An AGGRESSIVE upstate lawmaker who backs gun rights and Texas-style low taxes and calls Gov. Cuomo a “bully” has emerged as a likely — some say certain — Republican candidate against Cuomo next year, The Post has learned.
Rensselaer County Assemblyman Steve McLaughlin, 49, a former commercial pilot who in February compared Cuomo to Hitler over the way the governor rammed through the anti-gun SAFE Act, has privately told legislative colleagues he’s planning to run.
McLaughlin, who works part-time as a salesman for a solar-energy firm, was introduced last week at an anti-SAFE Act rally in Albany “as the next governor of the state of New York.” State GOP Chairman Ed Cox recently described him to an associate as being on his “short list” of gubernatorial candidates.
“I am considering running for governor,” McLaughlin told The Post.
“It took 12 years for people to get sick of Mario Cuomo, but upstate and, I think, on Long Island, people are already sick of Andrew Cuomo.”
“There are 4 million gun owners in this state, and I don’t know one who is going to vote for Cuomo.
“I’ve had people, including city money people, come to me and say, ‘If you get in, we can raise you a lot of money very quickly.’ ”
McLaughlin promised a spirited race — if he does run — as he called himself “a man of the people,” in contrast to Cuomo, who he said was “the very definition of a bully. I personally don’t find Cuomo to be a very likeable person.”
He claimed many upstate Democrats in the Assembly have also told him of their dislike of Cuomo.
“They say he’s a pain in the ass and is always trying to follow a path of dictating and bullying people,” McLaughlin said.
He’d face enormous hurdles in running against Cuomo, who, while his poll numbers are falling, remains popular in the city and the suburbs and has a $22 million war chest.
State Board of Elections records place McLaughlin’s war chest at $4,396.
Republicans are also bitterly divided over the SAFE Act, which was supported by Senate Republican Leader Dean Skelos of Nassau County and nearly all other GOP senators in the city and Long Island.
State Republicans privately concede McLaughlin could wind up being their nominee by default, because few in their party believe Cuomo can be beaten.
Shortly after Cuomo used a “message of necessity” to rush the SAFE Act through the Legislature, McLaughlin compared the tactics to anti-democratic actions taken by Hitler, Mussolini and Russia under Vladimir Putin.
But after widespread criticism, McLaughlin quickly apologized, calling the comparison “an honest mistake” made in the “heat of the moment.”
*
Cuomo, meanwhile, was being described as a “bully’’ and worse by horse-racing interests over the weekend because of his last-minute bill designed to intimidate owners of the Aqueduct and other racinos and discourage them from opposing his plan for a constitutional amendment legalizing full-blown casinos.
The racinos claim Cuomo’s plan, which includes granting regional monopolies to three Indian tribes, would put them at an unfair disadvantage, and they’re considering launching a campaign to have the proposed amendment defeated at the polls in November.
If the amendment is defeated, Cuomo’s bill would punish racinos with additional competition by authorizing the governor to grant a set of new racino licenses.
“Cuomo’s plan would screw the racino, and now he’s planning to screw them even more if they oppose it? This is something you’d expect to see in Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela,’’ said one racino exec.