You know you’re in for a rough mayoralty when the weatherman predicts that you’re a one-termer just 43 days into the gig.
Especially when the weatherman is the always-affable Al Roker, who last week lashed out at Mayor de Blasio’s clumsy effort to blame a weather-related schools-closure flap on faulty meteorology. “Long range de Blasio forecast: 1 term,” Roker predicted.
Roker backed right off, as well he should have — but the incident wouldn’t have been more than a curiosity if de Blasio hadn’t spent his first six weeks in office stumbling about like a drunk in the dark.
The rookie mayor had already picked two unwise fights with Gov. Cuomo — one over early-education funding, the other concerning health-care and hospital policy. This was a mistake not so much because the governor is a rip-your-guts-out political tactician as because Albany holds the constitutional high ground in such disputes. It almost always wins, regardless of the merits.
And then there was the matter of de Blasio’s eye-popping interference in the arrest of a minister in Brooklyn. The details are well known — the mayor made a phone call on behalf of Bishop Orlando Findlayter, an early and ardent supporter, who was then released in contravention of standard policy.
De Blasio thinks it’s no big deal: “I thought it was appropriate to make an inquiry,” he said, “and I got a response and that’s the end of the story.” Except that it likely isn’t. And here’s why.
The mayor was alerted to the arrest of the minister by City Hall’s political hammer, Emma Wolfe — who clearly hadn’t cut Police Commissioner Bill Bratton in on what was happening.
This shouldn’t surprise: Wolfe, to be charitable, is as hard-left a specimen as is likely to be found in any mainstream government — if, in fact, the de Blasio administration is a mainstream government.
So why should a mere cop expect the courtesy of consultation in such a situation? Even when that cop comes with the credentials and credibility of Bill Bratton?
Oh, and the ego.
Bratton is unlikely to forget this unforced insult — which could cost de Blasio dearly going forward given how little maneuvering room he has on criminal-justice issues.
Then again, there is the wholly unnecessary Cuomo-de Blasio fight over early-education funding.
In general terms, it’s a garden-variety squabble over whether the city should “tax the rich” to add $530 million to a $27 billion Department of Education budget — a hike of less than 2 percent — to pay for a poorly articulated, barely understood mini-bonanza for the United Federation of Teachers.
City Hall insists that it should — but as Gov. Cuomo is offering state dollars to pay the tab anyway, the de Blasio contrivance has little to do with educational opportunity. It’s about nicking “the rich.”
A more experienced — or less ideological — politician would’ve simply accepted the governor’s offer and moved on.
Instead, de Blasio deployed his wife, the formidably left-leaning activist Chirlane McCray:
“Make no mistake, this is the defining civil-rights issue of our day,” McCray, who is African-American, told 200 black ministers last week. “Universal pre-kindergarten and after-school programs are essential to our children’s future, are essential to our future.”
If she’s right — that is, if her husband’s inchoate pre-K scheme is the Selma, Ala., of our time, and if Andrew Cuomo is New York’s own Bull Connor — then actual civil rights “in our day” are far more secure than anyone might have imagined.
But she’s not right, of course. Not even close.
Seasoned pols normally work such things out among themselves, quietly. Now Cuomo is not-so-quietly seething — even if conciliatory words were exchanged in Albany over the weekend — and it’s going to be very difficult for Team de Blasio to walk back McCray’s race-card-wielding provocation.
Again, governors and mayors in New York are not so much oil and water as they are matter and anti-matter. Their fundamental interests are virtually always in conflict — think Rockefeller and Lindsay, or Pataki and Giuliani, for starters — and be assured that this match-up will be no exception.
De Blasio needs to keep in mind that Cuomo’s ability to punish the state legislators necessary to make the mayoral agenda work is exceeded only by the governor’s ability to reward lawmakers for loyalty.
The mayor is not without powerful allies — an array of unions, for starters — but Cuomo is holding most of the cards. If he doesn’t blink, he probably wins.
Just as de Blasio, if he continues to indulge the hubris he brought to office, likely loses.
It’s not much more complicated than that.