“There are no more excuses, my friends,” the governor said last week, as he declared his agenda for the coming year. “Do what you’ve said you were going to do all those years, and make a Democratic vision a reality.”
Within days, questions about the governor’s intentions had emerged. They came from the Assembly and the state Senate, from new lawmakers and veterans. They accused the governor of dishonesty, stinginess, even betrayal.
The backbiting was not altogether unexpected — this is Albany, after all. But what was unexpected was the source of the dissent: Cuomo’s fellow Democrats.
There was the cohort of six newly elected senators, five from New York City, who took issue with Cuomo’s calling a legal fight over equitable school funding a “distraction.” One of the six, Robert Jackson, who won a seat in Manhattan, called Cuomo’s remarks “fiction”; another, John Liu, who won a seat in Queens, compared the governor to Ebenezer Scrooge.
Even Assembly Speaker Carl E. Heastie recently made clear his displeasure with Cuomo over the governor’s desire to limit legislators’ outside income.
“God knows the governor has had issues in his office,” Heastie said in a radio interview, probably in reference to recent corruption trials connected to Cuomo’s administration. “Yet only the Legislature was told, ‘You have to reform the way you do business.’ ”
It was a striking comment from Heastie, who has typically been cautious when it comes to criticizing Cuomo.
Together with the senators’ statements, it suggested a subtle but potentially momentous shift in the power dynamics of Albany: Newly empowered by resounding Democratic majorities in both chambers and watched closely by an expectant electorate, legislators may be emboldened to push back against the governor.
In other words, the strength of Democratic victories in November has raised the paradoxical possibility of more headaches for the state’s Democratic governor than he endured from Republicans.
“I think that as a new senator, I’m less concerned about managing expectations,” said Julia Salazar, one of the six victorious insurgents who also panned the governor’s education remarks. “And a little bit, given my position on the political spectrum, I’m less concerned about my direct relationship with Gov. Cuomo.”
Cuomo’s office pushes back on any assertion that it has shortchanged education, noting that it has increased 36 percent since 2012, including a $1 billion increase this year, to a record high: $26.7 billion. And there is no doubt that during his two terms in office, the governor has forged a reputation as a master tactician who dominates all major negotiations, putting his political weight behind issues such as same-sex marriage or gun restrictions, and winning victories despite daunting odds.
But legislation he dislikes often languishes, and open criticism of him from fellow Democrats is rare.
Progressives have long worried that Cuomo was using his political acumen to secretly undermine the liberal agenda he promoted, in particular by tacitly accepting the decision of a group of Democratic senators, known as the Independent Democratic Conference, to collaborate with the Republicans. Until recently, those senators helped allow Republicans to maintain control of the chamber and stall expensive bills that Cuomo, a fiscal moderate, might have wanted to avoid.
Cuomo, progressives said, could then blame the Senate Republicans rather than having to veto the bills himself. He also blamed the Republicans for blocking some progressive legislation, such as the DREAM Act, which would have made it possible for undocumented students to receive state financial aid.
But after a slate of insurgent candidates won victory after victory this year, that dynamic has shifted.
Five of the six senators who criticized Cuomo’s education comments, including Jackson and Liu, had defeated former IDC members.
“Members cannot be afraid. Members need to represent their constituency, and they need to speak up for what they believe is right,” said Jackson, senator-elect from Manhattan and a longtime proponent of more funding for low-income schools. “If the governor is going to be — people say that he’s like a dictator, things like that — well, let’s stand up and fight.”
Democrats hold a supermajority in the Assembly, and will hold 40 of the Senate’s 63 seats, their strongest majority in more than a century, and just two votes shy of the two-thirds needed to override a veto by the governor.
(One of those 40 is Sen. Simcha Felder, who has previously sat with Republicans in that chamber. He has not indicated whom he will caucus with in the coming session, which begins in early January.)
Heastie and Sen. Andrea Stewart-Cousins, leader of the Senate Democrats, have already signaled their intention to work closely together. On Thursday, Stewart-Cousins wrote on Twitter that she and Heastie had met to discuss a “united and historic legislature.” Heastie replied that they would work “closely together” toward shared goals.
At the same time, the governor may also be facing more aggressive legislative oversight, with the appointment of James Skoufis as chairman of the Investigations and Governmental Oversight Committee in the Senate. Skoufis, a Democrat who was elected to the upper chamber in November after serving in the Assembly, has signaled a willingness to criticize the governor in the past. And Saturday, he suggested on Twitter that he would have his hands full, given Albany’s well-deserved reputation for corruption.
“For the first time in recent Albany history, I am hiring staff whose entire focus will be conducting investigations,” Skoufis wrote. “There’s a lot of work to do.”
Other newcomers to the Senate also seem to be champing at the bit. Alessandra Biaggi, who defeated Jeffrey D. Klein, former leader of the IDC, said her experience knocking on doors as an insurgent candidate empowered her to speak more boldly than previous legislators might have.
“Because I have the grassroots and the people behind me — it’s less about him,” she said of her willingness to challenge Cuomo on school funding. “It’s more about, ‘These people are relying on me to make the right decision on their behalf. I’d better say things that are in line with what they want, always.’ ”
All the senators said they wanted to work with Cuomo and were ready to applaud him on issues where they agreed. They also emphasized their cohesion with the rest of their conference, including senators who had been in office longer and had not openly clashed with the governor.
For its part, the governor’s office says it is expecting a lot from the Assembly and the Senate, too.
“The Legislature will need to move from campaigning and advocacy to governing,” said Dani Lever, a spokeswoman for Cuomo. That, Lever added, “will require them to balance the needs of the entire state” and “pass an on-time budget so we prove we are functional, don’t lose the Senate majority and they get their raises that just passed.”
Still, many members of the Democratic conference, not just the new ones, are eyeing a more openly left-leaning agenda, despite potential political peril for more moderate members in New York City’s suburbs and upstate.
Indeed, freshmen and senior senators alike seem to be embracing a more independent approach. Sen. Michael Gianaris of Queens, deputy leader of the Democratic conference, has been a vocal critic of the subsidies that the state has promised Amazon for its new headquarters in New York; Cuomo has framed the deal as a major victory for the state.
And Stewart-Cousins said in a recent interview that she would be unafraid to challenge Cuomo or any other official, no matter their position.
“I’ve always been somebody who’s very direct,” Stewart-Cousins said. " And I’ve always been somebody who is not afraid to say what needs to be said.”
Jackson said the Legislature should announce its new strength boldly.
“Everyone knows that the governor thinks that he’s in control. He’s not in control,” Jackson said. “The governor cannot pass laws by himself.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.