Andy feels FDR is man of moment

ALBANY – In setting a 2019 agenda to fight back against Washington, Gov. Cuomo said he will be guided by the question, what would FDR do?

Using former President and New York Gov. Franklin Delano Roosevelt as his inspiration, Cuomo, during an appearance Friday on upstate public radio’s “The Capitol Pressroom,” said he is set to give an address Monday to outline his top 15 priorities for the upcoming 2019 legislative session.

“I have always been an FDR fan, but I’ve been immersed in it now in the past few weeks getting ready for this, and thinking about it,” Cuomo said. “FDR was very big on capture the moment. He was very demanding of government. He was not a process-oriented person.”

The speech will be hosted by the Roosevelt House, which is part of Hunter College’s Public Policy Institute.

“The speech is going to get to the meat of the specific legislative issues,” he said. “This is not going to be a lot of rhetoric and retrospective. We have a new Legislature. I want to say here are my priorities.”

Cuomo will start his third term with his fellow Democrats controlling both chambers of the state Legislature for the first time during his tenure.

The governor has previously said he will push legislation in the new year that had previously been bottled up by the Republican-controlled Senate to strengthen the state’s abortion laws, enact more gun control measures, impose new voting, electoral and ethics reforms, and finally pass a bill making it easier for victims of child sex abuse to seek justice as adults.

He’s also expected to push for legalizing recreational marijuana. Most, if not all, of the issues have been sought for years by legislative Democrats.

He has said he will also seek to push back against Trump’s agenda, including moving proclimate change measures and passing pro-immigration measures that would create a state DREAM Act to give kids of undocumented immigrants access to state college tuition assistance programs.

“We are starting new,” Cuomo said. “This first year (of the third term) for me is nothing like the past years. It’s like you wake up one morning, God forbid your house has burned down, the whole situation is different. The whole federal government is attacking us.”