The 2016 GOP presidential campaign has moved from the Badger State to the Empire State, from ground fertile for Texas Sen. Ted Cruz to the hometown of former reality TV star Donald Trump. So it was inevitable that Cruz's "New York values" swipe would again take center stage.

To review, before the Iowa caucuses – which Cruz ended up winning – the Lone Star State senator accused The Donald of being unfit for the GOP nomination because of said "New York values," the contempt for which Cruz positively drips with. "The rest of the country knows exactly what New York values are," Cruz said at the time. "They're not Iowa values and they're not New Hampshire values." Wink wink, nudge nudge, you know what I mean?

Well, now New Yorkers are getting to say exactly how they feel about Cruz's dig, to his face, before an important primary on April 19. Spoiler alert: They aren't thrilled.

Trump, of course, is defending his hometown, as well he should. But Cruz isn't backing down. And Ohio Gov. John Kasich, the mathematically eliminated yet still rolling third wheel in the GOP's dysfunctional campaign relationship, is taking shots at Cruz as well.

Far be it from a native New Jerseyan who now calls D.C. home to be the arbiter of true New York values, but I'd like to put forth the proposition that all three of them could use a new definition.

After all, the other big story out of New York at the moment is that the state is taking two major steps in economic policymaking: increasing its minimum wage to $15 and providing 12 weeks of paid family leave to workers. These are two of the economic Holy Grails among progressives at the moment. And they say a lot about the state's values, too.

Take these numbers, to start. The minimum wage hike, once fully phased in (which takes a while, granted), will benefit some 3 million New Yorkers, according to the National Employment Law Project; the average beneficiary will be "a woman over 25 years old who works full time and provides on average half her household's income."

Economists at UC Berkeley's Institute for Research on Labor and Employment found that the average worker receiving an increase will see an earnings boost of about $4,900 annually, and that the increase will generate a very small net gain in employment, contrary to the constant carping from the right when it comes to minimum wage hikes.

Boosting income for low-wage workers while having no negative effect on job growth? That's a value worth having. (Between California and New York, in fact, we're going to see in real time which political camp's theory of minimum wage increases fares best out in the actual world. But I digress.)

And then there's paid family leave. As has been exhaustively documented, the U.S. stands alone in the developed world in not having any sort of paid family leave policy. Cities and states – from San Francisco and Austin to Rhode Island and New Jersey – have instead been forced to step up on their own to ensure that workers can stay home to care for and bond with a new child or attend to a sick parent. New York's new law will provide 12 weeks of leave, making it the most generous state law in the country.

This is good for workers, who will no longer need to decide between their job and their newborn. But it's also really beneficial for the kids, with one study finding that more leave for parents was associated with higher wages and better educational outcomes for children.

To top it all off, the recent New York budget also included a record amount of aid for schools.

That's value, in a lot of ways.

The GOP is interested in none of this, of course. Trump says wages are too high. Cruz derides paid leave policies as "free stuff." Kasich is using the same playbook, even if he's on a different page.

"At the end of the day, family matters. Intimate relationships matter," New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said when first proposing a paid leave law earlier this year. "And in this 24/7 world, let this state make a statement about what's really important. And those relations are important. And we should be there for one and another, especially in a family environment."