By Alan S. Chartock

Everyone wants to know whether Carl Paladino can really be elected Governor. The answer is yes, he can. That is astounding to everyone who thinks he is a mad, crazy, Tea Party kind of guy—a rip-off artist who has made tons from government programs while preaching the gospel of fiscal conservatism. You can pick and choose among all the reasons not to vote for the guy, but recent polls show that Paladino is moving up. How can that be when the newspapers are doing one exposé or editorial after another about him? Of course, newspapers are not well thought of. We have seen several polls indicating that journalists enjoy widespread contempt.

How is it that when Andrew Cuomo is doing the right thing by not getting down in the mud with the guy, Paladino’s numbers keep going up? The respected Marist Poll shows him 15 points behind among likely voters.

Things get stranger and stranger. I have a friend who makes his living selling legal guns. He tells me that he is voting for Andrew Cuomo. He says that the other guy is just too crazy. That would fly in the face of the rising poll numbers for Paladino. The secret, of course, is that the middle-class voter sees the “system” as conspiring against them. All they know is that no matter who is in power, they are the ones getting screwed. Their taxes are going up, their schools are characterized as not working, too many of their politicians are on the take and the in-groups in the legislature are more concerned about preserving their status than about helping the people. What’s more, voters are feeling more and more that they are being “played.” They get two choices, Republicans or Democrats, and no matter who is in office, things seem to stay the same.

People want to know why media magnate Rupert Murdoch, a fiscal conservative, is backing Andrew Cuomo and has been since the Attorney General got into the race. They are genuinely puzzled about the fact that Murdoch is supporting the son of Mario when he did more than anyone else to get Mario out of office in 1994. A few potential answers to the puzzle are that Andrew has been moving seriously to the right; Murdoch’s kids seem to have far more social conscience than he does; and Cuomo senior saved the New York Post when he supported giving Post owner Rupert a waiver on the prohibition against owning both a newspaper and a television station in the same market.

The better answer is that we have no idea. It could just be, as Woodrow Wilson once said, “…secret agreements secretly arrived at” (implicitly or explicitly). That’s why it was no surprise that one of Murdoch’s top political guys, Frederic U. Dicker, got in the face of Paladino and started the “War of Two Mutts” that was seen on TV and heard around the world on virtually every radio station. Dicker has done this kind of gonzo journalism again and again and it always gets the desired results. But let’s just remember who is pressing the Dicker buttons.

Many journalists know that the in-your-face Dicker performance was unprofessional but they supported him anyway, so threatening is Paladino, the rogue politician. So Joe Shmoe, living in Levittown and madder than hell about everything, may just want to send a message. Joe’s, “Get off my back. Get away from me. Go away!” may be just like Paladino’s, “I’m madder than hell and you should be, too!” message. It will not be the first time in history that someone has fallen for the off-the-wall politico message. When people get angry enough they just say, “Nothing can be worse than this.”

Andrew is between a rock and a hard place. If he comes out and fights Paladino, he is the old “Bully Boy” Andrew, and if he takes the reasonable path and doesn’t fight, he is disdained for not being combative enough. As of now, he seems to be holding his fire but if the polls continue to narrow, Andrew may have to come out and fight. That would mean debating, which is something he clearly does not want to do because it gives the man the Daily News calls “Crazy Carl” an even bigger platform. These are very dangerous times. The voters are in a state of near rebellion against what they think is a rigged system and that’s why Paladino could win. It all depends on just how angry and fed up they are.

Sad.
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Alan S. Chartock is president and CEO of WAMC/Northeast Public Radio and an executive publisher at The Legislative Gazette.

By Alan S. Chartock

Andrew Cuomo is positioning himself to be president of the United States. His chances of getting there will be infinitely increased if he is able to turn Albany into a calmer, less venal, more reflective and genuinely representative place.

Cuomo must win the Legislature’s confidence and at the same time convince the people that he really is going to clean things up. He’ll need to be perceived as being “good” and “likeable” as opposed to “tough guy Andy.” His friends at the radical right wing New York Post know that and they’re spreading around his picture, with his kids and his girlfriend and an atypical smile on his face. Old man Hearst would be proud.

To succeed, Cuomo has to reserve all the perks of being a strong executive. The more power he cedes to the Legislature, the weaker he becomes. He has to toughen the ethics rules. The less double-dealing and inside trading the legislative leaders can get away with and the more truly transparent the process is, the more powerful Cuomo will be. That’s why David Paterson vetoed the quarter-of-a-loaf ethics law that the Legislature was able to dupe the so-called “good government groups” into endorsing. That’s why Cuomo is opposed to allowing the Regents (owned by the Assembly, which is owned by the teachers union) to have the sole say as to who gets a charter school. He appoints the members of the SUNY Board of Trustees and he is not about to relinquish that influence to the legislative chieftains.

Of course, the members of the Legislature know full well that they need Cuomo at the top of the ticket, otherwise they will lose their marginal members. On the other hand, Cuomo knows that he can’t be perceived as being in bed with them. That means a diminution of power for the leaders and their associated lobbyists. He is telling anyone who wants to run on his coattails that they will have to pledge to support reform. Interestingly, he is painting himself not only as a candidate of reform, but as a candidate of bi-partisan reform. He is signaling to those Democrats who want to preserve the old order that he is not above making deals with their mutually exclusive Republican enemies in order to achieve reform.

Andrew has come a long way and he holds great promise. If he wants to go all the way to the White House and to uphold his anointed title as “son of Mario,” he will have to insist that apportionment be done fairly and that gerrymandering be relegated to the past. He will have to put a dent in the power of the institutionalized lobbyists. He will have to do more than the commendable talk his father was famous for, and translate his platform into actions. If I were Shelly Silver, I’d give up a lot to make Cuomo comfortable. Three-quarters of a loaf is better than none should be Silver’s thinking—otherwise he may just end up with none.

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Alan S. Chartock is president and CEO of WAMC/Northeast Public Radio and an executive publisher at The Legislative Gazette.

Lazio says he can win. That would mean beating either sitting Gov. David Paterson or Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, if he runs. Lazio recalled that when the then-popular Attorney General Robert Abrams ran for Senate against Alfonse D’Amato, he was leading Big Al by 25 points in the polls but still lost.

Lazio is a genuinely nice guy, a moderate Republican who takes progressive stances on issues like women’s reproductive rights. He describes himself as a fiscal conservative. Of course, if the conservative whack-jobs decide that Lazio is not conservative enough, they could throw a candidate into the race, thus dooming Lazio’s chances.

The politics of Lazio and the new Republican state chairman, Ed Cox, sound a lot alike to me. Lazio says that he likes and respects Cox, but when I asked him whether he would keep Cox in the top party job if he became governor, there was a certain amount of hemming and hawing until he decided that he would be comfortable with Cox.

If no one else comes forward to run, Lazio may well get the nod. Assuming that Cuomo is the Democratic candidate, how will Lazio catch up? He will certainly have to go on the attack. When I spoke with him, I got a taste of what that attack might look like. Lazio and some other people I know think that Cuomo’s soft underbelly is his time as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. Cuomo didn’t win stellar reviews while he was there. It turns out that Lazio was chairman of the Subcommittee on Housing and Community Opportunities when Cuomo was at HUD, and Lazio says that Cuomo was a weak secretary. He has facts and figures to back that up. My bet is that his people are doing what we call “negative research” on Cuomo’s time at HUD and we will be hearing a lot more about that from the former Long Island Congressman.

Lazio also senses a major Republican resurgence in New York. He points to a mess of Republican victories around the state in which county legislatures and county executive positions that were Democratic fell to the Republicans. Right now, Lazio has a big name-recognition problem, but if he can ride the wave of anti-Democratic sentiment in New York, fueled by the nonsense in the State Senate and Paterson’s inability to get other Democrats to go along with budget cuts, he might prevail. Stranger long shots have come in.

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Alan S. Chartock is president and CEO of WAMC/Northeast Public Radio and an executive publisher at The Legislative Gazette.