Joe-Cuo as ‘Dem ticket’
GOV. Cuomo’s dream of being president has been dashed for the current election cycle but that doesn’t mean he isn’t angling for the secondmostpowerful job in the nation: vice president on a ticket headed by current VP Joe Biden.
That’s the most provocative of three theories circulating among state Democrats seeking to explain Cuomo’s effusive, jawdropping, and attentiongrabbing embrace of Biden over the past two weeks — the very time the vice president is weighing a challenge to Hillary Rodham Clinton, the governor’s purported choice for president.
Several angry Democrats, all strong Clinton backers, told The Post that Cuomo’s embrace of Biden had further damaged the former first lady and secretary of state as she struggles with investigations into her private email server, plunging poll numbers, and what seems to many like a President Obamabacked Biden candidacy.
“What the governor is doing with Joe Biden must be causing the Clintons and their allies to pull their hair out every day,’’ said longtime Democratic consultant Hank Sheinkopf.
Cuomo’s showcasing of Biden during three highprofile appearances together last Thursday and Friday and during the previous week were seen by some of the state’s most influential Democrats as what one called “an obvious effort’’ to join a Biden ticket and escape the “smallball politics of New York.”
The second theory holds that Cuomo has been promoting Biden to put pressure on Attorney
Gen eral Loretta Lynch, Southern District US Attorney Preet Bharara, and possibly Obama himself to block or terminate Bharara’s investigation of Cuomo’s shutdown last year of the corruptionfighting Moreland Commission and allegations he or his aides sought to interfere with the probe.
“There’s no way Preet would bring an action against Cuomo without Lynch and probably Obama himself signing off, and Biden would be right in the middle of that,’’ said a prominent New York City official.
Many Republicans also subscribe to that theory.
“Obama and his attor ney general will make the decision on whether there will be a criminal prosecution of Cuomo, and one way of trying to avoid this is by embracing the vice president at the expense of Secretary Clinton,’’ said national GOP consultant John McLaughlin.
Mayor de Blasio, Cuomo’s Democratic nemesis, is at the center of the third theory, which holds that the governor’s embrace of Biden is part of an effort to overshadow the politically struggling mayor.
That theory was triggered by Cuomo’s dramatic embrace of a $15anhour statewide minimum wage, a proposal he unveiled to cheering union activists with Biden at his side.
Asked which of the theories he thought was correct, a prominent Democrat quipped, “How about all of the above?”
An upstate Republican lawmaker is threatening to sue Cuomo if he uses state resources to help bail out Puerto Rico, as the governor promised to do during a “solidarity mission’’ to the Caribbean commonwealth last week.
“It’s wrong, it’s likely illegal, and it’s an outrageous use of public dollars to promote the governor’s political fortunes with Puerto Rican voters,’’ declared Rochesterarea Assemblyman Bill Nojay.