A teachers’-union rally against billionaire charter-school donors in New York City morphed into an angry screed against New York governor Andrew Cuomo, underscoring the Democrat’s shaky relationship with his liberal base.
Failed New York gubernatorial candidate Zephyr Teachout organized a union-funded meeting in front of NYC’s Tweed Courthouse on Tuesday, ostensibly to present a report on how wealthy charter-school backers are trying to “purchase” power in the state capital through donations to charter-friendly politicians — an effort she labels “legal corruption.”
But Teachout — who lost a primary challenge from the left to Cuomo earlier this year – clearly harbored some bad blood for her former opponent. “This is like, the new form of hedge-fund machine politics,” she told the crowd. “And Cuomo’s right at the center of it. He’s a key donor, his policies became prominently more pro-charter after he started getting more and more money . . . The best guess is that Cuomo is actually working for these hedge-fund guys, as opposed to the public in New York.”
That was all it took to open the floodgates. “Why is it that our governor is in bed with people who are so in love with charter schools, versus finding ways to improve our public schools?” one woman asked angrily. A man accused Cuomo of “violating human rights for equal and fair education for all children, free of charge.”
Yet another said Cuomo is “talking out of two sides of his face,” pushing a liberal agenda to get elected before pursuing pro-charter school policies as governor. “Clearly money matters to Governor Cuomo,” she said, ”He just doesn’t think it matters to the parents and the people in the working class.”
Though the governor finished with a comfortable lead against Teachout, her showing in the September primary was much better than expected, revealing deep liberal skepticism regarding Cuomo. Coupled with the disastrous sales numbers of his new book, that distrust could spell trouble for the New York governor’s rumored presidential aspirations.
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