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A Cuomo political comeback? – By George J. Marlin

March 20, 2024

The following appeared on Monday, March 18, 2024, in the Blank Slate Media newspaper chain and on its website, theisland360.com:

It appears that former Gov. Andrew Cuomo is taking steps to re-enter public life.

Following his successful 2006 comeback strategy that led to his election to the New York attorney general post, Cuomo’s public activities are managed in a methodical way.

First there was the 2023 publication of “What’s Left Unsaid: My Life at the Center of Power, Politics and Crisis” by Cuomo’s longtime top aide, Melissa DeRosa.

The most important chapter is the epilogue. DeRosa exposes the shoddiness of the accounts of Cuomo’s accusers and the reports released by state Attorney General Letitia James and the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Despite public threats, DeRosa points out, not one of the accusers has sued Cuomo and five district attorneys have cleared him of any wrongdoing.

Next, Cuomo has been reaching out to constituencies that have remained loyal to him, particularly African-Americans.

Just last week, he appeared at the Mount Neboh Baptist Church in Harlem. In his talk, the New York Post reported he made this humorous comment: “I want you to know as a matter of full disclosure, I am a Catholic. Catholics basically believe the same teaching that Baptists believe. We just do it without rhythm. But we try. We are not as without rhythm as some of our Jewish brothers and sisters.”

Cuomo has also been writing op-ed pieces on pressing public issues.

In a December 12, 2023, in a Wall Street Journal essay titled “Migrants and the Urban Death Spiral,” he declared “the federal government sets immigration policy. It is outrageous to make cities shoulder the cost.”

“Forcing cities to pay for a migrant crisis that they have no business managing,” he added, “is government malpractice. Cities are already struggling and in crisis.”

Two weeks later, in a Post opinion piece, Cuomo went after the governor and the state Legislature for failing to address the migrant “right to shelter” issue in New York City.

“They have the state constitutional authority,” he wrote, “to establish policies such as defining who has a right to shelter, what that entails and who is responsible for the cost. The Legislature could end the current confusion and court cases by establishing a uniform migrant (and homeless) policy for the state.”

Cuomo went on to take a shot at New York City’s state legislators: “Ironically the majority … are from New York City, so they are unfairly burdening their own constituents by imposing the cost on city taxpayers alone.

This year, Cuomo has focused his attention on the MTA’s congestion pricing plan.

While Cuomo concedes he approved the congestion tolls in 2019, he does not believe the MTA should commence the program at this time.

In the Post on March 12, he answered MTA critics who accused him of flip-flopping.

Citing the depressing facts that the city “still hasn’t recovered from COVID,” “office occupancy is still only at 48.5%,” and “mass transit is still operating 29% below pre-pandemic levels,” he concluded that the MTA “must seriously consider if now is the right time to enact it.”

Cuomo asked: “What impact will an additional $15 entry surcharge have on New York City’s recovery in this moment—when the migrant crisis, crime, homelessness, quality of life and taxes are all pressing problems?”

The MTA should address his concerns before imposing the congestion toll on struggling commuters.

In the public arena, Cuomo is coming across as a “liberal with sanity”—a rare species in New York.

And many taxpayers may clamor for just such an elected leader, one who will stand up to the extreme leftist ideologues in the state Legislature or the City council.

So, if Cuomo is eyeing another run, will he take on the state’s hapless governor in 2026 or the city’s hapless mayor in 2025?

In my judgment, running for mayor is the better of the two.

In a gubernatorial primary, Cuomo and Hochul could cancel one another out, thus, permitting a radical to win with a 34% plurality.

In a mayoral primary, however, Cuomo could patch together a winning coalition of working-class whites, browns and blacks. He may even pick up the support of Upper East Side liberals who have had it with Mayor Eric Adams.

With the political knives out for Adams, 2025 may be the year for Cuomo to be the “Comeback Kid.”

Categories: Andrew Cuomo, Articles/Essays/Op-Ed, Blank Slate Media, The Island 360

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Andrew Cuomo for NYC Mayor, Anyone? – By George J. Marlin

January 8, 2024

This article I wrote appeared on the Newsmax.com web site on Monday, January 8, 2024.

Categories: Andrew Cuomo, Articles/Essays/Op-Ed, Newsmax

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New York’s Billion Dollar Boondoggle – By George J. Marlin

July 25, 2023

The following appeared on Monday, July 24, 2023, in the Blank Slate Media newspaper chain and on its website, theisland360.com:

During the Cuomo-Hochul years, vast amounts of taxpayer dollars have been squandered on private-sector job investments.

Money has gone to initiatives that in many cases fell short of the job goals, while others did not set any benchmark for assessing their success or failure.

One flop was Cuomo’s 2013 “Start-up New York.” Over $50 million was spent on television and radio commercials to promote that program, which grants 10 years of no taxes to approved technology companies that locate in zones near state and City University campuses. The results were de minimis.

The program failed because the scope was too limited, there was no regulatory relief and interested companies had to endure a laborious application process.

But the biggest boondoggle of all has been—the heavily hyped “Buffalo Billion.”

In 2013, Gov. Andrew Cuomo proudly announced an investment to build plants in Western New York that would create at least 3,000 jobs.

The key participant in the project, Buffalo Solar City, controlled by Elon Musk, initially received $750 million in state subsidies and an additional $200 million in 2017.

An audit, performed by the office of State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli in 2019, revealed that the Musk project did not come close to meeting expectations.

To rationalize the faltering investment, the state approved amendments to the deal that reduced “the number of jobs required … as well as making it unclear what and where the remaining jobs will be.”

The dumbing down of the deal, the comptroller concluded, would result, at best, in a paltry economic benefit of 54 cents for every dollar spent.

A laid-off Solar City employee, Dale Witherell, insisted in a letter to U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) that “New York State taxpayers deserved more from a $750 million investment. Tesla, he added “had done a tremendous job providing smoke and mirrors and empty promises to the area.”

Since DiNapoli’s report was issued in 2020, there has not been any real progress.

A July 17, 2023 front-page expose in the Wall Street Journal titled “New York’s $1 Billion Bet on Tesla Isn’t Paying Off” explains just how bad a deal Cuomo cut with Musk.

Musk’s claim that his plant would produce over 1,000 solar panel shingles a week has fallen far short of that goal. “The company is installing on average only 21 solar installations a week,” the newspaper said.

The WSJ report noted “the suppliers that Cuomo predicted would flock to a modern manufacturing hub never showed up. The only new nearby business is a Tim Horton’s coffee shop.”

Democratic state Sen. Sean Ryan, whose district includes Buffalo, told the Journal “It was a bad deal. A cautionary tale is you can’t give governors too much power to get on the phone with egotistical billionaires.”

After inspecting the facility, Ryan sadly concluded that the activity “didn’t look like full-scale manufacturing work.”

The chairperson of the state Senate Finance Committee, Democrat Liz Krueger, was also shocked by the poor return on investment. She said we “should invest in infrastructure and job training instead of spending billions of tax dollars pretending we’re very good being angel investors.”

E.J. McMahon, of the Empire Center for Public Policy, summed up the Cuomo debacle thusly: “In building and equipping the Tesla solar panel plant, the state became an investor in that project under the worst possible terms. In terms of shared direct cost to taxpayers, this may rank as the biggest economic development boondoggle in American history.”

One can only hope that state officials finally learn that “Big brother” type government bureaucrats should not be the persons to dictate where entrepreneurs should locate and risk investment dollars.

If Gov. Hochul and her Democratic colleagues are serious about jump-starting New York’s economic engine, they will employ genuine incentives—tax cuts and regulatory reforms—that have created lasting middle-class jobs in flourishing states like Texas and Florida.

Categories: Andrew Cuomo, Articles/Essays/Op-Ed, Kathy Hochul, The Island 360

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Can Cuomo beat Gov. Hochul in November? – By George J. Marlin

April 5, 2022

The following appeared on Monday, April 4, 2022, in the Blank Slate Media newspaper chain and on its website, theisland360.com:

Lately, there has been plenty of nervous chatter in Democratic circles that former Gov. Andrew Cuomo will seek a political comeback.

Political wags tell me that Cuomo may attempt to resurrect the defunct New York State Liberal Party and nominate himself as its candidate for governor.

For the under-50 folks unfamiliar with the Liberal Party, here’s a little background: Founded in 1944 by leftists who abandoned the Communist-dominated American Labor Party, the Liberal Party provided the margin of victory for many like-minded Democrats and Republicans. Democrats endorsed included Hugh Carey, Mario Cuomo, and Robert F. Kennedy. Republicans were Jacob Javits, John Lindsay, and Rudy Giuliani.

Ironically, the Liberal Party went out of business in 2002 when its gubernatorial nominee, Andrew Cuomo, failed to receive the 50,000 votes required by law to maintain its ballot line.

Cuomo may have convinced himself that by running on the Liberal Party line he could win in a four-way race because sexual harassment criminal investigations into his behavior have been dropped by five district attorneys due to a lack of evidence.

Theoretically, that outcome is possible if the following were to occur: First, the Working Families Party candidate Jumaane Williams would have to receive at least 5 percent of the vote. Next, support for the Republican-Conservative candidate Lee Zeldin could not exceed his base, which is about 30 percent.

That would leave 65 percent of the remaining electorate for Gov. Kathy Hochul and Cuomo to tussle over.

If Cuomo’s traditional supporters—minorities, center-left Democrats and Independents—were to stick with him, he could get the 33% needed statewide to win.

Then again, such a plan could easily backfire and put Zeldin over the top. Yes, if enough centrists, particularly in Westchester County and the Hudson Valley area, say a pox upon the houses of Hochul and Cuomo and support Zeldin, he could pull off a surprise victory with a 33% plurality.

Frankly, I believe a Cuomo comeback is unlikely.

In my judgment, his coverup of nursing home COVID-related deaths will destroy his chances.

An audit released in March by state Comptroller Tom DiNapoli on Cuomo’s COVID performance explains why Cuomo has much to fear. DiNapoli reported that “the public was misled by the highest level of state government and given a distorted version of reality that suppressed facts when they deserved the truth.”

Cuomo’s Department of Health:

  • Understated the number of nursing home deaths due to COVID-19 by at least 4,100 and at times during the pandemic by more than 50 percent.
  • Was slow to respond to a federal directive to conduct surveys of nursing homes for infection control problems, surveying just 20 percent of facilities between March 23 and May 30, 2020, compared with over 90 percent for some other states.
  • Imposed impediments on the audit, including delaying requested data, limiting auditors’ contract with program staff, not addressing auditors’ questions during meetings and not providing supporting documentation.

The audit also revealed that the Department of Health was delinquent in performing its duties. Instead of being dedicated to promoting public health, it “conformed its presentation to the executive’s narrative”, (i.e., the former governor and members of his staff) “often presenting data in a matter that misled the public.”

Andrew Cuomo’s management of the reporting of COVID-nursing home deaths throughout the crisis “lacked transparency, and was at times, inaccurate, inconsistent, incomplete, and/or not amenable to analysis,” the audit said.

DiNapoli’s report concluded that consistent with Cuomo’s governing style, his DOH was “plagued by a threatening environment, closed ranks and lack[ed] commitment to openness—at the expense of the public’s trust.”

That’s quite an indictment!

If Cuomo jumps into the governor’s race, I am certain his opponents, and the families and friends of the more than 15,000 New Yorkers who died in nursing homes from COVID-19, will brandish the devastating DiNapoli report.

And that would sound the death knell for Cuomo’s restoration hopes.

Categories: Andrew Cuomo, Articles/Essays/Op-Ed, Blank Slate Media, Kathy Hochul, Political Issues

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Cuomo might run for governor again – By George J. Marlin

January 16, 2022

The following appeared on Monday, January 10, 2022 on The Island Now’s website:

Readers of my column know that during most of Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s time in office I was one of his staunchest critics.

When he was first elected, I did agree to be the “conservative” voice on his transition team and on his Council of Economic and Fiscal Advisors. However, I was quickly disillusioned.

The man I thought would govern as a centrist quickly moved to the far left. He abandoned his solemn promise not to raise taxes and he promoted and signed into law extremist legislation on social issues that I opposed.

From his second year in office until he resigned in 2021, I maintained a “Cuomo Watch;” critiquing his fiscal, economic and social policies.

When accusations against Cuomo hit the papers—I was at first skeptical. I grew up with many Italians in Queens County and knew they hug and kiss—both men and women—particularly at family, social and religious gatherings.

I am not a hugger. But I have been hugged by both Mario and Andrew Cuomo. It’s part of their ethnicity.

But after reading the Report of Investigation into Allegations of Sexual Harassment by Governor Andrew M. Cuomo released by state Attorney General Letitia James on August 3, I concluded the governor may have pushed the “affection envelope” too far and was politically cooked.

I was reminded of the post-Watergate comment made by Richard Nixon during the famous May 1977 David Frost interview concerning his political enemies: “I gave them a sword. And they stuck it in. And they twisted with relish. And I guess, if I’d been in their position, I’d have done the same thing.”

I, like others, sort of enjoyed twisting the political sword into Cuomo. Many experienced what the Germans call “schadenfreude,” which means “joy over some misfortune suffered by another.”

When he resigned in late August 2021, I wrote at that time that his fall was inevitable. His ruthless approach to governing took its toll. He had few friends and a long list of enemies.

And when Albany Sheriff Craig Apple filed a criminal misdemeanor complaint against Cuomo for allegedly touching a female aide “for the purposes of degrading and gratifying his sexual desires,” it fortified my belief that Cuomo had to depart.

Since that time, however, circumstances have broken in Cuomo’s favor.

In November, Albany District Attorney David Soares delayed Cuomo’s arraignment to January because the sheriff’s complaint was “potentially defective.”

As Cuomo waited to be arraigned, there were other developments: The district attorneys of Nassau and Westchester declined to prosecute him for any sexual harassment allegations.

Next, the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office ended its investigation into Cuomo’s mishandling of nursing homes during the 2020 pandemic lockdown.

While there is no doubt in my mind that his wrongheaded policies caused the deaths of thousands of our seniors living in nursing homes, the DA’s office concluded “there was no evidence to suggest that any laws were broken.”

Then on January 4, Albany prosecutors moved in court to drop their case because there was not enough evidence to “meet our burden at trial.” Albany City Judge Holly Trexler granted the district attorney’s motion.

Looking back, despite his cries of innocence and unfair treatment, Andrew Cuomo had to leave office last year.

First and foremost, his political support collapsed.

The other reason: If he remained in office and was impeached and convicted, he would be unable to run for office ever again.

The New York State Constitution states: “Judgment in cases of impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from office, or removal from office and disqualification to hold and enjoy any public office of honor, trust or profit under the state.”

But now with various charges dropped, a January 7 New York Times headline declared that “Some See a Possible [Cuomo] Comeback.”

Will he seek his old post? He certainly has the money in his campaign chest to finance a comeback. He may run to vindicate himself to spite his critics and to restore his family’s honor.

Such a move, in my judgment, would be a mistake. It would open old wounds and his enemies would have a field day sniping at him.

The brooding, angry, former governor must not let his pride cloud his thinking. Cuomo should be mindful of the Biblical proverb, “Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.”

Categories: Andrew Cuomo, Articles/Essays/Op-Ed

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