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Gov. Cuomo has veered sharply away from the reform and pro-business policies he followed during his first two years in office and is “adrift’’ on a course of murky proposals, frequent indecision, and political obsessions focused on re-election next year and the presidency in 2016, insiders have told The Post.
The insiders, some of whom have known Cuomo for decades, said the governor has become so obsessed with maintaining what until recently were record-high job-approval ratings that he has refused, for fear of alienating politically potent liberal voting blocs, to make tough decisions to cut costs for fiscally troubled local governments, reduce regulations to attract businesses, and approve hydrofracking for natural gas.
“It’s all about maintaining his numbers now, not about the best policies for the state,’’ said a source who knows Cuomo well.
“If he makes the political tough decisions, his numbers will go down, so what he’s trying to do is avoid anything controversial. That’s why he’s adrift,’’ the source continued.
The insiders describe Cuomo as hypersensitive to criticism and prone to argue at great length with anyone who says his administration has, as one of its own members put it, “run off the tracks.’’
“He’s running around like a banshee, blaming his staff and everybody else for the problems of his own making,’’ said a highly knowledgeable source, adding, “I’ll be a dead man in Albany’’ if his identity is disclosed.
Cuomo signaled his new direction in a State of the State Address last month that was so devoid of serious, game-changing initiatives that he had to rely on two catastrophes — the Sandy Hook school massacre in Connecticut and the devastation caused by Hurricane Sandy — for its principle news-generating proposals.
The third major substantive piece of his speech — the so-called Women’s Equality Act — was a largely manufactured effort because the supposed “problems’’ being addressed in the proposals are already largely covered by state law, the insiders agreed.
“It was put in the speech because there really wasn’t much else there,’’ said a second source close to the administration.
Democrat Cuomo’s unfocused new direction is tied to the Republicans’ loss of control of the state Senate, which the governor openly sought to prevent.
For Cuomo’s first two years in office, Senate Republicans joined with him in forcing the Democratic-controlled Assembly to end years of irresponsible state spending, cap runaway local property taxes, and create a new pension system to reduce the cost of future public employees.
But with Republicans now forced into a “coalition’’ government with a rump group of “independent’’ liberal Democrats, that alliance is over.
And what support Cuomo still retained in Senate Republican ranks was badly damaged last month when he pressured Dean Skelos, the weakest GOP leader in modern times, to support a tough new anti-gun law that was so politically damaging that state GOP Chairman Ed Cox has publicly denounced it.
Last week, Senate Republicans exacted revenge as they embarrassed Cuomo by publicly questioning the fitness of the governor’s controversial choice of CUNY law prof Jenny Rivera for a seat on the state’s highest court, the Court of Appeals.
At the same time, Assembly Democrats, who deeply resented the Cuomo/Senate GOP alliance, embarrassed Cuomo at a budget hearing with hostile and insulting questioning of Environmental Conservation Commissioner Joseph Martens over the controversial hydrofracking issue.
The Democrats even allowed flash mobs of anti-hydrofracking activists to interrupt and mock Martens who, for his part, was tense and defensive and left lawmakers with the impression that he wished he worked for anybody but Cuomo.
Business leaders, meanwhile, see the long-delayed hydrofracking decision — which could come this week — as the definitive test of whether Cuomo is serious about changing New York’s reputation as the least business-friendly state in the nation.
“The New York/Pennsylvania border is like the old Berlin Wall, with Pennsylvania being free West Berlin, with prosperity and good jobs thanks to gas drilling,’’ said a top New York business official.
“The New York side is communist East Berlin — poor, humbled, and humiliated, with no high-paying jobs to speak of,’’ the official continued.