“The center of gravity has shifted, and Andrew Cuomo will face a radically different Albany,” Working Families Party head Bill Lipton predicted last year, after a motley group of underfunded challengers knocked off most of the former Independent Democratic Conference that — despite its name — had kept Republicans in control of the state Senate.
“This was all rearranging deck chairs,” countered Cuomo, just new Democrats replacing old ones farther down on the same ticket where he’d steamrolled his own progressive challenger.
Listening to Cuomo claim credit nine months later for the “economic growth and social progress on an unprecedented scale” in that radially different Albany, where Democrats are finally in full control — and firm control given Trump’s place at the top of the ballot next year — it’s clear that Lipton was right.
This is the future that liberals want — and that Trump wants to run against, by the way — as the blue wave flooded over the dam Cuomo had maintained through his first two terms.
Notably, it’s a future that New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, who’s spent more time lately in South Carolina than Albany, nearly got indicted for trying to achieve after funneling money from his rich backers in 2014 to upstate Senate candidates who mostly fell short. “This could be like California,” he told me, “”where Democrats have consolidated power and have done some remarkable things with it.”
It’s happening here now, as a torrent of new laws — including congestion pricing, a vastly ambitious climate plan, sweeping new statewide rent regulations, driver’s licenses for undocumented immigrants, marijuana decriminalization (with outright legalization high on next year’s agenda), an end to cash bail, strong new sexual harassment laws, and much more — showed how political wins become governmental ones.
At an end-of-session briefing Friday, Cuomo framed Albany’s new progressive agenda as his agenda, and that agenda as a response to Trump, as “state government is here to protect people when the federal government won’t. This state government is here to protect people from the federal government’s attacks in many ways.”
Talking about the new Democrats who’d smashed through Albany’s incumbent protection racket and their stumbles in adjusting to power (most notably in withdrawing an automatic voter registration bill they belatedly realized clashed with providing licenses to undocumented immigrants), Cuomo implicitly admitted that their wins had indeed shifted the state’s center of gravity:
“The election that brought many of these people to office was driven by that lens (of people) saying, ‘we want protection from the Trump administration and a rejection of the Trump administration,’ and this agenda addresses that.”
Meantime, Cuomo suggested the new lawmakers were pulling the state hard, maybe too hard, to the left: “remember, you are a Democrat from New York City: There is no such thing as a general election. There is no such thing as a Republican threat if you are a New York City-based legislator.”
“Did they go too far?” Cuomo asked, rhetorically, before not quite answering that “I don’t think there is any legislation that Republican moderates would not have passed.” He made an exception for marijuana legalization — which didn’t pass this year with Democrats in control — and then added the driver’s license bill, which despite signing into law he said was really a political statement since he doubts undocumented immigrants will sign up until it’s certain the Trump administration won’t be able to subpoena the list of applicants or get it from county clerks opposed to it.
But even as he talks down his orchestra, the governor used to waving a $175-billion baton is promoting himself as the face of the new Albany sound.
“Change comes when the stars line up — and when people are ready to change,” he said.
“The political part is easy. The governmental part is hard: How do you do it, and what are the consequences, etcetera, but we did it.”
![In a narrow vote this week, the Federal Trade Commission approved a rule that will ban the vast majority of noncompete clauses by U.S. employers, which have long prevented workers from switching jobs or setting out on their own. In doing so, the agency did its duty to protect American economic dynamism and opportunity, nothing less, nothing more. We hope that’s the clear conclusion of the courts that will now rule on a lawsuit being brought by the Chamber of Commerce, which has strenuously supported this anticompetitive practice. Of the arguments that the business group and other opponents have rolled […]](https://www.nydailynews.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/GettyImages-1820955015.jpg?w=490 "In a narrow vote this week, the Federal Trade Commission approved a rule that will ban the vast majority of noncompete clauses by U.S. employers, which have long prevented workers from switching jobs or setting out on their own. In doing so, the agency did its duty to protect American economic dynamism and opportunity, nothing less, nothing more. We hope that’s the clear conclusion of the courts that will now rule on a lawsuit being brought by the Chamber of Commerce, which has strenuously supported this anticompetitive practice. Of the arguments that the business group and other opponents have rolled […]")
