ALBANY–There has never been anyone better prepared to be governor than Andrew Cuomo, and if you speak to people close to the 52-year-old attorney general, the word “destiny” is often heard.
He’s become the state’s most popular political figure during nearly four years in office and his achievements and experience before that are formidable.
He was US Housing secretary under President Bill Clinton, close friend and adviser to Vice President Al Gore, prosecutor, son of and policy adviser to Gov. Mario Cuomo and political operative in two mayoral campaigns and in his father’s race for governor.
Cuomo also founded the HELP program for the homeless, worked as a private-sector lawyer and traveled the world as an international economic-development executive — all experiences that taught him a healthy respect for the private sector.
And, of course, there’s the bitter learning experience that came with his failed campaign for governor in 2002.
But merely having a strong background to become governor isn’t a guarantee of success, as former Lt. Gov. and one-time Senate Democratic leader David Paterson and former Attorney General and one-time prosecutor Eliot Spitzer clearly demonstrated.
Thanks in part to the sad legacies of Paterson and Spitzer, the stakes have never been higher for New York. Some of the state’s most powerful political and business leaders privately whisper that the real question facing the next governor is: “Can New York be saved?”
Can Cuomo lead a state with an out-of-control budget, a deadlocked, corrupt and dysfunctional government and a private-sector economy that has fallen prey to parasitical public-employee unions?
Should he become governor — as every public-opinion poll says he will — Cuomo will need to crush the give-away-the-store special-interest pandering that has passed for leadership for more than three decades.
He is gearing up for the battle of a lifetime. Nothing more than New York’s survival is at stake.