Chris Churchill
Primary win notwithstanding, local voters still don’t much like Cuomo.
Had the decision rested with Capital Region voters alone, Andrew Cuomo would be licking his wounds. Cynthia Nixon beat him here in Thursday’s primary.
But if voters in these parts were making the call, Cuomo wound not even be governor. Four years ago, the ill-tempered Democrat lost the region to Zephyr Teachout in the primary and Republican Rob Astorino in the general election.
The numbers from 2014 are remarkable, actually. I’d forgotten how big the margins were.
Teachout, then an obscure lawyer, garnered 62 percent of the cumulative vote in Albany, Rensselaer, Saratoga and Schenectady counties. Cuomo mustered a measly 35 percent.
Fast forward to that year’s general election, when Rob Astorino, another littleknown and underfunded challenger, won 49 percent to Cuomo’s 40 percent in the four counties as the governor won re-election statewide in a cakewalk.
Even in deep-blue Albany County, which Hillary Clinton would later win by 25 points, Cuomo barely eked out a victory against Astorino, in part because Green
Party candidate Howie Hawkins received 13 percent of the total.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist, or even a political scientist, to figure out why the governor is unpopular around here. We’re the voters who know him best. State politics is our game.
In and around New York City, many voters couldn’t find Albany on a map, and they care not a whit what happens here. When those voters think about politics, they obsess over who will be mayor and what’s happening in Washington.
Out in Buffalo, the state capital feels like a far-away destination; Detroit is closer. Plus, most voters have had their brains addled by the Bills and Sabres.
But here, we pay attention. We have reason to take personally the endless corruption scandals, the rot that makes Albany a statewide epithet and a national punch line. We know that Cuomo has made the problem worse, despite promising to do otherwise.
Many of us work for state government or know somebody who does. That means we’ve heard stories of awful Cuomo behavior, how he bullies subordinates and foes alike. We’ve seen the depth of his cynicism, the ease with which he distorts the truth.
And though the economy here is generally strong, we are close enough to the widespread and distressing decay to know Cuomo’s upstate economic policies are not working. Most of us have neighbors or family members who have fled to states where taxes are lower and jobs are more plentiful.
Of course, the Capital Region has just a small say in statewide decisions, and so once again voters here watched as Cuomo stormed to an Election Day victory. Give him credit. He knows how to wield and maintain power. And this year, in this blue state, he knows it is wise to focus as much as possible on President Trump.
Expect much more of that in the general election.
Let’s be honest. In the end, Cynthia Nixon was not a strong candidate, especially from an upstate perspective. The actor and activist was famous enough to make the tabloids pay attention, but she never gave the impression that she was up to the complexities of the job. Her inexperience showed.
And as is typical among denizens of that self-important downstate island, her ignorance of our geography was obvious.
“Once you get to Ithaca, by around there, you’re starting to get upstate,” she infamously said, as voters from Wappingers to Fredonia groaned.
Still, New York should thank Nixon. She stepped up to oppose Cuomo when it seemed no other Democrat would have the courage. It isn’t easy to run a race you are destined to lose.
The governor had daunting financial advantages, and he had the benefit of state voting laws, the most restrictive in the nation, that are designed by the political parties to stymie outsiders. There’s a reason establishment figures at the top of the ballot — Cuomo, Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul and Attorney General candidate Letitia James — all won Thursday.
But Nixon made the governor sweat a bit. She got in his face. Heck, she even got him to sit on a stage and debate.
In the Capital Region, Nixon didn’t come close to replicating Teachout’s margins from four years ago, and there are other signs Democrats here had reservations about her.
In Albany County, for example, 1,112 voters, about 4 percent of the total, chose to write in names rather than vote for Cuomo or Nixon. That’s unusually high.
Yet Nixon did edge out a win in Albany County. And though she lost nearly everywhere else — and got blown out statewide — she won in each of the Capital Region’s four counties and in all the bordering ones, too.
That shouldn’t have been a surprise. In these parts, Andrew Cuomo would lose to a ham sandwich.