Gov love in full Bloom
GOV. CUOMO heaped praise on a New York City mayor Wednesday — going so far as comparing him to both Franklin D. Roosevelt and Cuomo’s own late father.
But hell hasn’t frozen over — he was talking about former Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
Bloomberg was the star of the show Wednesday as officials gathered for a highly choreographed ribbon-cutting to dedicate the campus of Cornell Tech — the result of a competition Bloomberg launched to build a genius school on Roosevelt Island, something the former mayor called a “wild and, some said, unrealistic idea.”
While everyone spoke highly of Bloomberg, nobody devoted more time to it than Cuomo — who at the same time largely ignored Mayor de Blasio, save for congratulating him on “last night,” a reference to his primary win.
He compared Bloomberg first to Roosevelt, whom Cuomo noted knew that “pontification and mere advocacy are not the goal of an elected official.”
“The goal of an elected official is to make change for the people they serve,” Cuomo said. “Mike Bloomberg’s tenure reflected Roosevelt’s theory.”
There’s perhaps only one higher compliment that could come from Cuomo — a comparison to his dad, the late Gov. Mario Cuomo.
“Mike Bloomberg had the formula: vision plus competence plus achievement equals progress,” Cuomo said. “Mike’s formula was shared by my father, Mario Cuomo, who called himself a pragmatic progressive. Think about it, a progressive who gets things done and gets results.”
De Blasio, who himself identifies as a progressive, sat in the crowd awaiting his turn to speak as Cuomo led the lionization of Bloomberg and virtually ignored de Blasio.
It might have seemed like a bizarro universe version of de Blasio’s inauguration, where Bloomberg had to sit stonefaced as speaker after speaker tore apart his legacy.
De Blasio wouldn’t say whether he felt his frequent foe was makinh a dig at him.
“I don’t spend a lot of time analyzing the governor’s speeches,” de Blasio told reporters after the event.
In his own remarks, de Blasio also praised his predecessor. “I don’t think I’ve been accused of being a Michael Bloomberg sycophant, therefore I hope the praise is seen as that much more genuine,” he said. “I want to say to Michael Bloomberg a profound thank you and behalf of 8.5 million New Yorkers.”