Cuomo has briefing at county facility without Curran

                                                                               

Gov. Andrew Cuomo at Bay Park ground-breaking

Maybe Nassau County Executive Laura Curran, who is running for re-election this fall, has read the polls.

Because Curran wasn't at the county-owned Bay Park sewage treatment plant this morning when Gov. Andrew Cuomo hosted the ground-breaking for a $439 million project to send treated sewage through a more-than-century-old aqueduct under Sunrise Highway to an ocean outflow pipe at the Cedar Creek sewage treatment plant in Wantagh.

This was a news briefing at a county facility for a county project.

But neither Curran nor any county legislator -- who are also running for re-election-- this fall attended.

Curran had been close to fellow Democrat Cuomo since she took office in Jan. 2018, coordinating with the governor and his aides on coronavirus, tax payments and other actions.

Then within the past few months,  Cuomo was hit with allegations of sexual harassment, covering-up coronavirus nursing home deaths, bullying other elected officials and receiving a $4 million advance for a book that his taxpayer-paid aides reportedly helped write.

Cuomo has denied any wrongdoing.

Many Democrats, including U.S. Rep. Kathleen Rice of Garden City, have called for Cuomo to resign.

Curran has been among the few Democratic officials who have taken a more moderate stance, saying she would await the results of independent investigations into the allegations -- the same position held Jay Jacobs, the Nassau and state Democratic Chairman.

But this Monday, the Siena College Research Institute released a poll showing that Cuomo's popularity in the state had dropped sharply,  with 52 percent of voters overall viewing him unfavorably.

His numbers were worse in the suburbs: 56 percent of suburban voters have an unfavorable opinion of the governor, 58 percent say he is doing a fair to poor job and only 26 percent say they would re-elect him.

Curran is running in one of those suburbs.

The two elected officials who appeared with Cuomo this morning were Democratic State Sen. Todd Kaminksy of Long Beach and Democratic Assemb. Judy Griffin of Rockville Centre. Their terms do not expire until next year.

Kaminsky spoke but did not mention Cuomo by name.

Although Griffin in March called on Cuomo to step down, today she thanked him twice by name for helping to fund the project, which is intended to clear the dirty waters of Reynolds Channel.

The Bay Park plant was built in 1949 and has been dumping treated effluent into the Channel and the western Bays ever since.

 A spokesman for Curran did not respond to an inquiry as to why she did not attend the Cuomo event.

Adrienne Esposito, executive director of Citizens Campaign for the Environment, who has backed the project was there.

 "Five years ago you came to Long Island and made a promise," she told Cuomo. "You kept that promise."

Nobody mentioned that Cuomo made that promise in Oceanside when he appeared with former County Executive Ed Mangano to announce joint county, state and federal funding for diverting the effluent under Sunrise Highway.

Republican Mangano had first proposed the project in 2016. 

Mangano, who is fighting his conviction on unrelated federal charges, also did not attend the event.