Cuomo’s even fallen behind in usefulness to Hillary Clinton. Andrew Cuomo's progressive blues

This should be Andrew Cuomo’s springboard moment: He has tens of millions in the bank and every sign of routing his largely forgotten Republican challenger to win a second term. Throw that together with what’s still one of the best-known names in Democratic politics and a record of balanced budgets and wins on gay marriage and gun control, and election night should, for an ambitious big-state governor, be the first step toward a White House run.

Barring true shockers, Cuomo will win his Democratic primary Tuesday, as will his embattled running mate, former Buffalo-area Rep. Kathy Hochul. But the governor is finishing the nomination fight amid a sense in Albany that his political clout is diminished, that many progressives believe he’ll always value his power over their principles and that a rivalry with New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has been recalibrated.


Cuomo’s even fallen behind in usefulness to Hillary Clinton — the New Yorker who’s likely to clear the 2016 presidential field of most other Democrats, particularly those also from the Empire State — with the upstart challenge from Zephyr Teachout and her running mate Tim Wu exposing Cuomo as out of touch with the political passions of many liberal New Yorkers, and with a larger sense of progressivism that’s now defined much more by economic than social issues.

That’s the progressivism represented by de Blasio — a former Cuomo aide whom the governor started off the year all but trolling, and on whom he’s finished the primary season leaning, repeatedly, to backstop him.

( Also on POLITICO: Clinton robocalls for Cuomo)

Whatever Cuomo’s speculated-on national plans actually were, they are on ice for the foreseeable future. De Blasio is now the figure who’s more valuable to Clinton or any Democrat heading into presidential politics in the coming cycle. There is a freshness to the mayor’s family, his use of social media and an approach to politics that has made Cuomo look creaky by comparison.

Cuomo can’t buy Clinton much of anything with the 2016 electorate. De Blasio, who has created a fusion organization of political support that trumped other organizational muscle in his primary in 2013, can buy a lot, especially for a presidential candidate whose bona fides on income inequality are being scrutinized.

Cuomo stormed into Albany four years ago on a promise of cleaning out corruption, fixing the always-disastrous state budget and restoring New York as the progressive leader of the country. He’s arriving on primary day with a federal investigation of supposed meddling into his anti-corruption Moreland Commission — which exacerbated political troubles simmering over a left-wing revolt over spending cuts and tax breaks he’d signed off on and a failure to press for stricter campaign finance rules. That only intensified as Cuomo attempted to get Teachout thrown off the ballot in a move that made many New York politicos privately shake their heads.

Even Cuomo’s 2011 push for legalizing gay marriage, at the time a controversial effort that was seen as a definitive progressive validator for an eventual White House run, has faded from people’s minds.

The Cuomo campaign rejected the idea that either the governor’s or his running mate’s progressive credentials were at stake, pointing to a new ad that “features President Clinton, Senator [Chuck] Schumer, Senator [Kirsten] Gillibrand and Mayor de Blasio — a united Democratic team supporting Kathy Hochul,” said campaign spokesman Peter Kauffmann.

( Also on POLITICO: NYT to Cuomo: No endorsement)

A reminder of Cuomo’s image on the left came Friday, when Hillary Clinton was roasted by liberals on social media for recording a robocall supporting the governor and his running mate.

Cuomo allies contacted by POLITICO said there’s no problem with progressives that will hurt him or his second-term agenda. They pointed to his legislative successes and suggested an over-eager press corps — many of whose members has seethed at treatment by Cuomo’s aides over the years — is looking to write that he has come undone.

What’s driving this primary challenge are the very things that were once the reason New Yorkers elected him: his fiscally moderate-to-conservative approach to the budget and a mastery of political tactics that progressives say have sold them out time and again.

“I submit that the governor of the state of New York cannot hold that title as the leader of the progressives if they plan on staying around long,” said David Paterson, the former governor whom Cuomo helped push out of a reelection bid in 2010. Paterson, picked by Cuomo earlier this year as chairman of the state Democratic Party, cited the governor’s approach to the state budget as the only reason why he thinks that the primary challenge got legs.

Kathy Wylde, head of the pro-business Partnership for New York City, whose members largely support Cuomo, said she believes that his work on economic issues is going to “serve him well over time. I think substance trumps politics.”

Hochul, who served less than a full term in the House, looked like a natural fit for a lieutenant-governor running mate: A woman from the often-overlooked western corner of the state, she had relationships with her old colleagues in Congress that came with built-in political power. But she also had a record that reflected her Republican-leaning district: opposing driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants, voting against Obamacare and for Attorney General Eric Holder’s censure, and supporting gun rights. Those stances made Wu — the Columbia law professor whose previous claim to fame was coining “net neutrality” — more of a factor in the race even than Teachout.

( Also on POLITICO: N. Y. poll: Gov't corruption a problem)

And because of New York election law, the Wu threat could mean trouble far beyond primary day — candidates for governor and lieutenant governor run in separate primaries, but the winners are fused together on a single ticket for the general election.

Crystallizing the progressive state of mind last week, as is often the case, were the local picks of The New York Times editorial board. The Times endorsed neither Cuomo nor Teachout, but it very strongly backed Wu — essentially as a way of punishing the governor without going so far as to support putting the state in the hands of a Fordham law professor whose own prior political experience was topped by working on Howard Dean’s presidential campaign.

“The Times is out to kill Cuomo,” said one supporter of the governor outside of his campaign, who asked not to be identified, referring to the paper’s editorials not endorsing him and also backing Hochul’s opponent.

Despite his efforts on some progressive issues, the state’s liberal wing has gritted its teeth about backing Cuomo since 2010, when he engaged in an extensive dance with the liberal Working Families Party, then under investigation, over whether he’d accept its backing (he ultimately did).

Cuomo, obsessed with his margin of victory in his reelection campaign, aggressively sought the group’s backing this time around. In the end, that required turning to de Blasio, whom he’d gleefully outmaneuvered earlier in the year by providing funding for the universal pre-K that had been the signature promise of de Blasio’s come-from-behind 2013 campaign — but without the tax hike on the rich that de Blasio had wanted to pay for it.

By May, the tables turned. De Blasio, who helped found and stays deeply involved with the WFP, arrived late on the last day of its party convention in May to bless a deal that gave Cuomo the ballot line, but he extracted the key concession of a pledge to swing the state Senate back to Democratic control.

“I think the mayor has been extremely helpful to the governor,” Paterson said. “If I had had a mayor like Bill de Blasio when I was governor, it would have been very helpful if he could say, ‘Hey, some of the things he did, he had to do, but his heart’s in the right place.’”

De Blasio’s support for Cuomo was “understandable as a matter of friendship and convenience, but it can lead to absurdity,” said Mark Green, a former New York City public advocate who’s endorsed Teachout and Wu — and who holds the distinction of being the only person to have lost races to both Cuomo (for attorney general in 2006) and de Blasio (for an attempted return to the public advocate’s office in 2009).

Cuomo, if his past is any guide, won’t be eager to govern any differently or with any more concessions in his second term. Even as the son of the true liberal lion Mario Cuomo, the governor has always seen his true political role model as Bill Clinton, the man who appointed him as secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development. But if the state Senate does go Democratic, that would give de Blasio even more of an edge — both by giving him the credit for a win and pulling away Cuomo’s constant foil. De Blasio’s seen as likely to use that to push for more of exactly the kind of tax hikes Cuomo would like to avoid. Under that scenario, it’s possible Cuomo would try to embrace his inner Mario more.

“Gov. Cuomo apparently doesn’t believe in the philosophy that it’s not whether you win or lose, but how you play the game,” said Green. “But by being so focused on his percentage rather than being a happy warrior campaigner — welcoming debates, interacting with the press and public — he’s probably helping himself next week but not next term. … Ideally, he’ll be either a better governor by being more principled than hair-splitting, or he’ll have a harder time because he would have lost some of the fear factor that enables him to get his way.”

Cuomo’s purported brand for a potential presidential run, though, was structured around marrying traditional social progressivism to stopping the kind of tax approach de Blasio’s likely to seek.

“If the Democrats take back control of the state Senate, Andrew Cuomo’s agenda could be derailed, because the more liberal/progressive members of the Democratic Party will want to drive issues to support de Blasio’s agenda, which goes against the narrative that Andrew Cuomo wants to paint or to sell,” said Brendan Quinn, a former state GOP executive director.

Of course, if Clinton does run, Cuomo’s own White House plans could end up permanently on hold.

The challenge for de Blasio might end up being assuring progressives that he didn’t abandon them for a political deal of his own. De Blasio spokesman Phil Walzak brushed off that possibility.

“Mayor de Blasio’s progressive credentials and accomplishments are clear to any nonbiased observer,” Walzak said, citing the opening of expanded pre-K just last week as “a game-changer in the long-term fight against income inequality.”

But Jonathan Tasini, who staged his own long-shot challenge to the left against Clinton in the 2006 New York Senate primary, signaled that some dissatisfaction is brewing.

If de Blasio calls Clinton “a ‘progressive,’ we need contest 4 new term 4 war-voting, wall st funded, pro-nafta, Wal-Mart, corp lawyer pol,” he tweeted Thursday.