for de Blasio, it's good to hear him oppose a cap increase again and to indicate that he is going to lay down some political capital in the fight.

Will the AFT, UFT and NYSUT back him up or will they be helping their pro-charter school pal Andy Cuomo instead by staying on the sidelines when the showdown over the cap comes?

What Happened To Mayoral Control Of NYC Schools?

Funny how when a pro-school privatization mayor was in power in NYC, the corporatists were all in favor of mayoral control of NYC schools, but now that a mayor less aligned with the privatization movement is in power, the corporatists are doing everything they can to undercut it.

First the charter school criminals/entrepreneurs got Governor Cuomo, their favored donation target, to force NYC to either find space for every charter school in a NYC school building or pay rent for said charter school in private space.

So far, the city is on the hook for a few million dollars for two charters owned by charter school criminal Eva Moskowitz, but that tab will rise over the next few years as more and more charters spring up.

With charter school criminals looking to have the charter cap completely eliminated in the next legislative session, it is quite possible we will see charters grow cancerously all across the city and stamp out what is left of the public school system.

Now we have Regents Chancellor Tisch further undercutting mayoral control by issuing a threat to close 94 city schools by spring if they do not show improvement - even though de Blasio has only been in power for less than a year and his improvement plan just was announced this month.

That threat from Tisch is clearly meant to humiliate the mayor and undercut his power as steward of the city school system.

If the mayor no longer has the power to place or not place schools in his own city, no longer has the power to keep schools open if the state wants to close them, then mayoral control has been effectively destroyed by the state.

It will be interesting to see if de Blasio stands up to the state in this showdown.

He tried standing up to the charter school criminals last spring in the Eva/de Blasio Showdown, but found not one ally willing to back him in the fight as the charter school criminals spent $5 million in ads to vilify him on TV.

Even the UFT was MIA during that time.

Unless de Blasio is publicly backed by supporters of the public school system - including the unions - I'd say the chances of him standing up to the state are not very good.

After the beating he took over the Eva Showdown, he would be crazy to do otherwise.

So, UFT and AFT, where are you now that your beloved mayoral control is under attack?

Cuomo Sticks The Shiv Into De Blasio Before Election Day

Last spring, Governor Andrew Cuomo beat Mayor Bill de Blasio badly in fights over charter school co-locations and tax increases on wealthy New Yorkers to pay for NYC's universal pre-K plan.

De Blasio had been in a showdown with charter school entrepreneur Eva Moskowitz over co-locations of three of her schools when Cuomo helped co-ordinate a pro-charter rally in Albany and pushed through new rules in the state budget that forced New York City (and only New York City) to either find space for all charter schools or pay rent for space in privately-owned buildings.

Moskowitz and her charter school supporters are major donors to Cuomo and while the governor and the mayor were supposed to be friends going back to the days when they were both in the Clinton administration, Cuomo didn't think twice about screwing his old friend over for his wealthy charter school friends.

Cuomo also rolled de Blasio over the mayor's push for a tax on the wealthy to pay for universal pre-K in New York City.  The governor provided state money for de Blasio's pre-K plan (though not as much as the tax plan would have raised) but made sure that money did not come from increased taxes on wealthy people, many of whom are also Cuomo donors.

Again Cuomo didn't think twice about sticking it to old friend de Blasio and making sure his donors got what they wanted - no new taxes.

Cuomo was riding high after his twin showdowns with de Blasio during the budget negotiations, but that ride didn't last for long.

A challenge from the left flank of his party arose in the figure of Fordham professor Zephyr Teachout late in the spring.

Teachout attempted to get the Working Families Party ballot line during the WFP convention last May and present Cuomo with a problem for the general election - he would have had two opponents to take on, one from the right in GOP candidate Rob Astorino, one from the left in Zephry Teachout.

A Sienna poll showed Cuomo would have trouble breaking 50% if a challenge from the left emerged for the general election, so he and his campaign pulled out all the stops to make sure Teachout didn't get the ballot line.

First they had their union friends, major supporters of WFP, threaten the party with dissolution if the ballot line for the general election was given to Teachout.

Then Cuomo had his old friend Bill de Blasio intervene with the party faithful and negotiate an agreement between the governor and the party in which Cuomo would receive the ballot line in return for agreeing to work for a Democratic takeover of the State Senate.

De Blasio was supposed to be riding high after this intervention, since Cuomo had needed his help to secure the WFP line, but I thought at the time de Blasio was acting the fool for helping his old friend Andrew Cuomo in the negotiations.

On May 30, I wrote:

Is de Blasio suffering from Stockholm Syndrome or did he get something in return for mediating negotiations between Cuomo and WFP?

If you remember, it was just a short while ago that Cuomo took every opportunity to stick it to de Blasio over not just charter schools but issue after issue.

Anthony Weiner even noted how putzy Cuomo was to de Blasio in a DN piece.

Now de Blasio helps save the day for Sheriff Andy.

My guess is, seconds after the election is over, Cuomo starts sticking it to de Blasio and the unions again.

Hard to know if this is Stockholm Syndrome, stupidity or a sell-out, but whatever the hell it is, it sucks.

De Blasio's aid for Cuomo didn't stop in May at the Working Families Party convnetion.

Polls showed late in the summer that Cuomo's pro-gun, anti-abortion running mate, Kathy Hochul, could lose her primary challenge to Teachout's running mate, Tim Wu.

Cuomo again reached out to de Blasio and had the mayor (along with union buddy Randi Weingarten) issue robocalls throughout the city in support of  the"liberal" Hochul.

After the election, Wu said that internal campaign polling showed him with the momentum going into the primary, but the de Blasio robocalls essentially stopped that momentum cold and Hochul won the race.

In short, Cuomo's running mate won her primary challenge because de Blasio helped her do it.

Again I wrote at the time that de Blasio was a fool for helping Cuomo, that Cuomo wouldn't think twice about screwing his "old friend" - and Ken Lovett and Jennifer Fermino at the Daily News reported the same thing:

“For good or bad, the governor is not a person who views the world as 'I owe you one.' If someone came to him and said, ‘I was there for you and I took care of you — you owe me,’ you don’t get a good reaction,” the insider said.

A second source who has had dealings with de Blasio and Cuomo agrees.

“Andrew appreciates what Bill has done for him. But if he needed to f--k over the mayor tomorrow, he's going to do it. That’s just how he operates.”

Even I thought Cuomo would wait until after the election to "fuck over" de Blasio, but it turns out Cuomo, worried that his GOP challenger Rob Astorino is making inroads over the first reported Ebola case in the city, decided post-Election Day was too late to screw de Blasio over.

So he did it yesterday instead.

On Thursday, Cuomo and de Basio made a joint appearance to reassure city residents after it was reported a doctor who had worked with Ebola patients in West Africa had tested positive for the virus here in the city.

Both Cuomo and de Blasio took pains on Thursday to tamp down hysteria over the incident and assure New Yorkers that the chances of getting infected by Ebola on the subway or in a cab were slim.

That was Thursday.

On Friday Cuomo changed course and suddenly decided hysteria over Ebola was exactly what was needed:

On Thursday night, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo sat beside Mayor Bill de Blasio at Bellevue Hospital Center as they offered soothing words to worried New Yorkers: New York City’s first case of Ebola, they said, was no reason for panic.

Less than 19 hours later, Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat, joined the Republican governor of New Jersey, Chris Christie, and struck a starkly different tone. The governors announced Friday that medical personnel returning to New York after treating Ebola patients in West Africa would be automatically subject to a 21-day quarantine.

The risk, Mr. Cuomo said, was grave. Offering an ominous hypothetical, he raised the precise situation that the mayor and the city’s health commissioner had tried to play down the night before: the danger of Ebola spreading through the subway system.

“In a region like this,” Mr. Cuomo said, “you go out one, two or three times, you ride the subway, you ride a bus, you could affect hundreds and hundreds of people.”

...

Within the city, an unexpected policy shift by Mr. Cuomo on Friday appeared to open up a public divide between the governor and the administration of Mr. de Blasio, a fellow Democrat. The city’s health commissioner, Dr. Mary T. Bassett, was not informed in advance of the Cuomo-Christie mandatory quarantine order and was “furious,” a senior city official who spoke to her said.

A spokeswoman for Mr. Cuomo, Melissa DeRosa, said city officials were not consulted about the quarantine policy because it pertained to airports that are run by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

Mr. Cuomo’s shift came just 11 days before he will be on the ballot seeking a second term, and on a day when his long-shot Republican challenger, Rob Astorino, seized on the city’s Ebola case to assail the governor for not closing the New York airports to travelers from affected West African nations.

As Lovett and Fermino had reported in the Daily News in September, Cuomo wouldn't think twice about having to "fuck over" de Blasio if political expediency necessitated the screw job.

Apparently between Thursday night and Friday morning, political expediency necessitated Cuomo "fuck over" Bill de Blasio on the Ebola crisis.

In the same Times story on the "public rift" between Cuomo and de Blasio over Cuomo's sudden shift in policy, this is said about past health crises:

The partisan divide over how to respond to Ebola stands in stark contrast to previous public health threats over the last decade, including the anthrax attacks after Sept. 11, 2001, the West Nile virus, the avian flu and the tuberculosis outbreaks in the 1980s and 1990s. In those cases, public health officials worked largely in concert with elected ones to maintain calm and disseminate consistent information.

This time around politicians - including Cuomo and Christie, but certainly not limited to these two - are hyping the crisis for political gain.

Caught flat-footed once again by his old pal, Andrew Cuomo, it remains to be seen how de Blasio responds to the pre-election screw job by the governor.

But clearly Cuomo was showing de Blasio up yesterday at his press conference with Christie, big-timing the mayor by not alerting anybody in the de Blasio administration about the change in policy and protocol Cuomo was going to put into place with Christie at the Port Authority airports.

Much of this is de Blasio's own fault, of course.

De Blasio spent much political capital helping Cuomo in the spring with the Working Families Party and in the fall with the Hochul robocalls.

If Cuomo wins re-election with over 50% of the vote, that will happen because Bill de Blasio ensured Cuomo would not have a challenger from the left on the WFP ballot line taking double digits away from Cuomo in the general election.

Now Cuomo pays de Blasio back by sticking the shiv in him less than two weeks before Election Day.

I see two takeaways here:

One, De Blasio was a fool for expending so much political capital to help a "friend" who everybody knew would screw him over at the first opportunity.

And two, Andrew Cuomo is a sociopath, a man with no moral center who will literally do and say anything to promote himself and his career.

Neither of these takeaways are surprises, of course - we knew this stuff long before yesterday.

And indeed, Cuomo had already broken his promise to de Blasio and WFP that he would work for a Democratic takeover of the State Senate.

One thing I am surprised at, however.

I really thought Cuomo would wait until Wednesday November 5th to stick the shiv into de Blasio.

But he shoved the shiv in nearly two weeks earlier - that just shows you how desperate Cuomo is to not only win re-election but run up the score.

Cuomo Breaks Working Families Party Promises

Gee, here's a surprise:

It has been more than four months since the fragile marriage between the governor and the Working Families Party was consummated: The group endorsed Mr. Cuomo, over many of its members’ objections, after he agreed to pursue a long list of liberal goals, as part of a deal that Mr. de Blasio helped broker.

The top priority was an effort to tilt the balance of power in the State Senate, where Republicans currently share leadership with a group of breakaway Democrats.

Less than a month before Election Day, with polls showing some key Senate races leaning in Republicans’ favor, the arrangement with the governor appears increasingly fraught. Despite his pledge to push for Democratic control of the Senate, Mr. Cuomo has at times seemed not to have a strong opinion about the outcome of the November elections.

“You can’t say, ‘Well, I can work well if they elect this party,’ ” he told reporters last month. “They elect a legislature: Democratic, Republican, whatever they elect. I think the job of the governor is to figure out how to make it work.”

Some of the governor’s grudging supporters say he has already faltered on his promise: Mr. Cuomo has not ruled out endorsing a Republican incumbent from Buffalo, Mark J. Grisanti, calling the decision “personally difficult.” Mr. Grisanti, who lost the Republican primary to a right-leaning challenger but is staying in the race as the candidate of the Independence Party, backed the governor’s push to legalize same-sex marriage.

... 

Democrats hoped that with the support of Mr. de Blasio and Mr. Cuomo, they would be able to win enough seats this year to take control of the Senate. But those efforts are not going so well. A promising candidate running on Long Island ended his candidacy in September after his former law firm accused him of fraud, and a series of polls conducted last week offered a bleak outlook in several other contests.

The polls, by Siena College, found three incumbent Democrats trailing Republican challengers by double-digit margins. And in two Republican-controlled districts on Long Island that Democrats had hoped to capture, the polls showed the Republican candidates holding wide leads.

City officials have framed the fate of the State Senate as crucial to their agenda. A shift in the balance of power, they say, could help advance legislation related to the minimum wage, campaign-finance reform and immigration, among other issues.

Cuomo doesn't want any of those things - an increase in the minimum wage, campaign-finance reform, immigration reform - so he doesn't really want a Democratic State Senate.

What he wants is for things to remain the same, with Republicans in control, an Independent Democratic Caucus backing Republicans and the rightward lean of the State Senate remaining as it is.

His book, out soon, says it all:

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo , whose center-right policies have alienated him from much of his party’s progressive base, attacks the “extreme left of the Democratic Party” in his new memoir, according to a report in the New York Times.

While his father Mario Cuomo’s 1984 address at the Democratic National Convention served as a liberal rallying cry, Andrew Cuomo has repeatedly found himself starkly at odds with the liberal wing of the party. Although the governor signed marriage equality and gun safety legislation into law and has staked out a robustly pro-choice position, he has also slashed corporate taxes, capped property taxes, maneuvered to keep his own party from controlling the New York State Senate, lent conditional support to fracking, and earned plaudits from the right-wing National Review for his conservative economic agenda. There’s also the federal probe into Cuomo’s disbanding of his much-heralded anti-corruption commission, which Cuomo had touted as evidence of his commitment to good government.

...

 Given his center-right track record, it’s hardly unsurprising that Cuomo is no fonder of the left than the left is of him. According to the Times – which got its hands on a copy of his new memoir, All Things Possible: Setbacks and Success in Politics and Life – Cuomo rips the “extreme left” in the book, particularly for what he depicts as its hostility to the rich. Leftists, Cuomo writes, “speak of punitively raising taxes on the rich and transferring the money to the poor” and seek to “demonize those who are very wealthy.”

Few things aid Cuomo's helping of the 1% than ensuring the State Senate continues to run as it has.

And so, Cuomo's promises to WFP were worthless.

Again I say, gee, what a surprise.