‘Party’ foul in Blaz-Andy war

THE COLD WAR between Mayor de Blasio and Gov. Cuomo went nuclear on Thursday.

The two camps traded ugly personal blows over a deal designed to reunify the fractured state Senate Democrats, and mocked each other’s legal issues and presidential aspirations.

A “skeptical” De Blasio started the battle when he called the reunification deal involving the mainline Dems and a breakaway group known as the Independent Democratic Conference brokered by Cuomo allies a “charade” — and suggested the governor was only acting to help his own presidential ambitions.

“Let’s be real about this,” de Blasio said. “A lot of us in 2014 thought we had a commitment from the governor to create a Democratic state Senate. We saw that commitment broken.”

De Blasio in 2014 helped Cuomo win the backing of the progressive Working Families Party, but not until the governor was forced to agree to help Democrats try to capture control of the Senate. Cuomo aides say the governor tried, but the Dems didn’t pick up enough seats.

De Blasio called it “very convenient for him now, as he apparently is running for President, to be in good graces with the Democratic Party. So now he’s going to move heaven and Earth to have a Democratic Senate.”

He said Cuomo — who has said he is focused on running for reelection in 2018, not the White House in 2020 — should have already been doing such things.

“So I’ll believe it when I see it,” de Blasio said.

Cuomo spokeswoman Dani Lever shot back at the mayor by bringing up the investigations into his fund-raising operation.

“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,” Lever said.

No charges were brought in the case, though prosecutors said the actions were inappropriate, if not illegal. Lever also brought up the mayor’s upcoming trip to Iowa.

“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,” Lever said.

That prompted de Blasio spokesman Eric Phillips to reference the upcoming federal corruption trials of several former Cuomo aides and associates.

“The mayor has never had aides charged with corruption,” Phillips said. “Whether the governor is in New York or on the presidential campaign trail, Andrew Cuomo can’t say the same thing.”