On his way out of the reception hosted by the Senate Democratic conference after his State of the State address, Gov. David Paterson continued hitting hard on a main theme of his speech: the special interests are killing New York, and must be stopped.
“The Legislature could not close the deficit, forcing me to delay payments because people who knew that the cupboard was bare continued to advocate for their causes, showing no concern for all of New Yorkers,” Paterson said.
Meanwhile, one floor down, Attorney General Andrew Cuomo was squeezed into an impromptu scrum of reporters—including New York Times editorial board member Eleanor Randolph, who stood to his right, listening closely—at his crowded reception, which spilled out across a whole floor of the Capitol building.
Though Cuomo and his aides had spent the morning exchanging coy comments with elected officials and others who pressed them for an answer on when they would get word about his expected entry into the governor’s race, the attorney general carefully avoided concrete answers to questions about his future. But he happily talked about his past, and in particular, the long commitment he claimed to the reform proposals his prospective rival had just laid out in the first big speech of the 2010 election year.
Cuomo said he had long been active on them.
“I have been, in terms of position papers and talking about these issues. We’ve all been talking about more disclosure, more openness, more transparency, Project Sunlight, ethics reform, campaign finance reform, fiscal reform—so the outline of the direction is right,” he said. “Where I think we’ve had trouble in the past is actually making progress, actually getting it done, actually solving the problem. And that we’re going to have to do going forward.”
Some in the chamber had grumbled about the lack of sufficient attention to health and education in Paterson’s speech. And in his remarks, Senate Democratic Conference Leader John Sampson said that he wanted to add the idea of property tax reform to the conversation.
But Cuomo said that Paterson “effectively covered the issues that are going to have to be addressed,” adding, “I think he hit the main areas, I think he hit the priorities.”
As to whether, in his opinion, Paterson has the ability to accomplish what he set out to do, Cuomo said, “that’s what we’re going to have to find out. It’s not just about the governor. It’s about the governor and the Senate and the Assembly, Democrats and Republicans, can we get it done.”
Asked if he believed the governor had the leadership ability to get the Legislature to pass his bills, Cuomo did not provide a direct answer.
“The governor, as the leader, laid out an agenda,” Cuomo said. “It’s now a question of accomplishing that agenda. Which is different.”
Cuomo batted away rumors that his own gubernatorial effort was accelerating. Campaigning has the potential to get in the way of policy making, he said.
“Once the political season starts, it actually, in my opinion, can impede what you get done in government,” Cuomo said.
Nor did Cuomo have a definitive answer about whether—in a race for governor or if he ultimately decides to seek re-election as the state’s top law enforcement official—he would seek or accept the ballot line of the Working Families Party.
“I don’t know,” Cuomo said. “What line I run on, that’s a little bit down the road.”
Cuomo was the candidate of the Working Families Party in his 2006 attorney general’s race. But that was before the subpoenas issued by the United States attorney’s office to the Party, its secretive political consulting company called Data & Field Services and the candidates which were involved with the conglomerate entity in the 2009 New York City elections.
In light of those subpoenas, Cuomo said he was not yet ready to make a definitive statement about seeking the Working Families line.
“It depends. Obviously, you have to see at the time. It depends,” he said. “Scrutiny in itself is not necessarily a bad thing. It’s the conclusion of that scrutiny that you have to look at.”
