Cuomo Family Values
They thought I was being paranoid when I
suggested the Clinton administration might alter its food stamp policy to
help Hillary Clinton run for Senate against New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani.
Hey , I thought I was being paranoid. But within
hours of that alarmist item--which also suggested that Housing and Urban
Development secretary Andrew Cuomo was gunning for Giuliani--Cuomo had
dramatically seized control of $60 million in federal homeless money earmarked
for New York, taking it away from the mayor.
Cuomo's rationale? A federal judge had ruled that
Giuliani acted with "retaliatory intent" in cutting funds to the advocacy group
Housing Works, which has criticized the mayor's AIDS policies. But this
rationale was self-refuting: Giuliani's "retaliation" had already been blocked
by the judge, who presumably has the power to correct any impropriety and
restore the group's funding. With the judge on Giuliani's case, who needed
Cuomo? (Unless, of course, the Democrats feared the judge's ruling would be
overturned on appeal.) ... Meanwhile Cuomo was engaging in political
retaliation at least as blatant as that of which Giuliani was accused. ("We
cannot allow federal funds to be politicized," Cuomo actually declared as he
politicized federal funds.) ... If HUD seized back control of its funds every
time a mayor was sued by an "advocacy" group and lost in district court, it
would soon run out of mayors. But New York is the only city HUD has done this
to.
Cuomo's motive, Dick Morris suggests in a recent column, was not so much to embarrass Giuliani
on the homeless issue as to bait him into an angry outburst. If that was the
strategy, it partially worked. (Giuliani blasted HUD, though he didn't come
unhinged.) But this small victory for Hillary came at a cost of some
embarrassment to Cuomo, who now looks a little like a partisan thug (and a
disloyal thug at that, since Giuliani risked his career to endorse Andrew's
father Mario in the 1994 New York governor's race.)
Question: Has Andrew Cuomo really thought this through?
Does he really want to risk becoming known in his home state as a Shill for
Hill? Does he want to tie his career to hers, subordinate the now-venerable
Cuomo political dynasty in New York to a newly cobbled-up Clinton dynasty he'll
have to live with for the next decade (as Senator H. Clinton plots her
inevitable run for President)? ... Just a thought! ... Andrew: You might
consult your father on this... Actually, through Andrew Cuomo's wife, Kerry
Kennedy Cuomo (who announced her husband's homeless power play to cheers at a
Democratic Christmas function), the Clintons have succeeded in subordinating
not one but two dynastic Democratic families to their own. ...
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