Gov. Andrew Cuomo for the first time Tuesday said Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s political left-leaning influence played a major role in scuttling the Amazon deal to open a headquarters in Queens.
Cuomo was asked during a radio interview whether Ocasio-Ortez’s stunning upset victory over Rep. Joe Crowley in last year’s Democratic primary spooked local pols to flip from supporters to opponents of the project because they feared a primary challenge from progressives.
“Yes,” Cuomo responded.
It was only last week that Cuomo played down Ocasio-Cortez’s role, pointing out she wasn’t directly involved.
But he changed his tune Tuesday.
“The state said we’ll put forth the application only if the local politicians and community supports it. Senator [Mike] Gianaris signed the letter of support. [City Councilman Jimmy] Van Bramer signed the letter of support. We win,” Cuomo said on WNYC radio.
Cuomo said there was a “political shift” after Ocasio-Cortez’s victory.
“Then they oppose the very application that they supported. They signed the darn application. We win. The same people who sign it then say, ‘Oops, the politics changed, I changed my opinion,’” he said.
Cuomo also escalated his feud with fellow Democrats who control the state Senate for giving Gianaris veto power over the project, which he called “irresponsible.”
“I think they should’ve stuck it out, but I also think you had politicians playing their own local politics and the state Senate as a body represents the entire state and should not have deferred to just a local politician’s political interests,” the governor said.
Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins nominated Gianaris to serve on the obscure Public Authorities Control Board, where each voting member would have had a veto on the Amazon deal.
Gianaris shot back that Cuomo negotiated a “bad deal.”
“A real leader would take responsibility for his mistakes and learn from them instead of pointing fingers at everybody else. The fact was this was a deal the governor negotiated in secret, kept it hidden from everyone, and then once he reached a bad deal expected everyone to accept it without asking questions. That’s not how it works,” said Gianaris.
Stewart-Cousins’ spokesman, Mike Murphy, also slammed Cuomo for refusing to “take any responsibility for this failure.”
“He still refuses to understand that the Legislature is a separate entity and has the right to ask questions . . . .This is a democracy not a dictatorship,” he said.
Meanwhile, Republicans in the Senate proposed an amendment to restructure the PACB to eliminate the veto power given to a single member by allowing a majority vote to approve a project.
Democrats defeated the amendment in a procedural vote.