Andrew Cuomo Forgot To Make Friends

It’s hard to know exactly what former mayor Ed Koch would think of the scandal that forced Andrew Cuomo from office. That said, it’s likely a safe bet that the only thing that he would find surprising is that Cuomo actually resigned.

“He doesn’t own up to his mistakes, he doesn’t seem capable of admitting things,” Koch said around a quarter century ago. The former mayor was thinking back to 1977 when he was first elected mayor. His chief opponent at the time was Andrew’s dad, Mario. It was a close race made closer by the sudden appearance right before the primary of fliers reading, “Vote for Cuomo not the Homo.”

At the time, Koch and many others believed that it was Andrew who was behind the fliers. Though only 19 years old at the time, he was a major advisor for his father’s campaign and had a reputation for being willing to bring the fight.

“It’s politics, not a tea party,” Koch remembered. “It’s dirty at times. We all do things maybe we wish we hadn’t. But there are lines.”

Even though Andrew and his father always denied any involvement, Koch maintained that even if they hadn’t been behind the fliers, they could have denounced them, which they didn’t.

“They wanted the Catholic vote,” Koch said. “The vote was all that mattered, not how he got it.”

It wouldn’t be until 2006 when Andrew was running for Attorney General that Mario reached out to Koch to make amends. Mario wanted Koch to endorse his son, which Koch did.

“You forgive but you never forget,” Koch said, pointing out that the approach from the Cuomos only came when they needed something.

In his more than three decades in politics, Andrew has built the reputation of someone focused on the endgame. After helping his dad win the governor’s race in 1982 – defeating Koch in the primary in a bit of a turnaround – Andrew was placed in charge of the transition. He made it clear that he was very much aware of who had supported his dad and who hadn’t, rewarding the former and punishing the latter.

It was a pattern that he would follow again and again over the years. Being politically beneficial to him appeared to often be the motivating factor rather than whether it would help fellow Democrats or the state.

There was the time in his first term when he urged four Democratic members of the state senate who were not working well with members of their own party to ally themselves with Republicans instead. It was a move that hampered efforts to reform the criminal justice system and enact stronger tenant protections.

When Cuomo was first elected in 2010, it was partially on a platform of good government and rooting out corruption, he followed that up by creating a commission that he promised would be independent. That held true until the commission started looking at a political consulting firm that counted many Democrats including Cuomo as clients.

Cuomo responded by dispatching an aide to tell the commission that maybe they wanted to look in a different direction. When they did, and started looking at allegations involving members of the administration, the commission was dismantled.

Then there’s the famous anecdote that State Senator Liz Krueger shared with the New York Times about Cuomo maintaining a "do not yell at" list. She told the paper that a top aide to Cuomo had said it was “very small.”

A person who has been in the political orbit of the Cuomos since Mario was a lawyer and Andrew was in elementary school said that Andrew, his temper, and his desire to punish perceived enemies have always been his own worst enemy. As a result, he says that while Andrew has accomplished a lot as governor – finally making changes to the criminal justice system and legalizing same-sex marriage – his yelling and bullying drowns out the good things.

“He’s been so focused on the power that he forgot to make friends,” this person said.