Oddly, both Democrat Cuomo and Republican Cairo were losers this year

 

 

Gov. Andrew Cuomo at cornavirus briefing

                                                                               

Forget Trump vs. Biden.

Some Nassau political junkies have reached a surprising conclusion after examining the November election results:

Both Democratic New York State Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Nassau Republican Chairman Joseph Cairo lost big.

But Nassau and state Democratic Chairman Jay Jacobs should be pleased with the results, which have yet to be certified.

Joseph Cairo (NC archive)

 

First, let's talk Cuomo.

Before the election, political sources, including Gothamist.com, suggested that Cuomo was the force behind billionaire Ron Lauder's decision to sink $4 million into a campaign to beat six Democratic state senate candidates and incumbents, using their support of criminal justice and bail reforms as cudgels against them.

Cuomo's spokesman denied it.

But sources couldn't help but notice that conservative Lauder, an heir to the Estee Lauder cosmetics fortune, had developed a cozy relationship with Cuomo over the years. His family had donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to Cuomo campaigns. Lauder and the governor also appeared together during Cuomo’s January 2020 trip to Israel.

But why would Cuomo want to defeat his own party's candidates?

Sources say  Cuomo, who likes to be in control, didn't want Democrats to win a veto-proof majority in Albany. The Assembly already had enough votes to override Cuomo, but the Senate still had to follow orders to get what they wanted from the governor.

This election handed Senate Democrats a veto-proof majority. Now the legislature, in theory, can do whatever it wants -- such as passing measures to tax the very rich like Lauder --without Cuomo's approval.

Cuomo's second loss was the survival of the Working Families Party.

Just before the election, New York Magazine opined, "Should the WFP’s ballot line be killed this week, a Democrat will be the one holding a smoking gun" referring to Cuomo.

It recounted that Cuomo has been at odds since 2014 with the progressive party, which ran Sex and The City co-star Cynthia Nixon in a primary against the incumbent governor in 2018.

As the magazine points out,  Cuomo since then had backed a measure to dramatically increase the number of votes required by any political party to automatically get a ballot line. Though he denied it, sources told the magazine, his intention was  "to crush the party." 

He also appointed Jacobs in 2019 to head a commission on public funding for elections and third party balloting. Jacobs was an opponent of "fusion voting" which allows a third parties to run major party candidate on their own ballot line.

Cuomo critics contended that Jacobs was there to kill the Working Family Party on the governor's behalf. But Nassau politicians know that Jacobs was aiming at the Independence Party. Jacobs and the Independence Party have been at loggerheads for years.

Jacobs' commission recommended third parties be required to accumulate 130,000 votes or two percent of the total votes cast in a gubernatorial or presidential election to receive automatic ballot lines. The existing requirement was only 50,000 votes.

A judge struck that down in March, so Cuomo inserted the proposal into his budget before it was passed in April.

Then came the election. 

Not only didn't the Working Families Party lose its automatic ballot line, it accumulated enough votes by running Joe Biden to move up the ballot to third place, pushing  Republican ally, the Conservative party, down to fourth place.

The new rules did kill the Green Party, the Libertarian Party and, yes, the Independence Party, by knocking them out from automatically qualifying for ballot lines.

Then we come to Nassau's Cairo.

Cairo put little energy or money into this year's state races. 

He did not order a robust absentee program during an election that everyone knew would be a big absentee year because of the coronavirus. 

He nominated nearly unknown candidates against freshman Democratic State Sen. Anna Kaplan of Great Neck and powerhouse Democratic Sen. Todd Kaminsky of Long Beach.

Because of nominating snafu's, the GOP put nobody up against Democratic State Sen. John Brooks of Seaford, whose district straddles Nassau and Suffolk county. 

And Cairo ran a suptuagenarian -- 70-year-old Hempstead Town Board member Dennis Dunne --  against freshman Democratic senator Kevin Thomas, who was considered the weakest link in the Democratic team. Thomas had shocked pundits two years ago by ousting Republican stalwart State Sen. Kemp Hannon of Garden City in a traditional Republican district. 

Cairo announced Dunne the winner on election night when Dunne was almost 7,700 votes ahead of Thomas. But Republicans did little to challenge a flood of uncounted absentee ballots and Thomas won by almost 3,000 votes.

Thomas doesn't look weak now, winning despite the opposition of two powerful political leaders. 

And then there is State Sen. James Gaughran of Northport, who defeated former Republican State Sen. Carl Marcellino two years ago, for the district that runs from Nassau into Suffolk.  Gaughran was behind by nearly 14,000 votes on election night. 

The Suffolk tally is not final, but it appears that a gain of almost 9,400 absentee ballots in Nassau helped put Gaughran over the top.

As a result, the Nassau GOP again has no state senators, after holding five senate seats for years.