Cuomo, like his father talks too much, maybe it’s the Italian in him, but once he opens his mouth he talks too long and it is only a matter of time before he puts his foot in.
So it was on a chilly Tuesday July 29th morning when I discovered his first verbal rebuttal to the four page Times article reporting the sputtering rage of members of the Moreland anti-corruption committee at being second guessed, ordered around and told that “they did not understand the budget or legislative processor or how the government worked” and finally got terminated nine months early.
The “governor’s office” that is the people paid to remove his foot from his mouth like Larry Schwartz labored over a formal multi-page rebuttal to the Times account of the committee member’s rage and then Cuomo verbally blew it.
Cuomo’s people said it was silly to expect the commission to investigate the man who set it up and Cuomo said yesterday “I never said it couldn’t investigate me – I never said that. See facts matter even for the New York Times.”
I read these words about an hour before Cuomo’s rapidly emerging rival, Zephyr Teachout arrived at 69 Charles for a photo session – she looked terrific (I offered to marry her) but she was not in her best pearls for the Publisher of WestView News but the New York Times Editorial Board she was seeing after lunch.
I have been before the Times editorial board years ago with Dr. S. I. Samoylenko of the Soviet Academy of Science and it is a regally formal event – an invitation goes out to the senior Times people and those who want show up and it takes place in this very large conference room with a huge table. When I attended about thirty Times “names” showed – all men, seemingly all in suspenders looking like New England small town editors – not one women – they then began to ego posture before their colleagues with polished stiletto like questions.
“Will you get their endorsement?” I asked Zephyr. She shot back, “I think they may not endorse Cuomo.” I asked if they were waiting for a stronger candidate to emerge and Teachout said, “There are no more candidates. It is just me, Astorino and (she mentioned another name that I did not catch and I can’t find him on Goggle so I guess he does not count).
Oh wow. Just Teachout and Westchester Executive, Ron Astorino on the ballet in November and we are already in August.
And Teachout has written a book on political corruption! When I asked about the publication date she pulled out a copy of the book and when I tried to wrest it from her. She said it was her only copy and I guess she wanted to have it on hand for the Times session which as I write this is just beginning.
Now when we interviewed de Blasio he had absolutely no chance (like 60 points behind) and shortly after the Times endorsed Quinn – a black day.
It would appear that the Times no longer likes Cuomo and the Republican’s haven’t really thought about a candidate perhaps because Cuomo has so much money and so many connections and this is projected as a ho-hum election.
But wait, as I explained to Zephyr (boy that is hard to spell) WestView News is a community newspaper and I am told the only way we can survive is to concentrate on community issues and that has been and still is returning a real trauma one emergency room and a hospital beds to back it up to the West Village.
Zephyr smiles while I talk to her and is extraordinarily receptive (she even quoted me from our first meeting) and she accepted that the only way to get big new money was not to build a hospital but to build the most advanced global medical electronics research center and have the hospital as a part of it.
No question, if Zephyr becomes governor she will have only academic knowledge of “how things are really done in Albany” and let us hope she does become governor and never learns what Cuomo knows.
