Gov. Cuomo’s cruel, chilling threat
Gov. Cuomo is angry. He’s angry that he is facing an increasingly competitive Democratic primary challenge from Cynthia Nixon. He’s angry that our organizations have endorsed Nixon and played a role in the Working Families Party getting behind Nixon as the real progressive candidate in the gubernatorial race.
When Cuomo gets angry and fears he is losing his grip on power, he goes on the attack against his perceived enemies and tries to destroy them.
That’s why he is lashing out at us and our organizations.
In recent days, Cuomo has said to labor leaders and leaders of the Working Families Party: “If unions or anyone give money to these groups, they can lose my number.” We can confirm those threats by the governor are real, and we take them very seriously.
By threatening to defund “these groups” we help lead, Cuomo is attacking the people we organize and represent — thousands of low-income working New Yorkers in communities of color who are on the front lines of grass-roots movements for justice, and struggling for survival in our state.
Attacks on community organizing have an ugly history in the Republican Party. At the 2008 Republican National Convention, Sarah Palin and Rudy Giuliani tried to discredit Barack Obama as nothing more than a “community organizer” from the South Side of Chicago.
In 2009, the Breitbart-fueled attacks on ACORN were meant to diminish and, ultimately, end the work of low-income communities of color building power. More recently, the Trump administration has targeted for detention and deportation activists who have organized for immigrant protections in their communities.
It’s especially galling and wrong for Cuomo, a Democrat, to take a page from that right-wing playbook when he claims to care about the very people whose lives have benefited from community organizing victories such as the fight for a $15 minimum wage, criminal justice reform and efforts to protect immigrants at the city and state level.
Make no mistake: Recent progressive policy accomplishments in New York like the $15 minimum wage belong to the communities that successfully pressured Cuomo to do the right thing. Our members won these victories in spite of Cuomo, who was in almost all cases a reluctant warrior.
The victories do not belong to the governor or to the Republicans he empowered and emboldened in Albany.
Back in 2014, the Working Families Party gave Cuomo the benefit of the doubt, and endorsed him over primary challenger Zephyr Teachout.
But he did not live up to what he promised us — including the Dream Act, marijuana decriminalization and a strong effort to ensure a Democratic state Senate. Rather, throughout his second term, Cuomo allowed the Republicans and the Independent Democratic Conference members allied with them to dictate the agenda, blocking progressive priorities like stronger rent laws that matter to our members and to New Yorkers across the state.
While Cuomo was cutting deals with people who stood in the way of progress, Nixon was becoming a stronger presence in our communities and on our issues. For years, she has stood with us when Cuomo failed to show up — whether at rallies for more funding for public education or at Kennedy Airport to protest the Trump administration’s travel ban.
She is a consistent progressive, not a part-time or occasional progressive like Cuomo, who is now cynically moving to the left on issues like ending vacancy decontrol — which he has refused to lead on for years. He’s only moving now because Nixon is making him.
Simply put, Nixon earned our endorsement; Cuomo did not.
Nixon recognizes that our state needs more community organizing, not less, and is clearly prepared to govern with her values and prioritize the needs of communities that have been ignored or left behind by Cuomo.
We are choosing her because we have no reason to believe that a third term of Cuomo would be any different from the last two terms. He may not like that assessment, but it gives him no right to attack our organizations and the people who are devoted to making New York a better, fairer place.