A little more than four months ago, New York’s Working Families Party threatened to nominate its own candidate against Governor Andrew Cuomo, because Cuomo had grown so close to his Wall Street campaign contributors and was often called “Governor 1%” for his intense desire to defend the interests of the plutocrats. The WFP was prepared to nominate an unknown law professor named Zephyr Teachout, who was an expert on government ethics.
Cuomo promised to work with the WFP to elect a Democratic majority in the State Senate so that the Legislature could pass progressive legislation, which died in the State Senate, abetted by a small caucus of Democrats who aligned with the Republicans to give them control.
Mayor Bill de Blasio, the state’s leading progressive official, worked hard to persuade the WFP to support Cuomo (even though Cuomo had just humiliated de Blasio by backing charter schools over public schools and gutting the Mayor’s power to regulate charters). De Blasio even nominated Cuomo at the state Democratic convention, burnishing his otherwise nonexistent progressive credentials.
Of course, the WFP gave its nomination to Cuomo, Teachout challenged him in the Democratic primary, and with almost no money, managed to win 1/3 of the vote and half the counties in the state.
Now, lo and behold, de Blasio is working hard to elect the Democrats who would shift the balance in the State Senate, but Cuomo has turned invisible.
The New York Times wrote:
“It has been more than four months since the fragile marriage between the governor and the Working Families Party was consummated: The group endorsed Mr. Cuomo, over many of its members’ objections, after he agreed to pursue a long list of liberal goals, as part of a deal that Mr. de Blasio helped broker.
“The top priority was an effort to tilt the balance of power in the State Senate, where Republicans currently share leadership with a group of breakaway Democrats.
“Less than a month before Election Day, with polls showing some key Senate races leaning in Republicans’ favor, the arrangement with the governor appears increasingly fraught. Despite his pledge to push for Democratic control of the Senate, Mr. Cuomo has at times seemed not to have a strong opinion about the outcome of the November elections.
“You can’t say, ‘Well, I can work well if they elect this party,’ ” he told reporters last month. “They elect a legislature: Democratic, Republican, whatever they elect. I think the job of the governor is to figure out how to make it work.”
Translation: Cuomo hoodwinked the WFP, de Blasio, and the unions.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Duh!! I for one can no longer respect this party. They allowed themselves to be bullied by the likes of Randi, Mulgrew and deBlasio to rid Teachout of her rightful place. deBlasio is also on that list of people I will no longer support. I was so excited about his campaign. But he proved himself to be weak by allowing the same old DoE regime to stay in power and by allowing Eva and Cuomo to get the best of him just so he could maintain his promise of universal Pre-K. He quickly folded on the charter issue. Another politician who flipped too easily. As for Cuomo, didn’t vote for him the first time and that turned out to be the right decision. He is a Republican dressed up as a Democrat.
Agreed!
And this is surprising? It is most unfortunate that WFP bought Cuomo’s line… with Teachout they could have shown the way for Progressives in 2016… now voters will have to choose between the lesser of two evils in NYS and may have another Hobson’s choice in 2016
Might explain Foye’s piece about Martins.
In New York and in many other places, there is no longer any real difference between the Democrats and the Republicans, and the WFP, de Blasio, and the voters have no one to blame but themselves/ourselves.
As someone so aptly put it on this blog (and I’m sorry to have forgotten where and who that was…), Cuomo is a “mini-Nixon”. I love that image. If only I could draw a good cartoon. If only that image could be spread statewide.
Scorpions are as scorpions do.
Cuomo should not be blamed, as he is merely obeying his predatory nature.
The real shame is to be directed at the willfully self-deluding Pwogwessives – easily bullied by the Weingrew’s of the world – who lied to themselves and the rest of us, pretending that Cupmo might actually keep his promise.
What they received instead is the Governor’s smirking contempt, and widespread understanding that they are hopeless.
I agree. That’s the intelligent way to see it, in my opinion. I think people are putting off the inevitable conclusion that our governments are so far gone that it is going to take mass movements and people being hurt, dying, or going to jail/prison to effect positive change, and it may even be too late.
I agree. Someone needs to hand DeBlasio a copy of Machiavelli’s The Prince. A couple weeks ago there was a post here about a Regent literally using The Prince as his playbook. It seems that’s getting passed around in Albany. The good guys need to start using Machiavellian tactics too.
I think De Blasio has at least one dog-eared copy. His naive, breathless promoters during the mayoral campaign and his operational ineptitude have obscured the fact that he’s as pure an opportunist as politicians come. It’s also become apparent that he’s a bit of a tyrant. This has to be obvious by now to all sentient New Yorkers, at least.
WFP might have been hoodwinked. De Blasio? Politically castrated. And Weingarten? Just read the “Randi Weingarten” category on my blog for my documented thoughts on that one.
Hoodwinked? Who couldn’t see that coming? Real progressives are going to need real progressive movements, not collaborators. This is deep. What is happening in this country is making it so that you have to be on one side or the other; there is no compromising, there are no “deals,” with people like Cuomo.
Another phrase for the Great Book of Oxymorons:
A “Cuomo Promise”
Andrew Cuomo is a piece of dung with radiation proof e-bola crawling all over him, dipped in unexpired nuclear waste and stuffed into the glands of a freshly road killed skunk.
stinks, stank, stunk . . . . . . . Repulsive!
Neither candidate is acceptable, so I’m voting green.
Most politicians today need to be sprayed with a giant can of Raid. But we must always remember and act upon the following fact: WE are the government, and we are the vast 98% majority. When we exercise our civic duties, we can largely shape the societal landscape.
We have most of the power, but like a mammoth tethered elephant, we have been conditioned to believe that, once the tether is removed, we still are not able to walk away from the tree we were tied to. Yet here we stand as a strapping king of the jungle, unawqare of how powerful we are.
The ruling elite will have many a day of reckoning, I reckon . . .. .
I hear the thunderous thump of a herd of elephants, and I’m not talking GOPs or the democrats. I am talking the increasingly aware and mobilized people . . . . .
I read the article and have a slightly different take on the governor’s absence from the democrat campaigns. First, at least in my area, where there is a closely contested race, the governor lost the primary-35% to Teachout’s 65%. An endorsement by the governor, I think, would not be a positive. Second, by not appearing too often, he does not expose himself to questions about corruption or inconvenient protests. Instead, the governor solves all these problems by leaving the country.
One way that the governor did hurt the WFP, and I think it was mentioned in the article, is he set up the Women’s Equality Party. The WEP could siphon off voters from the WFP. So in a way, the governor is playing to win, just not playing fair.
This is just like Cuomo’s failure on the bill to codify a woman’s right to choose in NY. He knows damn well he needed to be pro-active, plan ahead and emphasize the issue, whipping up the votes to ensure he fulfilled his own campaign promise.
He did not, preferring Clinton’s triangulation strategy which firmed up cooperation with Republican leaders instead. The WFP failed in their job to keep Cuomo honest and gave away the store. Zephyr Teachout could have been on the ballot right now, which would have pressured Cuomo to follow through in his rhetoric right up to Election Day.
The WFP could have been the X factor, making headlines for weeks – but is now an empty husk because it cut a deal with Cuomo instead of fighting for working families.
Well, this is unfortunately what has become of the Democratic Party. Some say Cuomo is “acting like a Republican”, but the real truth is that Cuomo is acting like a DEMOCRAT!! Democrats at the highest levels are marching to the same corporate drummers as Republicans. Sure, there are some lower level Democrats who do good work. But their party is so corrupt that they just stand there are take the outrageous abuse when they get screwed in the ways you describe. The entire Teachout situation is the best example. Did anyone realize that NOT A SINGLE Democratic elected official (not even the MOST “progressive” among them like Brad Lander) endorsed Teachout publicly in any way, shape, or form?!? None of them endorsed her, none spoke out for her, none campaigned for her in any way! Why is that?! Well, its because they are all following orders and kissing the Butt of Cuomo.
I am a Green Party member and on the weekend before the primary I was out campaigning for Howie Hawkins and Brian Jones. After doing that I saw City Councilman Brad Lander on the street. He told me that he thought it was “confusing” for me to campaign for the Green Party right before the primary because I would in essence be hindering the vote total for Teachout. His exact words to me were, “don’t you think that’s confusing? Don’t you want her (Teachout) to do well?”. I was so astonished by this insinuation that campaigning for my candidate would confuse the voters and/or hurt Teachout. My god! Who is he kidding!? Not only was my campaigning EDUCATING voters that there WAS a primary coming up at all (as opposed to Democrats who think there is no need to educate voters or increase voter turnout in any way) but what could be MORE confusing than the fact that all the Democrats (even the most progressive) stood silently behind an endorsement for Cuomo and did NOT support the candidate who was supposedly speaking to their issues. That my friends is where the confusion lies.
Yet this is the kind of hypocrisy that has become acceptable within the Democratic Party. They have to twist their morals up into pretzel-sized bites just to get thought the day and stay in office. And believe me, staying in office is usually more important to them than speaking truth to power. This is further evident to me by the fact that Teachout has not chosen to endorse Howie Hawkins since she lost the primary. In fact, Tim Wu basically endorsed Cuomo right after the primary! To me this shows that Teachout is more concerned with preserving her future power within the Democratic Party than she is in speaking truth to power and saving the planet. The problem with that is that we don’t have any more time to waste. The planet is in crisis. The Democrats want to blame others for their failure. But it is them who have failed with their endless compromises and greed. The time is now for People, Planet, and Peace over Profit. Vote Hawkins/Jones for Governor in New York and make history!
Dani Liebling
Daniella,
So beautifully and powerfully put! If Teachout did not make it, which is the people’s doing (that’s democracy in action to a large extent), then we should all be voting Green.
Most democrats on any level are ROTTEN to the core, as is the GOP. . . there are wonderful exceptions on both sides of the aisle, but for the most part, our body elected politic is corroded and decayed. . . . .
I love your writing. Keep on posting, as I shall keep on reading and looking for your comments.
Why have we not heard from you more often? Thank you for articulating what many of us are thinking . . . .