Molinaro Wins
Bests Cuomo in debate on tone and issues
THE third term is never the charm for an Albany politician — ask former Gov. George Pataki, who capped off two successful terms in office with a directionless muddle after the 2000 market crash and 9/11.
At Tuesday’s debate between Gov. Cuomo and Republican challenger Marc Molinaro, Cuomo looked exasperated after two terms. Molinaro beat him, on issues and tone. But Cuomo took every chance to tighten what he hopes will be an albatross around Molinaro’s neck: President Donald J. Trump.
Molinaro, the elected executive of Dutchess County, is a solid candidate. He’s got county and local government experience — critical to understanding New York’s labyrinthine budgeting and governance.
He’s even-tempered — except when goaded for an hour by Cuomo. Like last year’s mayoral candidate, state Assemblywoman Nicole Malliotakis, he’s what the GOP needs: someone not tempted to go for the cheap shot on hot-button issues like immigration, but someone who wants to coax voters on the other side.
There, he easily homed in on Cuomo’s weaknesses. The biggest issue, from New York City’s perspective — and a big one for commuting suburbs — was the MTA. As Molinaro noted, “The governor abandoned responsibility for the MTA,” creating “a total death spiral.”
He also gave a pragmatic partial solution. Let the construction and transportation unions — whose members know more about their jobs than anyone else, thanks to more than a decade of heavy MTA management turnover and disinterest in the details — identify faster ways to do their work, sharing the savings with taxpayers.
Cuomo stuck to the story he’s been telling for more than a year: “You have never seen a governor take more responsibility for the MTA than I have,” he said, in noting that he declared a state of emergency on the subways 15 months ago (and nearly two terms into his governorship).
Except: It’s all the city’s fault. “I launched the emergency plan. I said to New York City, pay half the funding, they refused . . . The mayor doesn’t want to pay,” Cuomo said.
This is inconsistent, to say the least. The governor controls the MTA board, and, except for the property tax, the state controls all New York City revenues.
Plus, as Molinaro pointed out: “We pay eight separate taxes to the most bloated public authority in the world . . . Your MTA costs five and six times more to lay a mile of track” than anywhere else. “We’re wasting dollars.” With a budget that has doubled in a decade, a lack of money is not the MTA’s problem.
On an issue more important to suburban voters — property taxes — Cuomo and Molinaro were both sort of right. Cuomo noted correctly that his cap on property taxes — limiting growth to 2 percent a year — has saved New Yorkers money.
Molinaro said, in turn, that the tax cap isn’t the full relief that towns and counties are looking for, because “mandated expenses” — such as retirement benefits for local employees — “continue to rise.”
These are reasonable points of debate. But this is where the voter’s consideration turns to tone. Instead of amicably debating a fraught issue, Cuomo termed Molinaro a “fiscal fraud.” From then on, the tenor deteriorated, with Cuomo calling his opponent a liar and a criminal every chance he got.
The WCBS debate moderators asked each candidate how he might elevate the tone of the nation’s political discourse.
Molinaro rose to the occasion. Referring to a past Cuomo comment that “extreme” conservatives have no place in New York, he said that, in a Molinaro administration, “if you’re too far left of center, you have every place in New York.”
Again: This is what the GOP needs — not someone who takes easy potshots at the evil “left,” without acknowledging that unaddressed concerns over jobs and health care have brought people to consider socialism.
Cuomo used the same question as an excuse to call Molinaro “reprehensible.”
And, resorting to what had by then become a common trope, Cuomo used the question to tie his opponent to Trump. “You are an acolyte of Donald Trump,” the governor said at one point. “Are you saying you don’t support Donald Trump?”
Molinaro could have had better answers. Instead of vacillating on whether he supports the president, he could have pointed out, for example, that Trump is president because a generation of mainstream politicians like Cuomo let voters down.
Cuomo’s electoral bet is simple: that there are more New Yorkers boiling mad about Trump than there are New Yorkers thoughtfully concerned about whether the past eight years have produced real results for constituencies such as transit riders and property-tax payers.