Opinion

The governor of NYC

US Census Bureau data last week revealed that, for the first time in memory, more people are moving into The Bronx than are leaving. This is good news for that economically battered borough — and for New York City generally.

But those same stats show ever more tumbleweeds blowing through Upstate’s leafy lanes — and that dichotomy goes a long way toward explaining Andrew Cuomo’s slow-motion evolution from Different Democrat to just another poll-driven blue-state pol.

Let’s be clear: The city numbers aren’t huge. In The Bronx, net population growth of 115 was noted since 2010 — while the city itself grew by 160,000, roughly 2 percent, with immigration and a marginal rise in the birth rate accounting for the higher numbers.

It may be too early to declare a trend in the city; sadly, that’s not true of the numbers for Upstate, which continue a dreary, decades-long population collapse.

A full 35 of the state’s 62 counties lost more people than they gained during the three-year period, with the overall non-New York City numbers again dropping.

Meanwhile — and this is important — the state Labor Department last week reported that January unemployment in New York hovered just a tad below an eye-popping 10 percent — with Upstate again feeling the most pain.

The economics, the demographics and the sociology of all of these numbers will keep the economists, demographers and sociologists gainfully engaged for many months to come.

But the politicians, Cuomo chief among them, already have developed a strategy for dealing with them. That is:

* Ignore the dismal employment stats.

* And exploit the population disparities.

That’s the only rational explanation for the latest batch of economically corrosive policies emerging from Albany: Cuomo’s double-cross on the expiration of New York’s massive 2011 income-tax hike; his obdurate refusal even to try to lighten the tax burden on local governments; the Legislature’s job-killing minimum-wage hike — and so on.

But of all the disappointments that Cuomo himself has brought to office, his duplicity on hydraulic fracturing — fracking — sits right at the top of the list.

The process is a do-or-die economic issue for Upstate, particularly for the Southern Tier, and Cuomo coyly showed a little pro-fracking ankle during the 2010 campaign.

Since then, though, he has dithered and delayed as an astonishingly dishonest fright campaign has tipped public opinion from modestly pro-development to a so-far equally modest anti-fracking plurality.

And, with various Cuomo-controlled state agencies keeping the matter under iron control — er, “study” — a final determination is unlikely to be made until sometime after the governor’s 2014 re-election effort.

Meanwhile, Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia continue to roll in dough from fracking royalties and related job growth.

And, again, Upstate withers.

But for Cuomo — and for New York Democrats generally — all of this is of scant consequence. For their constituency — New York City voters — believes that natural gas comes from a knob on the kitchen stove, and that tax revenues can be increased whenever necessary simply by picking another “millionaire’s” pocket.

This strategy won’t work forever, of course — but for the moment New York’s shifting demographics speak to its political efficacy.

That is, from 2002 to 2012 total voter registration statewide dropped about 4 percent. But overall Democratic enrollment jumped nearly 13 percent — as overall Republican enrollment fell roughly 11 percent.

Such numbers are far from dispositive, of course. They don’t take into account third-party enrollment, for one, nor do they necessarily mirror voter attitudes at any given moment.

But they do more or less reflect the population shifts found in the new Census Bureau numbers — and the message to New York’s benighted political class is clear: Don’t worry about the Upstate appleknockers, boys and girls. The action’s in the city.

And that’s likely to remain so for some time to come. Unless something were to occur to change the economic and demographic calculus — such as a fracking-fueled Upstate revival that could eventually restore some semblance of political balance to the Empire State.

Too cynical?

Well, maybe. But, so far, no one has ever gone broke betting with the graspers and grabbers who run government in New York.

At one point, it seemed that Andrew Cuomo was above all that. But the lengthening list of the missed opportunities that have marked his tenure — and a glance at who benefits from those miscues — makes it clear that Cuomo wasn’t all that special in the first place.

Certainly he has seen his opportunities, and he has taken them.

A pity, that.