New York awoke Wednesday morning to find a new frog in the Democratic political pond. How will the old one take it?
Most likely, not well.
That’s because, in Andrew Cuomo’s eyes, he’s the Big Frog. Tadpoles need not apply.
But here comes Bill de Blasio, mayor-elect of New York City, with a convincing electoral mandate and an agenda sharply at odds with the governor’s.
So the political and policy conflicts now percolating just below the horizon promise to be epic.
That’s ironic, because there’s not a lot of ideology separating de Blasio and Cuomo — each is more liberal than the other, and each is tempered by the lessons of a lifetime spent in progressive politics.
But there are important differences.
One is that de Blasio is totally out of the closet with his leftism, while the governor still pretends to moderation in a state that believes no problem is so complicated that more free stuff can’t fix it.
Another is that Cuomo has already demonstrated that he can be rolled, which won’t help much in the scrums to come. For weakness compounds itself.
Who was more opposed to new taxes three years ago than Andrew Cuomo — especially new income taxes, and even a tax on millionaires? No one, that’s who.
But the governor melted in the face of polls showing that most New Yorkers are mad for millionaire-gouging — even if the threshold for pocket-picking was a lot lower than $1 million.
And so Cuomo, without pretense of apology, signed off on one the largest income-tax hikes in New York history — a $2 billion impost that was supposed to have been temporary, but which of course turned out to be anything but.
Now de Blasio has ridden the same populist polling to City Hall, promising another bite out of the “millionaire” apple even as Cuomo — heading into a re-election year — struggles to present a moderate image to upstate and (some) suburban voters.
Cuomo’s in no danger of losing, of course, but there is the matter of dominance in the frog pond. (And what that might mean for the governor’s national ambitions, now overshadowed by Hillary Clinton.)
In this respect, de Blasio has to like his odds.
He’ll bring hungry allies into the fight — not the least being municipal unions shaking off the torpor of the Giuliani-Bloomberg years and eager to renew their influence in Albany.
Cuomo says the state must be “business-friendly.” That’s been a pipe dream since Nelson Rockefeller’s days, but the unions will have none of it anyway. Not even rhetorically.
Thus, what are the odds that Albany — which must approve all city tax increases except for the property tax — will stand up to the pressure? Or that Cuomo will even try to?
Vanishing small. Hasn’t the governor already said he’s open to tax talks?
And no wonder: A public fight would have implications ranging far beyond a new millionaires’ tax. It would be about effective control of — or at least major influence in — the state Democratic Party.
Cuomo has been in unquestioned command of his party since his election three years ago. Twelve years of Republican George Pataki, followed by the insane Spitzer-Paterson incumbency, left a vacuum that he quickly filled.
Now folks are getting restless.
Cuomo’s inconsistent efforts at ethics reform (some would say hypocritical, actually) have cost him support among party leaders. Unions have been feeling a little unloved. And minority groups — black and Hispanic, especially — have long since lost patience with him, though none will say so publicly.
These are all natural de Blasio constituencies, especially the unions. Especially the teachers’ unions — which were particularly aggrieved by Cuomo’s imaginative, if effectively stopgap, property-tax cap.
Fold in less traditional special-interest pleaders — the Occupy movement, for example, as well as low-information Democrats likely to be blaming Cuomo for ObamaCare failings — and de Blasio’s opportunity to command real influence in the party becomes clear.
Whether he’ll seize his moment is an open question. But there is nothing in the mayor-elect’s ascent — from back-bench city councilman to powerless public advocate to back-of-the-pack Democratic mayoral contender to Tuesday’s electoral triumph — to suggest that he’s slow to capitalize on opportunities.
Plus, Bill de Blasio gets along with people.
And Andrew Cuomo, quite famously, does not.
Nor does he graciously share his lily pad.
Ribbit.