Cuomo Vows Offensive Against Labor Unions

By NICHOLAS CONFESSORE
NYT

Andrew M. Cuomo will mount a presidential-style permanent political campaign to counter the well-financed labor unions he believes have bullied previous governors and lawmakers into making bad decisions. He will seek to transform the state’s weak business lobby into a more formidable ally, believing that corporate leaders in New York have virtually surrendered the field to big labor.

And even as he girds for war, Mr. Cuomo, the state attorney general and an expert practitioner of political hardball, also plans to lavish attention on individual legislators, who he says are sick of being demonized and eager for accomplishment after years of gridlock and enmity.

In a rare extended interview, Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat, insisted voters can believe he will succeed where other governors failed, saying he has the savvy and the experience to maximize the leverage of the state’s highest elective office. “I know these guys. I know them very well,” he said of the state’s political class. “I’ve played with them, I’ve played against them. I know this game. I know it extraordinarily well. I know what they’re capable of, I know their strengths and I know their weaknesses.”

In the 90-minute discussion, Mr. Cuomo for the first time laid out his strategy to isolate, destabilize, and ultimately defeat the tangle of entrenched interests that has left state government bankrupt, infamously dysfunctional, and mired in scandal. He would not submit to the fate, Mr. Cuomo said, that met the Democrats Eliot Spitzer and David A. Paterson after they took office as governor.

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