He’s a power-mad sleaze bucket, but he has kept his state from becoming another California.
He’s a power-mad sleaze bucket, but he has kept his state from becoming another California.
N ew York’s governor, Andrew Cuomo, is a weakened political animal. And, as a conservative, I have mixed feelings about it.
I’m already starting to miss the good old days when Andrew Cuomo was announcing that people like me “have no place in the state of New York” because I’m pro-life or object to his bizarre “SAFE Act,” which placed onerous and hard-to-interpret restrictions on rifles that are almost never involved in serious crimes. One of his former aides, remarking to The New Yorker on Cuomo’s manifest unlikability, said, “He was born for social distancing.” He is a weirdo who seems to have no life beyond politics, evidenced by the fact that he has no residence besides the governor’s mansion. The man wrote a self-congratulatory book about his own leadership even as he was hiding the enormous death toll that his COVID-19 policies wrought on the state. If this is the era of believing women, one must believe that he abuses and creeps out female staffers.
This absolutely power-mad, arrogant, sleaze bucket of a governor deserves to be run out of Albany. He is deservedly detested by New York’s conservatives and any other men and women of goodwill who can see through the befogging cloud of praise that Cuomo has emitted for himself.
At the same time, this absolutely power-mad, arrogant, sleaze bucket of a governor is the only thing preventing New York from becoming the next California.
Cuomo began his reign in New York by immediately closing the state’s massive budget deficit, taming an unruly legislature, and then going on the offensive against big public-sector unions. But when he ran for his third term, in 2018, he sensed potential danger on his left flank, so he made peace with his former enemies.
Cuomo has also seemed to bless a group of Democrats who, for years, effectively seceded from the rest of their party in New York’s Senate. The Independent Democratic Caucus, which grew from four to as many as eight members, maintained that their disagreements with Senate leadership forced them to caucus with Republicans. In exchange for chairmanships, the GOP gained control of the Senate. Cuomo not only benefited from claiming for years to be “bipartisan,” but this arrangement of power really did grant him much more political room for maneuver with a divided legislature.
But if Cuomo’s kiss-and-make-up with unions indicated that he was a little nervous, the new New York budget shows that he is no longer the king of New York. The highest earners in the state will face the highest taxes in the country (a gift to Florida if I’ve ever seen one). The revenue-hungry progressives want to expand vice — by legalizing sports betting. The budget will feature a hilarious attempt to mollify Asian Americans who are suspicious of progressive plans for schooling in the city — by spending $10 million to combat discrimination in their communities.
But the real headline-grabber is the $2 billion fund that seeks to distribute cash to illegal immigrants who must document their illegal status and their lack of work over the past year. Maximum benefits for an individual could reach up to $28,600. If New York’s tax hikes are a gift to Florida, then this is a curse at an already overwhelmed border.
New York was already hemorrhaging residents. And why shouldn’t it? Its economic power center is a global city that remains expensive and that’s been subject to a massive increase in crime. It’s attached to some nice suburbs, but the rest of the state resembles the most rusted-out parts of the Rust Belt and the most opioid-addicted parts in all of New England’s opioid corridor.
The progressive obsession with equity needs to be seen as an intra-party effort at building a coalition between upwardly mobile and downwardly mobile people. It’s the tribute that corporate wokesters pay to the service-industry workers who make their lifestyles possible. California is the most unequal state in the country and, consequently, the most progressive. With Cuomo weakened this way, New York is about to head in the same direction with speed.
And so suddenly, I’m filled with a guarded, resentful appreciation of a governor who hates people like me and openly wishes we weren’t in his state. His governorship was focused on building and completing massive projects such as the huge overhaul of LaGuardia Airport, or the construction of the new Tappan Zee Bridge (only the governor and the road signs call it the Governor Mario M. Cuomo bridge). Besides that, Cuomo seemed to enjoy owning the libs almost as much as conservatives do. I guess it’s a tribute to this bizarre state to think, That son of a bitch was intolerable and deserved to be at Rikers; I’ll miss him when he’s gone.