$100 Million Gov

You can call Gov. Cuomo the $100 Million Man. As USA Today notes, that’s how much (and counting!) he’s raised for his three campaigns since 2010. Some of the other facts dug up by the paper’s Albany bureau are equally eye-raising, such as the $13 billion worth of state contracts landed by just 19 of the gov’ s top donors, who collectively gave $425,000.

That fantastic rate of return tells you why Albany’s pay-to-play culture is so hard to change.

Indeed, a full fifth of Cuomo’s windfall has come from individuals and LLCs that clearly do business with the state.

That includes a cool million from 16 LLCs affiliated with real-estate giant Glenwood Management. And of course Glenwood is the company that was never indicted for the bribes that Shelly Silver and Dean Skelos were convicted of accepting (among their other corrupt crimes).

Cuomo continues to deflect all questions about the recent corruption convictions of several of his (former) closest associates, such as Joe Percoco, Todd Howe and Alain Kaloyeros.

Nor is he addressing the federal investigation into $25 million in state grants to Crystal Run, a Hudson Valley health-care firm whose execs gave some $400,000 to Cuomo’s campaign.

The gov loves to use “first in the nation” or “leading the nation” to describe his initiatives. Yet it’s in corruption — much of it legal, or at least not provably illegal — that New York truly leads America.

And the governor who won office in 2010 on a vow to clean up Albany’s culture of corruption is instead neck-deep in it.