No man is an island, the poet wrote. Clearly, he’d never met Andrew Cuomo — good old Governor Go-It-Alone.
Cuomo is a conscientious objector in America’s effort to achieve fundamental energy independence — if conscience is the right word, which it probably isn’t.
And for a lawyer sworn to protect the Constitution, he’s remarkably cavalier when it comes to the US Supreme Court and the value of precedent in the rule of law.
Sure, Cuomo always cites high principle as his motive for setting New York apart from the mainstream — especially on energy, gun control and campaign financing. But somehow, it always seems to boil down to low politics.
Rarely has that been more obvious than this week, as Cuomo struggles with a demand from the hard left wing of his party that he impose a full regime of campaign-finance “reform” on New York — never mind that a federal judge rendered the matter effectively moot just last week.
There are no lefties quite like New York lefties, of course. The present generation may not quite be the Stalinists that once prospered here, but it’s still strong enough to have cowed Cuomo into submission on several fronts.
To wit:
Energy
While the rest of the nation eagerly embraced new oil- and gas-extraction technologies that have produced stunning prosperity in economic backwaters and a measure of national energy independence not seen since the ’50s, Cuomo — most unpatriotically — flinched. In effect, he dodged the fracking draft. Now the Southern Tier continues to languish in Ozarkian poverty, but the left is happy — which is what matters most to the governor.
Guns
Cuomo, who once posed proudly with a shotgun to burnish his outdoorsman’s credentials, moved sharply in the other direction in the aftermath of the 2012 Sandy Hook murders — ramming through the so-called SAFE act, a near-confiscatory gun-control statute.
There’s always room for honest discussion on guns in America, but Cuomo brooked no debate on SAFE. Nor did he show any respect for two then-recent US Supreme Court decisions that moved the law in precisely the opposite direction — toward personal freedom and away from state control.
Again, Andrew played the outlier; again, the left was delighted.
Campaign finance
This is, to be fair, a tricky issue. Cuomo’s flirtations with the public financing of political campaigns — he says it’s a high priority, but he never seems truly serious about achieving it — bring him into conflict with a Legislature that wants no part of it and activists demanding a system modeled on New York City’s.
The city plan is fraud on stilts. It places virtually no restrictions on unions, even as it insidiously hobbles individuals and business. It’s ridiculously expensive — and has delivered the city to the Working Families Party, a coven of hard-left operatives only now testing the levers of real power.
Not surprisingly, they have big eyes for Albany — and if Cuomo is to be taken at his word, they soon will have their way. He promises to “keep fighting” to make New York “the largest state to pass public financing.”
Never mind, again, the Supreme Court’s recent rulings that have liberalized campaign-finance restrictions — that is, providing for more debate, not less.
Never mind, too, US District Judge Paul Crotty’s ruling two weeks ago tossing out key New York limits — guaranteeing that outside groups can spend freely, no matter the city or state’s public-finance rules. (The judge wasn’t happy about it, but he respected the high court’s rulings: “We know what the Supreme Court has held, whether we like it or not, and I’m bound to follow it.”)
And never mind the equally inconvenient fact that, while states are free to adopt laws more liberal than Supreme Court precedents, they can’t contradict such rulings.
Yet that is precisely the direction in which New York is headed — with Cuomo leading the parade.
He knows better. He just doesn’t care: The elevation of politics over principle has been the hallmark of the Cuomo tenure.
Yes, the governor has done good things — with his embrace of charter schools perhaps at the top of the list. But even then, Cuomo’s motives seem closely linked to the interests of rich donors who support charters; a glance at the governor’s campaign accounts reveals that quickly enough.
And yes, politicians whose principal interests are self-interests are thick on the ground. In this respect, at least, Cuomo travels with the pack. To a fault.
Which is a pity, because once upon a time, he seemed so far above all that.