city & state — No ve m b e r 24 , 2014
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meeting, Speyer explained, because like them, Cuomo wanted to keep the State Senate in Republican hands. If the party ran a candidate who could potentially beat Cuomo in 2014, however, the governor would spend $40 million to defeat that candidate and Senate Republicans. Skelos responded first: The person they were considering was Westchester County Executive Rob Astorino, he said. At this point, Astorino had not yet won re-election in Westchester. “Well, that is the one candidate you can’t run,” said Speyer. It was “a load of shit,” Lawler jumped in to say, that they could not run a real candidate without risking losing the governor’s support for the Senate. After a heated back-and-forth, the meeting ended with no agreement. Some time later Speyer received a call from Cox, who is the son-in-law of former President Richard Nixon: Astorino was their candidate, Cox said, and he was running. Jumping quickly off the phone, Speyer called back 20 minutes later with a direct message from Gov. Cuomo: “FUCK YOU! FUCK REPUBLICANS! AND FUCK RICHARD-FUCKING-NIXON! I WILL GO AFTER YOU!” Asked about the exchange, Cuomo spokesman Rich Azzopardi said, “That is a reporter’s conspiratorial delusion.” Eventually the governor would commit to a progressive agenda to win the backing of the Working Families Party, which was on the verge of endorsing Fordham professor Zephyr Teachout to punish Cuomo for his centrist approach to governance and propensity for collaborating with the GOP. Facing the defection of the left— the faction that votes most prolifically in Democratic primaries—Cuomo pledged publicly to push for a veritable wish list of liberal priorities including campaign finance reform, the DREAM Act and a bill codifying abortion rights in New York State. More importantly, Cuomo agreed to put his weight behind state Democrats’ foremost aim: taking over complete control of the Legislature by winning the State Senate. However, critics charge that once Cuomo got the WFP nod, he paid little more than lip service to his promise. When it came time for the governor to actually campaign for the Democrats’ Senate candidates, Cuomo failed to show up for incumbents in key races like Cecilia Tkacyzk’s and Terry Gipson’s in the Hudson Valley. While he did make a campaign appearance for himself in Rochester during which
he spoke warmly of Democratic State Sen. Ted O’Brien, who was at his side, some viewed the half-hearted effort as too little too late. All three incumbents lost, swinging control of the Senate firmly into Republican hands. Insiders say that was likely the governor’s hope all along. Just as he had used it in his first term, a Republican-controlled Senate would continue to provide Cuomo with both a foil to blame for measures he could not or did not actually want to pass, and the ability to frame his victories as bipartisan achievements, a valuable record for a potential candidate for national office to claim in an era of fiercely partisan gridlock. THE RISE OF CHRISTIE Like Cuomo, who withdrew when he first ran for governor in 2002 after making a blunderous remark about George Pataki, Chris Christie suffered setbacks on his eventual road to success in New Jersey. In 1994 Christie was elected to the Morris County Board of Chosen Freeholders. He then ran unsuccessfully for the state Assembly. Three years later, after picking fights with people on the county legislative board and facing difficulties, in particular with members of his own party, he was voted off the Freeholder board. In 2001, however, Christie’s old friend George W. Bush tapped him to be Newark’s U.S. Attorney. (Christie had befriended the younger Bush
while volunteering for the elder Bush’s 1992 presidential campaign.) In his seven years on the job, Christie truly shone, amassing a staggering record of convictions against public officials. He won all 130 of his public corruption cases. During some of these high profile prosecutions—which included convictions of former New Jersey Senate President John Lynch and Cory Booker’s predecessor as Newark’s mayor, Sharpe James—Christie also proved adept at holding blustery press conferences. New Jersey may be essentially a blue state in its presidential vote, but its selection of governors over the years has been bipartisan. Republican governors such as Tom Kean and Christine Todd Whitman thrived for two terms each. By contrast, at the height of the financial crisis in 2008, incumbent Democrat Gov. Jon Corzine was wildly unpopular. With many financial back office jobs located in New Jersey, it is often those lower-level employees who are thrown out the door first when mass layoffs hit, and this was the case back in 2008. And as a result, New Jersey was hit particularly hard as unemployment skyrocketed. Though he had previously been head of Goldman Sachs, Corzine was not well-regarded by the business community, which was unhappy over his raising of the state’s sales tax in 2006. The fight over that tax increase was so contentious that New Jersey shut down its government for six days. Eventually Corzine got his 1
percent increase, but though he had won the battle, he had lost the war. Rumblings about Christie’s political ambitions had begun shortly after he became U.S. Attorney, and key business community members such as MetLife’s Tom Considine (who served on a number of boards) decided to back Christie for governor in 2009. To avoid antagonizing Corzine and the Democrats, Considine and others helped Christie stealthily, funneling money through the national Republican Governors Association. The organization would pour millions into Christie’s ultimately triumphant race. Christie would later name Considine his commissioner of Banking and Insurance. A BRIDGE BETWEEN GOVERNORS What happened between Cuomo and Christie in regard to the Bridgegate scandal remains a mystery. In September 2013 Cuomo’s handpicked executive director at the bi-state Port Authority, Pat Foye, sent an email identifying lane closures on the Fort Lee side of the George Washington Bridge in September 2013 as a violation of law. “I believe this hasty and ill-advised decision violates Federal Law and the laws of both States,” Foye wrote. However, Foye did not inform outside authorities about this potential violation of law—which is now under investigation by the U.S. Attorney in Newark, Paul Fishman. Accounts
What happened between Cuomo and Christie in regard to the Bridgegate scandal remains a mystery.
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