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Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo is ripping entire chapters out of the playbook of the Democratic party’s far left faction in his bid to become New York City’s next mayor, according to critics and a review of his positions by The Post.
Cuomo — who resigned in 2021 amid a barrage of sexual harassment allegations he vehemently denies — began soliciting key powerbrokers to support his political comeback last year — but began his leftward tilt as polling for the Democratic primary showed his strongest challenger is extreme left Queens Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani .
“He knows his past positions are incredibly unpopular with Democratic primary voters, who he is trying to trick and fool,” said Bill Neidhardt, a former top aide to ex-Mayor Bill de Blasio who is now part of a political action committee trying to get Mamdani elected mayor.
In 2014, Cuomo vehemently rejected avowed Marxist de Blasio’s push to launch a universal “pre-K” program in the NYC public schools, telling The Post at the time “I don’t think there is a rationale for it” and that it wouldn’t be fair to other cities in the state to tax the rich so only de Blasio’s constituents benefit.
Cuomo, still the frontrunner in the race to unseat incumbent Mayor Eric Adams, did team up with other top state lawmakers that same year to provide $300 million to expand the city’s prekindergarten program. He is now pledging as a mayoral candidate to make the pre-K and 3-K programs created under de Blasio “truly universal.”
“He was one the earliest opponents for universal pre-K, so for him to say he’d do anything to expand it is pure chicanery,” said Neidhardt.
Other lefty policy shifts include:
- Pushing to add 100 to 200 psychiatric beds to the city’s hospital system after reducing the number of psychiatric beds in state hospitals by 28% from 2011 to 2021 as governor.
- Promising all NYC residents access to “affordable health care,” despite enacting measures in 2020 aimed at cutting $2.5 billion from the state’s Medicaid program.
- Suddenly becoming noncommittal on expanding a cap limiting the number of charter schools statewide to 460 after avidly supporting the idea as governor, all while trying to score an endorsement from the powerful United Federation of Teachers, which opposes expanding the cap.
- Declaring just last week during a candidate forum that he supports the powerful UFT’s campaign to roll the retirement age of “Tier 6” public employees hired after 2012 back to 55 years old, when, as governor, he pushed through major pension reform raising the retirement age for these workers to 63.
- As governor, Cuomo had a long history of raiding the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s budget to offset other state spending, including famously cutting a $4.9 million check in 2016 to help bail out three upstate ski resorts suffering financially from warm weather. But two months ago, he released a campaign transportation platform that includes exploring the creation of permanent free bus routes pending a pilot program and expanding half-priced MetroCard access for low-income residents.
The transit proposal sounded all too familiar to Mamdani, who successfully lobbied for a free bus pilot program serving all five boroughs that ended last year after state funding ran out.
“They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery,” said Mamdani in a March Instagram post poking fun at Cuomo. “….Just call me next time—we’ve got so many more ideas I could share!”
Cuomo as governor worked with his party’s far-left faction to pass a series of controversial criminal justice reforms that he still supports – including eliminating cash bail for most misdemeanors and non-violent felonies.
He also has a history of catering to the “Defund the Police” movement.
During the 2020 Black Lives Matters protests, he issued an executive order to strip future state funding from the NYPD and other police departments statewide that “refuse[d] to commit to a wide-ranging plan for reform.” However, no funding from these agencies ever withheld.
He also signed legislation in June 2020 sought by anti-police activists to repeal a section of state criminal law which shielded police disciplinary records from public view.
And he has come under heavy fire for calling the “Defund the Police” movement “a legitimate school of thought,” though his campaign has repeatedly claimed those remarks were taken out of context.
Cuomo also has a history of “defunding” the New York State Police. During the fiscal year beginning April 2011, he cut the agency’s operating budget by $45.8 million — or 6%.
But with Adams, a retired NYPD captain, dropping out of the June 24 Democratic primary and opting to seek re-election in November as an independent, Cuomo is also trying to position himself as a law-and-order candidate.
In March, he announced that if elected, he plans to increase the size of the NYPD’s police force to 39,000 by reducing overtime costs and hiring 5,000 additional officers.
“A larger police presence is a deterrent to crime, improves response rates to 911 calls and gives the police the resources they need to solve crimes,” Cuomo said at the time.
“Andrew Cuomo fled to the Hamptons after destroying this city—catering to the ‘Defund the Police’ crowd by forcing communities to ‘reimagine’ policing, slashing psychiatric beds, giving us congestion pricing, gutting pensions for public workers, and unleashing chaos with his reckless bail reform,” said presumptive Republican mayoral nominee and Guardian Angels founder Curtis Sliwa.
Cuomo also now opposes the controversial $9 congestion toll to enter parts of Manhattan – after being a staunch supporter of the scheme when he called the shots in Albany — and is distancing himself from rent reform legislation he signed into law in 2019.
“Andrew Cuomo changes positions like a snake sheds his skin — every month or two, and purely for self-preservation,” said Monica Klein, a longtime political strategist for Democratic and Working Families Party candidates now assisting the mayoral campaign of state Sen. Zellnor Myrie (D-Brooklyn).
Cuomo spokesman Jason Elan defended the ex-governor’s record on pre-K, saying he enacted a pilot program prior to de Blasio taking office in 2014 and that as mayor he’ll make sure pre-K “is available in every corner of this great city.”
Elan also said Mamdani’s criticism is “rich coming from a silver spoon socialist who voted against his own measure to fund a free bus pilot in the state budget and then failed to get it extended.”
“There’s been a ton of revisionist history and gas-lighting during this race, but these silly attacks aren’t going to work,” he added.
Additional reporting by Craig McCarthy, Carl Campanile and Vaughn Golden.
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