I’ve lived in New York for almost 20 years and this morning was the first time I was polled for a primary election. The reason is simple: Andrew Cuomo is running at least a little scared, and, judging from the questions in this poll, he’s especially scared that his running mate, Kathy Hocul, is going to lose to Tim Wu in the Democratic primary September 9.
The Cuomo “safe as houses”, “what, me, a Democrat?”, “throw Western New York a bone” strategy of having someone from the Rochester/Buffalo area as a Lt. Governor made him choose Kathy Hochul as his running mate this time out. His current Lt. Governor, Bob Duffy, former Rochester Mayor and an ideological Republican with a D after his name, declined to run again, probably because Cuomo basically ignored him for his first term. Sadly for the man who will never be President, Cuomo’s belt-and-suspenders strategy ran aground this week, when the New York Times endorsed Wu over Hochul. Hochul is a great conservadem to run in the R+6 district that she won in a tough special election. She’s a terrible Lt. Governor choice in a blue state where Democrats coast to victory in statewide races.
So, Democrats, here’s your chance. As Zephyr Teachout says in every interview (here’s a good one), only about 350,000 voters will pick the Democratic nominee for governor. For once your vote will count. So, vote as many times as possible for the Democrats in the race–Teachout and Wu–or shaddup about that fucker Cuomo for the duration.
BTW, any of youse who want fucking tell me that the Times is a “liberal” paper should read their piss-pants scared “non endorsement” editorial where they couldn’t ovary up and pick Teachout over Cuomo. What a shameful document that is, this part being Exhibit A:
Why endorse no candidate in a major state primary? Here’s how we see it: Realistically, Governor Cuomo is likely to win the primary, thanks to vastly greater resources and name recognition. And he’ll probably win a second term in November against a conservative Republican opponent. In part, that’s because issues like campaign finance rarely have been a strong motivator for most voters. Nonetheless, those who want to register their disappointment with Mr. Cuomo’s record on changing the culture of Albany may well decide that the best way to do that is to vote for Ms. Teachout. Despite our reservations about her, that impulse could send a powerful message to the governor and the many other entrenched incumbents in Albany that a shake-up is overdue.
These fuckers won’t endorse Teachout because she might not win? Yet another example of how pulling aside the curtain of savvy always reveals a status quo chickenshit hiding in the corner. You know what would make it more likely that Zephyr Teachout would win? A fucking New York Times endorsement! Jesus Bieber Christ – I pray to you in my hour of need – spare me from the triangulating turds who run that goddam sorry excuse for a editorial page by visiting upon them fulminating, scabby hemorrhoids that prevent them from ever again sitting in front of a keyboard. Amen.
PurpleGirl
Several days ago I received a phone call asking if was voting for Cuomo. I told the caller that I wasn’t sure yet who I was voting for in the primary but that I would vote. He again repeated the talking points on why Cuomo. I responded that I wanted Cuomo to debate Teachout. Then I hung up after saying ‘have a good evening’. I intend to vote for Teachout in the primary.
ETA: I’ve begun to get political mailings from Cuomo. I might teat them into little pieces and mail them back to his campaign/Democratic party.
c u n d gulag
Don’t hold back!
Tell us how you really feel! ;-)
I, for one, am voting for Zephyr Teachout and Wu.
I loved Cuomo’s father.
But the son, eh… not so much.
Not at all, actually.
If he didn’t look like a Cuomo, I recommend that Mario talk to his wife.
c u n d gulag
Don’t hold back!
Tell us how you really feel! ;-)
I, for one, am voting for Zephyr Teachout and Wu.
I loved Cuomo’s father.
But the son, eh… not so much.
Not at all, actually.
If he didn’t look like a Cuomo, I recommend that Mario talk to his wife.
Amir Khalid
You forgot to pray for them to get carbuncles on their fingertips that will make it too painful to touch the keys.
RaflW
And a pleasant Saturday to you, too, Mister.
big ole hound
Until NY politicians come right out and call Chris Christie a N.J. mobster and the Transient Authority and all Wall St full time crooks and control the NYPD by legislating the shit out them they do not deserve any votes at all. New York and Texas are both prime examples of whats wrong with American politics. One from the left and one from the right. Assholeos
JGabriel
I got a phone call from the Cuomo campaign earlier this week. The volunteer/marketer called to remind me of the primary on Sept. 9, and asked if they could count on my vote.
“Absolutely not.” I replied.
I know that Cuomo is regarded as the favorite by a wide margin in the primary. But I suspect Teachout has a much better chance than most people think – partly because Cuomo has pissed off a lot of the base who show up for primaries, and partly because there will be a lot of Democrats who normally skip the primary (because they know their choices are going to win anyway), who will show up this year to vote for Teachout and Wu.
I’ll be one of them.
NorthLeft12
For a country that was founded [in part] against the idea that people are born into classes with the according privileges, it is sad to see these political dynasties flourishing.
Meritocracy, my ass.
Another Holocene Human (now with new computer)
@big ole hound: NY and TX both have this urban/rural divide (including some rural red cities) so you’re really seeing the effects of which group is dominant at any one time, although NYS has better voter participation numbers from what I’ve seen.
I’ve been to (and lived in) blue states where rural residents aren’t all angry, reactionary jagoffs but I’m sad to report that NYS isn’t one of them.
(I grew up in Mass and the jerks congregated in the exurbs, SUV country, not in the actual farmland, pickup country. Western Mass is more liberal than Eastern Mass.)
If NYC was all there was to NYS politics the state would be a very different place.
Villago Delenda Est
A scene from The Wizard of Oz suddenly leaps to mind.
@NorthLeft12:
THIS.
Meritocracy my ass, indeed. This is why when the tumbrels roll, entire families need to be on them.
Another Holocene Human (now with new computer)
@big ole hound: also, too, why would NY pols call Christie a mobster when they’re just as dirty as he is? also, that mobster term sounds a little ethnically biased. Nobody called GWB that, or JEB!
Mike in NC
Triangulating turds? Earlier today David Gergen was on some TV news show lamenting that Obummer wasn’t being tough enough on ISIS.
pamelabrown53
@Amir Khalid:
Hah! Amir, I wonder if I tape the phrases “carbuncles on the fingertips” and “”fulminating, scabby hemorrhoids” on my fridge, I can lose the 10 lbs. that’s dogging me.
Catherine D.
I am delighting in the mailings from Cuomo and Hochul – three, I think, in the last few days. Smell the flop sweat!
I haven’t looked forward to a primary so much in ages.
Jay C
I may have to run back to the City next week to pick up our absentee ballots (we’re still up in the Scenic Berkshires) just for the fun of being able to cast a vote against Andrew The Smarmy. I’m afraid it probably – despite the fervent desires of so many NY Dems – won’t turn the trick, but at least it will send a message. One that may or may not be heeded, of course: but a clear signal nevertheless.
Joel
I know this is shallow, but I can’t get past the name. Zephyr Teachout. I’m assuming many others can’t, either.
Uncle Cosmo
The Dingy Slattern wimps out.
I remember vividly the one time I saw a major metropolitan newspaper strap on the bronze huevos & change state politics.
In 1978 the Democratic primary for the Governorship of Maryland was generally regarded as a two-man race, between Blair Lee III (then-Lt. Gov. & Acting Gov since Marvin Mandel’s conviction) and Ted Venetoulis (Baltimore County Executive). Lee was widely despised as a political hack; “TV Teddy” was loathed as well by blue-collar Dems whose votes had carried him to victory–their reward was to be screwed over in favor of his buddies in the rich north & northwest who always ran the county.
Free State Democrats were mostly resigned to voting for the lesser of those two weevils.
Just before the primary, the Baltimore Sun came out with an editorial whose title is burned into my memory: “A Vote for the Right Man is Never Wrong.” And for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination they endorsed a third candidate. Harry Hughes, a former State Secretary of Agriculture & State Senator from the Eastern Shore whom the pols in the know dismissed derisively (Baltimore City State Senator Harry McGurk calling him “a lost ball in tall grass”).
In essence, that gave all those voters disgusted with the two “front-runners” permission to vote for the Third Man.
Hughes won the primary & served two solid terms as Governor of Maryland.
So remember folks, a vote for the right person is never wrong!
Another Holocene Human (now with new computer)
@Joel: No trouble remembering who to vote for!
Tommy
@Joel: I want to tell you get over it. My name isn’t strange. Tommy. I don’t know how many times I have been asked if it is Thomas. Or Tom. There is a III after my name. We tend to name our male kids Tommy in my family.
PurpleGirl
@Joel: Then think of her whole name — Zephyr Rain Teachout. I don’t think it’s any crazier than a number of people I know.
Tommy
@PurpleGirl: I don’t know much about the women. So I just went and Googled her.
I am going out on a limb here, but maybe she is smart.
PurpleGirl
@Tommy: I Googled her too hoping to find something explaining her name, like an ethnic background for Zephyr. I know, it may be radical to think she’s smart.
ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®©
Compared to Andy Cuomo, a turd smells like a rose.
~
Pogonip
@c u n d gulag: I’d vote for Zephyr Teachout just so I could see news stories beginning, “New York Governor Zephyr Teachout today said…”. Hee Hee Hee Hee. Rock on, Zephyr!
Howard Beale IV
Nothing-and I mean nothing-wold please me more than to see every incumbent lose.
Even better still-make them lose to the Green party. Of course, we got too many slack-jawed nanocephalic low-information voters who will always vote against their best interest, but at a minimum the more we can get the vote-buyers to waste their money in trying to buy votes the better.
After all, what do you would think would scare the shit out of the Kochsuckers and the punditocracy-a minimal Dem majority of both houses or a veto-proof majority of Congress?
Yeah I know, it’s pipe dream-but after the shit we’ve been through, it’s time that neoliberalism is finally called out as the disaster that it is.
Mike J
OT, but holy shit are you watching Chelsea? 5-3 with nearly 15 minutes left.
Tommy
@PurpleGirl: I don’t know the background of the name. I can’t/won ‘t go to this against his name.
burnspbesq
We get the government we deserves. Anyone dumb enough to vote for Teachout deserves the Republican apocalypse that will follow if she wins the primary.
You don’t like Cuomo, fine. That’s entirely understandable. He’s a horror-show. But if you want to depose him, at least come up with an alternative that you can sell in Garden City and Monsey and Clifton Park and Vestal and the other places where this election is going to be decided.
The election isn’t for Governor of Park Slope.
Howard Beale IV
@Pogonip: If she indeed were elected, I would imagine the DJIA/S&P would go into seizures, and the CEO’s of various institutions would move to Connecticut in under 24 hours.
Ernest Pikeman
@PurpleGirl: As a WAG, I think her ethnic background might be “hippie parents”. Nothing wrong with that.
big ole hound
@Another Holocene Human (now with new computer): I have never understood the difference between mobsters and politicians. Both are guilty if conspiracy and collusion for profit. Maybe Perry in the godawful state of Texass will be the first to fry. The one guy who should do time for various crimes against Americans is the Benghaziman Darrell Issa.
TomG
If you voted for Barack Hussein Obama, I don’t think you’d be able to complain about Zephyr’s name being strange without being a hypocrite. Besides, we need more uncommon names in politics!
Anya
Did Kathy Hochul explain to New Yorkers, specially the Dem base her vote to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress?
I was at an OFA meeting recently and every single person there despises Coumo.
Another Holocene Human (now with new computer)
@Howard Beale IV: The Green Party is yesterday’s lunch. The party superstructure imploded. Let it go. And seems to me that their former voters are either Dem party activists now or off in dude-bronia with the Embarrassed Republicans criticizing the Near President, but doing it “to defend civil liberties” which is totally serious and not a daily interpretive dance on the state of white privilege in the USA. As the Sheriff sends “weak, ineffectual, didn’t pistol whip and then ass-rape bankers” Eric Holder to Missouri to defend obscure civil liberties like, IDK, due fucking process in not being gunned down in the street like a rabid dog by an out of control cop with an out of control prosecutor backing him up, the silence from dudebronia is deafening.
Which is to say, fuck purity politics. Let’s defend real people in the real world and work on the coalition we’ve got. Heightening the contradictions is another way of saying “I have no skin in the game. Your suffering is beautiful to me. Jesus loves you.”
Tom Q
Can we just note that the Times editorial clearly says “Despite our reservations about her (Teachout)”? This is not saying they won’t endorse Teachout because they’re afraid she won’t win; this is saying that, while they’re disappointed with Cuomo, they don’t view Teachout as a real-world alternative. Given that this is the same page that endorsed Ned Lamont over then-incumbent Lieberman, I don’t think you can make the case they’re wusses about intra-party challenges. They simply think Teachout is an implausible option.
Given that, Cuomo scoring a small enough margin of victory, and Wu defeating Hochul, would be as far as they want to go in nudging Cuomo leftward without upending the apple cart. I think you may find most NY Dems coming to that same conclusion. (And I’m speaking as one who’s been annoyed with this Cuomo since the start)
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@Another Holocene Human (now with new computer): Damn. That was one hell of a rant.
constitutional mistermix
@burnspbesq: Your massive ignorance of New York State politics is showing. First, the Republican running in this campaign, Rob Astorino, is a downstate neanderthal (which makes him less palatable to the WNY neaderthals – the larger, yet different tribe – and also to those who would vote for an upstater reflexively). Astorino who has no money and is about as electable as horse cock Carl Paladino, the last asshole they ran for governor. Carl, btw, earned that moniker from his penchant for circulating bestiality porn. Second, if Teachout wins it will be a 3 person race, since Andy bribed the Working Families party for their line on the ballot. Andy will pour his zillions of dollars and make it a real race. The Republican will be fighting for 3rd place.
Villago Delenda Est
@Howard Beale IV: Good, the tumbrels could use the change of address cards to trace them down for their just desserts.
Howard Beale IV
@burnspbesq: As Yogi Berra is fond of saying: “it isn’t over ’till it’s over”.
Who does the Koch Brothers have lined up as their bitches for NY Gov, anyway?
Anya
@Mike in NC: What was Obama thinking wearing that tan suit. He might as well have raised a white flag surrender.
Alce_y_Ardilla
@JGabriel: I might agree except no one ( except the blog readers of DKos and BJ) know who the fuck she is.
Alce_y_Ardilla
@JGabriel: I might agree except no one ( except the blog readers of DKos and BJ) know who the fuck she is.
Howard Beale IV
@Another Holocene Human (now with new computer):
Like every other neoliberal Democrat? What the fuck do you think got us into this position in the first place? Unless Stalin or Hitler himself is running for the GOP in 2016, there is no way in hell I’d ever vote for another Clinton for any political position, especially given what Bill did to lay the groundwork for the 2008 worldwide collapse.
Suffern ACE
There is something foul at the port authority and it isn’t just Christie. I’ll be voting against him. I don’t think he’ll last the next term. I think Wu will be governor.
Suffern ACE
There is something foul at the port authority and it isn’t just Christie. I’ll be voting against him. I don’t think he’ll last the next term. I think Wu will be governor.
JGabriel
@Alce_y_Ardilla:
I’ve been wondering about that. Teachout is moderately well-known among Democrats in NYC, but I have no idea how successful (or not) she has been at increasing her name recognition in upstate NY.
muddy
@JGabriel: There are a lot of Teachouts in Vermont. I wonder if they are on the other side of the lake too, in the upstate? Would make it a familiar name at least.
Roger Moore
@Joel:
It isn’t her fault if her parents were hippies.
Mnemosyne
@muddy:
I have to admit, I always assumed that “Teachout” was a made-up hippie last name, like when Barbara Hershey started calling herself “Barbara Seagull” in the 1970s but, nope, it’s legit. Primarily concentrated in New York and Michigan in bygone days — I think I would have to pay Ancestry.com to get more current records.
jo6pac
Teachout a true progressive
chuck
This post reminded me of this editorial from four years ago:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/13/opinion/13wed2.html?_r=1&ref=opinion
The Times is perfectly happy with having a Coke and Pepsi government. It is not a liberal newspaper.
I gave up my Democrat registration years ago, otherwise I’d be voting for Teachout. If she pulls off the upset, she may keep me from voting for Howie again.
Hal
@constitutional mistermix:
Astorino who has no money and is about as electable as horse cock Carl Paladino, the last asshole they ran for governor. Carl, btw, earned that moniker from his penchant for circulating bestiality porn
That was a fun election. My favorite part was the Buffalo news constantly trying to make it seem like paladino had an even remotely good chance of winning election. Sort of like the obligatory enthusiasm regarding the Bills chances of having a good season.
Pogonip
@Howard Beale IV: That’s certainly a point in her favor.
rikyrah
@Jay C:
I live in Chicago and never voted for Richard Daley. Didn’t help, but my conscience is clear.
rikyrah
@Tommy:
LOL
Should be going by Z.R. Teachout…….awe, who am I kidding..
Who the hell’s last name is TEACHOUT?
PsiFighter37
I’m late to this party, but frankly – the NYT makes a very good (and important distinction, IMO) as to why they would endorse Wu but not endorse Teachout. To me, the most important aspect of being an executive is the ability to make competent managerial choices – to analogize to baseball, the first thing you want to make sure is that your batter knows how to swing the bat and run the bases.
Cuomo obviously can do that (albeit apparently a bit heavy/underhanded), but his ideology sucks. Zephyr Teachout, as Markos has mentioned, is a hack (see here), and frankly, being a college professor does NOT prepare you to be in charge of the third-most populous state in the country. She’s also a single-issue candidate (corruption in politics), and, in that respect, Wu is not much better – as far as I can tell, he’s known for net neutrality, and that’s about it.
However, being Lt. Governor is a position that Wu can grow into over time if he needs to, with very little actual or real responsibility (unless Cuomo ends up getting his ass indicted for the Moreland shenanigans). And Kathy Hochul is such an obnoxiously conservative choice for a statewide ticket that there’s absolutely zero reason she should be the nominee. Hence why I can follow the Times’ logic in endorsing Wu but declining to endorse anyone for the gubernatorial primary.
In the end, I’m probably going to undervote for the top slot and select Wu for LG. But frankly, if progressives in NY had their act together, they would have come up with someone better than Zephyr fucking Teachout to run against Cuomo. The fact they couldn’t speaks volumes about how bought off most of those elected elements of the party are at this point – just look at de Blasio, who I wish would get a goddamn clue and stop acting like he’s got a national platform (which, just looking at his machinations in the statewide races, isn’t necessarily genuine) and start focusing on the nuts and bolts of city governance first.
Gus diZerega
@Joel: it is shallow. Read about her.
Remember an Obama became president.
laym AKA albany layman
There are one or two people in this thread who are over-thinking this. Cuomo sucks. Don’t vote for him.
Cervantes
@Joel:
Her middle name is Rain.
I’d advise getting over it.
constitutional mistermix
@PsiFighter37: I agree with Kos that Diane Ravitch would have been a better choice, but he’s also grinding an old axe with Teachout and some pissing match from the Dean campaign. I’ve listened to a couple of hours of Teachout answering questions, and she is not a one-issue candidate. For example, she’s pretty good on education issues as well.
That all said, as I mentioned above, Cuomo will still be on the ballot no matter whether he loses the Democratic primary, so we’ll have a real campaign if she wins the primary. If she flakes out, Cuomo will win it.