Cuomo 2020? NY budget boosts talk

ALBANY -- When Al Sharpton praised Gov. Andrew Cuomo last Monday about the state's new criminal-justice reforms, he put it this way: "To be a governor that can govern Donald Trump and Al Sharpton takes unique ability and versatility."

Two days later, Hillary Clinton said this about Cuomo as she touted his free SUNY tuition plan: "This is exactly the image that progressive leadership believes in and delivers on."

The comments came just days after Cuomo made good on several top priorities in the state budget and added to growing speculation that the Democratic governor is eyeing a presidential run in 2020.

"This was a good budget politically for Andrew Cuomo," said Steven Greenberg, a spokesman for the Siena College Polling Institute. "He will make the argument it has nothing to do with politics. But there is that old cliché, good government is good politics. In this case, the governor can claim both."

The free SUNY tuition plan, in particular, garnered national headlines that boosted Cuomo's profile. Not only did he appear with Clinton in Queens to do a ceremonial bill signing, he first launched the proposal in January with Bernie Sanders, who battled Clinton for the presidential nomination in 2016.

Cuomo's agenda, though, has come with criticism. Some lawmakers are questioning whether Cuomo is aiming at a national audience at the expense of the state, and the SUNY plan has drawn some jeers for fine print -- such as requiring students to live in New York after college to retain the free tuition.

When budget negotiations lingered past the March 31 deadline, Sen. Rich Funke, R-Perinton, Monroe County, said in a statement: "Everyone knows the governor wants to go to Washington, but we didn't know he also wants to bring the worst of Washington dysfunction back home to us."

Cuomo spokesman Rich Azzopardi disputed what caused the budget delay.

"We ended up with a great budget, but make no mistake: it was late ‎‎because legislators dragged their feet and stubbornly refused to put their ideologies aside," Azzopardi said.

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Balancing agenda

Since taking office in 2011, Cuomo has sought to distance himself from the national political conversation. During his first term, he rarely left the state or did national media interviews. And he shunned mention of presidential ambitions, pointing to the pitfalls the speculation had on his late father, the three-term governor Mario Cuomo.

The elder Cuomo ruminated publicly over whether to run for president in 1991, famously leaving an airplane in Albany that was destined for New Hampshire. He ran for a fourth term as governor and lost.

The younger Cuomo, though, faces a wide-open field in 2020 for the Democratic nomination and has used his major role as the governor of one of the nation's largest states to weigh in on national politics under the Trump administration and the GOP-led Congress.

He has boosted contraception rights in New York, added $10 million the state budget to provide legal counsel to immigrants who may face deportation and touted the free SUNY tuition as the first of its kind in the nation.

That's on top of him talking about past "progressive" achievements, such as New York becoming the largest state in the nation to legalize same-sex marriage in 2011 and last year adopting a $15 an hour minimum wage by 2021.

"This state, and this nation, we say the dream lives and not just the dream of education, but the dream that you can open your arms and you can embrace people from all over the globe, and you can say we welcome you to come to New York," Cuomo said Wednesday with Clinton at his side.

"We welcome you to come to America, immigrants, educated, income, rich poor; Come join the family of New York and we will work with you to do better because when you do better we all do better. That’s the dream."

Seeking higher office

Cuomo, 59, is positioning himself well for a potential presidential run, said Larry Sabato, a political science professor at the University of Virginia.

Democrats may want to look outside Washington for their next presidential candidate after Sanders and Clinton in 2016, rather than again look to a U.S. senator, like Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts or Cory Booker of New Jersey, he said.

"Governors may look pretty good by 2020 because they are problem solvers, and they haven’t been as consumed by these controversial national issues as these senators have," Sabato said.

"And of course as the governor of a big state, Cuomo has access to lots of money, which a presidential campaign needs to get just off the ground."

The 2020 campaign is so far off that it is hard to predict Cuomo's standing then, analysts warned, but he raised eyebrows recently at the state Capitol when he hired a number of former aides to Clinton and former President Obama.

2018 awaits

Cuomo's popularity hit a two-year high in February, according to Siena, yet his bid for a third term could be more competitive than it may initially appear -- despite Democrats holding a two-to-one enrollment edge over Republicans in New York.

Not only will he face a Republican who could seize on the dissatisfaction in parts of upstate still struggling with economic problems, Cuomo may also face a fight on his left.

In 2014, Westchester County Executive Rob Astorino narrowly beat Cuomo outside New York City, and Astorino may run against Cuomo again.

Also in 2014, Cuomo had to win a Democratic primary against Zephyr Teachout, a then-largely unknown Fordham Law professor who did surprisingly well.

Teachout almost won the nomination from the small, but influential Working Families Party. If a candidate next year could win the union-backed party's line, it could set up a competitive three-way race for Cuomo to contend with in November 2018, experts said.

"There’s a constituency who is not going to be satisfied" with Cuomo, Gerald Benjamin, a political science professor at SUNY New Paltz, said last month.

"He has to find his majority. He’s not going to make the far left of his party happy."

So what does Cuomo think of all the presidential speculation?

When asked by reporters recently about it in the context of his budget priorities, he offered this response:

"I say, ‘Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.’"