The feud between Mayor de Blasio and Gov. Cuomo exploded with the force of an H-bomb on Thursday in an exchange that saw Cuomo accuse Hizzoner of “breaking campaign finance laws” during the 2014 elections.
The mayor fired the first shot during a morning news conference at which he blasted Cuomo’s recently announced plan to unite the Democratic majority in the state Senate as “a charade.”
De Blasio said Cuomo could long ago have reined in a group of eight breakaway Democrats who cut a power-sharing deal with Republicans but finally decided to act because he’s lusting after the White House.
“It’s very convenient for him now, as he apparently is running for president, to be in good graces with the Democratic Party,” de Blasio fumed.
“So now he’s going to move heaven and earth to have a Democratic Senate, and he wants to elect Democratic Congress members in these swing districts and not see them redistricted against the interests of Democratic candidates.”
De Blasio also accused Cuomo of failing to follow through on assurances to help “create a Democratic state Senate” in 2014, saying: “ We saw that commitment broken.”
The remarks reverberated in Albany, where Cuomo went ballistic and had a spokeswoman invoke de Blasio’s fund-raising scandal involving the 2014 state Senate elections. The mayor and several top aides were investigated for months by state and federal prosecutors in probes that ultimately resulted in harsh criticism but no criminal charges earlier this year.
“The only commitment in the 2014 election cycle that we did not fulfill was breaking campaign-finance laws, and the mayor is right: We didn’t participate with him in that,” Cuomo spokeswoman Dani Lever said.
Lever also took a shot a de Blasio for planning a mid-December trip to Iowa, home to the political caucuses that mark the start of the nation’s presidential nomination process.
“It’s funny that the mayor would say the governor is running for president when the governor is in New York doing his job and the mayor is walking around Iowa,” she wrote in a statement.A de Blasio spokesman then retaliated by noting how two former top Cuomo advisers — including Joseph Percoco, whom Cuomo once likened to the “third son” of his late dad, ex-Gov. Mario Cuomo — are awaiting trial in bribery and bid-rigging schemes. “The mayor didn’t create the Republican state Senate, and the mayor has never had aides charged with corruption,” press secretary Eric Phillips wrote in a statement.
“Whether the governor is in New York or on the presidential campaign trail, Andrew Cuomo can’t say the same thing.”
Veteran Democratic consultant George Arzt said the blowup was “not accidental in timing,” noting that Cuomo is up for re-election in 2018 “and I think the mayor feels that the governor is vulnerable.”
Arzt added, “ This is a blood sport between the two.”