Metro

Gov-linked lobbyist the wife of the party

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The wife of a top aide to Gov. Cuomo has been quietly hired by one of New York’s most aggressive lobbying and public-relations firms, which is now advertising her connections to Cuomo on its Web site, The Post has found.

Karen Hinton — married to State Operations Director Howard Glaser, one of the governor’s oldest friends and a key figure in Cuomo’s high-stakes efforts to legalize casino gambling, bring a new power utility to Long Island, and finalize a decision on hydrofracking for natural gas — is a “managing director” at Mercury Public Affairs, which was founded by several former aides and advisers to Republican former Gov. George Pataki.

As word of Hinton’s hiring at what is described as a “substantial six-figure salary” began to circulate, many insiders at the state Capitol — long seen as a nest of special-interest influence-peddling — expressed shock and surprise, because Cuomo has repeatedly pledged to clean up what he has denounced as Albany’s “culture of corruption.’’

“Hinton’s hiring has people’s jaws dropping because this is seen as an obvious attempt by Mercury to gain even more influence with the Cuomo administration, just what the governor said he’d stop,’’ a business lobbyist told The Post.

“She’s obviously wired right in to Andrew Cuomo, and Mercury is making sure everyone knows it,’’ the source continued.

The home page of Mercury’s Web site lists Hinton’s name with a link to her biography, which claims she “worked as assistant secretary for public affairs for New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo,’’ but then oddly says that she did so “when he served as’’ federal housing secretary, which was from 1997 to 2001.

The biography notes that Hinton is “married to Howard Glaser,” although Glaser’s title isn’t listed.

Glaser, a well-known figure to lobbyists because he has authority over all state agencies and formulates major administration policies, met Hinton when he worked as a top aide to Cuomo at the US Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Hinton has not been shy about using her Cuomo connections to advance her personal business interests.

The New York Times reported in 2011 that Cuomo, as New York’s attorney general in 2009, used his office to threaten legal action against Chevron when Hinton was being paid $10,000 a month as a lobbyist for a group suing the oil giant in a multibillion-dollar court action alleging massive environmental damage in the Amazon.

“Andrew has no interest in doing this. He is doing this for me. Because I asked,’’ Hinton wrote in an e-mail about Cuomo’s intervention in the Chevron case, which became public as a result of the ongoing lawsuit, the Times said.

Ironically, while Hinton joined a firm with a long list of major business clients, she maintains a hostile-to-the-private-sector posture in a self-description on her personal Twitter page: “Taking on big oil, big banks & other big bullies one tweet at a time in Washington DC & New York.”

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Former Gov. Eliot Spitzer, in 2007 the bitter enemy of then-Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno (R-Rensselaer), appears to be showing some sympathy for his former foe.

Earlier this month, Spitzer ran into former Bruno press secretary John McArdle in Manhattan and asked how Bruno, whose conviction in 2009 on two counts of federal “honest services’’ fraud was thrown out based on a US Supreme Court decision, was doing.

When McArdle told him that Bruno, 84, was appealing prosecutors’ decision to retry him on essentially the same charges, Spitzer, a former New York attorney general, “agreed that this is clearly a case of double jeopardy and told McArdle to give Bruno his best,’’ said a witness to the encounter.

Spitzer did not respond to a request for comment.