HOLY CRAP!

Andy: God may hit party for Nixon nod – but I’m no ‘bully’

GOV. CUOMO says he’ll leave punishing grass-roots groups and the Working Families Party that endorsed his primary opponent up to God on Thursday as those same groups blasted Cuomo as a “bully” and a “demon.”

“I’m not gonna punish — it has nothing to do with me,” he said. “You know, punishment is for God.”

But the WFP — which endorsed Cynthia Nixon over Cuomo after several major unions quit the party in protest of the move — maintains Cuomo threatened reprisals.

Bill Lipton, state director of the WFP, said he attended a meeting earlier in the week in which Cuomo said, “If unions or anyone give money to any of these groups, they can lose my number.”

“Make no mistake. The threat is real. I was there,” Lipton said Thursday at a rally on behalf of groups in the WFP. “We’re not afraid of the bullying and the deception. We stand proudly for our progressive values.”

Cuomo, at an unrelated press conference in Midtown, insisted the dispute was between the WFP and the unions — and that he simply sided with the unions. But he said he’d never tell them who to support and that it was “delusional,” as the United Federation of Teachers said, to believe the governor would tell the unions who to support.

“No,” he said when asked if he’d made the “lose my number” comment. “Ask the unions what they said in response to that. The teachers union said they’re delusional. Nobody will tell the unions who to support and not support, and they’ll do what they see fit.”

But WFP-aligned groups — many of whom receive cash from both labor unions and the state — insisted at a Foley Square rally they were under attack by Cuomo.

“This message is for Albany’s top thug,” Marie Bautista of the Alliance for Quality Education said. “When you mess with one of them, you mess with us. Gov. Cuomo’s brazen attacks on (New York Communities for Change), Make the Road and Citizen Action is yet another clear example of the bullying black and brown communities have experienced at the hands of the governor.”

Bertha Lewis of Black Institute called Cuomo a “demon” and a “phony” who’d stolen the causes of others.

“This guy is a gangster. This guy is a thief. Yes, Andrew, I said it, you are a thief,” she said. “You not only steal our issues that we fought for, and then you claim you woke up one morning and decided to raise the minimum wage. Now you want to give people back your God-given right to vote. You’re as phony as a $3 bill.”

The groups said they feared both labor unions and the state would defund them in response to their endorsements.

Asked whether he could assure the groups would not see cuts to funding they receive from the state, Cuomo again pivoted to labor money.“The bulk of the funding is coming from the labor unions, the relationship is between the labor unions and those groups, and whatever the labor unions decide to do with the groups they will,” he said.

The second-generation governor called labor unions the “engine of progressive change.”

“They represent the middle class. I am a middle-class guy from Queens,” Cuomo, who reported $212,000 in income on his 2017 taxes, said.