There has been plenty for liberals to love about Andrew Cuomo’s first term — that much-vaunted support of gay marriage, for starters. But the governor is firm in his support of letting New York’s so-called “Millionaire Tax” expire, and that’s not something that will endear him to the left wing of his party (or the 72 percent of New Yorkers who want to see the tax renewed to avoid budget cuts). And it certainly doesn’t make him a popular figure with Occupy Wall Street protestors, who last week protested outside of an event in Soho because the governor was in attendance. (It’s where Naomi Wolf got arrested, in fact. And to think she used to advise center-left politicians on their wardrobe choices!)
Cuomo, for his part, is going back at OWS with a bit of bite. This weekend, he tried to get Albany’s mayor, his friend and fellow Democrat Jerry Jennings, to kick Albany’s protestors out of a city park at the official 11 p.m. closing time. According to the Post, Jennings “nervously” defied Cuomo after initially promising to boot the demonstrators.“Some of the governor’s people were pretty firm about our not doing this, letting them stay in the park, but basically, we had allowed this before … and my counsel said we’d be opening ourselves up to civil liability if we forced them out,” he told the paper, which also chalked up Jennings’ defiance to pressure from the city’s “leftist” district attorney, who reportedly will refuse to prosecute any arrests. Cuomo isn’t happy — the Post quotes a source close to the governor saying as much — but his attitude toward the protests perhaps shows that the governor either thinks they’re a passing squall, or believes he’s got plenty of political capital to burn on the left.
Sorry, make that slow-roast, not burn.
