NY TIMES
Mayor Bill DeBlasio publicly vented his frustrations with Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, who he believed had gratuitously hindered his agenda.
Mr. de Blasio’s extraordinary remarks this week about Mr. Cuomo — in which he accused the governor of ignoring New Yorkers’ interests for “game-playing” and “revenge” — were the political equivalent of a sound cannon, an explosive burst of candor designed to upset the dynamics of the city’s relationship with Albany.
But the mayor’s move was also the culmination of months of private ire and careful strategizing at City Hall about Mr. Cuomo, who the mayor’s advisers had come to believe was taking pleasure in blocking the city’s priorities in Albany. Having tried diplomacy, flattery and bargaining, Mr. de Blasio concluded that open criticism was his last effective option.
“We felt we had nothing left to lose,” said Karen Hinton, Mr. de Blasio’s press secretary, who along with other advisors on Wednesday described the thought process behind the mayor’s move.
Whether Mr. de Blasio’s gambit will pay off for him — and for his eight million constituents — is now a matter of strenuous debate in political circles.
The mayor’s team sees plenty of upside, arguing that Mr. de Blasio has put Mr. Cuomo on notice that Democrats will hold him accountable if the governor, whose poll numbers have sagged, does not support left-leaning policies. Mr. de Blasio’s camp also believes that the mayor will be seen as strong and willing to speak the truth and that future moves by Mr. Cuomo against the mayor could be viewed as vindictive.
NY TIMES
The mayor's barbed comments herald a broader challenge for the governor within his own party: Democrats have begun a season of open dissent.
The mounting public frustration is particularly acute among liberal and downstate Democrats aligned with Mr. de Blasio, in the party’s rising populist wing. The mayor’s remarks this week, accusing Mr. Cuomo of governing through vengeance and fear, are likely to further embolden Democrats who have long chafed at what they characterized as Mr. Cuomo’s ironhanded methods and imperious personality.
Their grievances are legion: The mayor faulted Mr. Cuomo on his handling of funds for public housing, and charged the governor with undermining his efforts to extend mayoral control of city schools. Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman, a Democrat, sharply criticized new ethics measures championed by the governor as deeply inadequate, and campaigned for his own set of more stringent proposals.
Others have fumed at Mr. Cuomo over the divided Legislature’s failure to raise the minimum wage or to pass a state-level version of the Dream Act, a bill granting tuition benefits to certain undocumented immigrants, as well as the governor’s support for an education tax credit meant to expand access to private schools.
Some downstate Democrats have already begun to talk openly of a challenge to Mr. Cuomo in the 2018 Democratic primary, should he seek a third term. The liberal Working Families Party, which endorsed Mr. Cuomo’s re-election in 2014, has strongly indicated that it is unlikely to back him again. The group’s state director, Bill Lipton, said that Mr. Cuomo seemed “motivated by a desire to please donors and inflict damage on rivals, rather than by any core set of values.”
Mr. Cuomo and his allies reject many of the criticisms against him, insisting that only a forceful dealmaker can steer a government split between two parties, in a state of New York’s scale.
Yet the governor’s Democratic critics retort that the balance of power in Albany is not some political accident. Mr. Cuomo, they say, has been sparing in his support for Democrats running in legislative elections, staying out of certain competitive races where friendly Republicans are on the ballot. (After the 2014 elections, Representative Steve Israel of Long Island publicly chided Mr. Cuomo for not having done more to help Democratic candidates for the House of Representatives.)
Representative Charles B. Rangel, the long-serving Harlem Democrat, said that Mr. Cuomo had the burden of balancing the city’s interests with statewide issues of little relevance to urban Democrats. At times, he said, that has meant making alliances with Republicans at the expense of his own party.
Stuart Appelbaum, president of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, said in an email that Democrats had run up this year against the simple reality of negotiation: “You can’t get everything you want.”The Republicans didn’t have any of their own urgent agenda items,” he said. “So they could have refused to do anything.”