New York Attorney Gen. Andrew Cuomo may be the only player emerging from the AIG mess as a star.
For a politician, of course, it doesn’t get any better than crusading against fat-cat bonuses subsidized by taxpayers. It’s a little like being dealt a straight flush in a card game.
But if anyone can be said to be riding the populist rage and emerging with real street creds, it is Cuomo, the 51-year-old son of a former governor, who fought to get the list of AIG executives who received bonuses and also went to court to pry similar information out about Merrill Lynch’s $3.6 billion bonus payout.
For Cuomo, the timing couldn’t be better. Just a few months ago, he had appeared stuck after being passed over by New York Gov David Paterson to fill the unexpired Senate term of Hillary Rodham Clinton.
This was the guy once viewed as a political wunderkind, who had been credited with putting together Mario Cuomo’s successful gubernatorial campaign in 1982 and who had gone on to work as Secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development under Bill Clinton.
But there was also suspicion over what some saw as his sense of political entitlement as the hard-charging scion of one political dynasty who had wed into a second with his ill-fated and now-ended marriage to Kerry Kennedy, and who was trying to go places too quickly.
In any case, when Cuomo ran for governor in 2002 against former state comptroller H. Carl McCall, then seeking to become the state’s first black governor, he got his head handed to him. Cuomo was accused of going after McCall personally, which especially alienated members of the African-American community.
Cuomo eventually withdrew before the primary after it became clear McCall had the support of the party establishment. McCall went on to lose to Republican George Pataki in the general election.
After that experience, some believe Cuomo would be loathe to tackle another African-American leader in a Democratic primary.
But if Paterson should self-destruct, as he appears to be doing lately with no help from anyone else, then Cuomo is certainly uniquely positioned to jump into the vacuum.
Cuomo has been closemouthed about what may be next.
In some ways, his strategy recalls that of Eliot Spitzer who, as New York attorney general built a reputation as the Sheriff of Wall Street. Spitzer’s profile as a crusader allowed him to virtually walk into the governor’s mansion in 2006 - winning the primary with 82 percent and the general election with 70 percent.
But while Cuomo appears to be following that playbook, his style is different from Spitzer’s. Cuomo comes on tough, but also knows when to pull back – for instance, deciding to withhold the release of the names of the AIG executives who received bonuses, until he reviewed their security concerns.
Even as he is mum about specifics, Cuomo is raising money for a campaign committee named “Cuomo 2010″ and apparently drawing support from such unlikely donors as former Republican Sen. Alfonse D’Amato and former state Republican Party Chairman Pat Barrett, who held a $1,000-a-ticket fundraiser for him, according to the New York Post.
Stay tuned.
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1 Comments
#1. Kelley 05.01.2009
Yeah…Barrett has a bucket of money tied up in Lake Placid Development and needs help from whoever is Governor,,,his son worked for Pataki. They will probably elect a Democrat and Barrett is hedging his bets Too much should not be read into this fundraiser held by an opportunist and a nasty one at that!!!
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