WGXC-90.7 FM
Cuomo and Working Families Party continue feud
Chris Bragg reports in the Times Union that New York's Working Families Party has added several ethical queries to their candidate questionnaires this year, after all sorts of scandals in Albany. "It is about your platform and your policy positions, and it’s also about whether or not you’re a leader that your community can be proud of, or whether you're someone that's going to mire us in crisis," Sochie Nnaemeka, the state director of the New York Working Families Party, said. "Unethical, closed-door, retaliatory governing is bad for New Yorkers." Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who took several efforts against the Working Families Party during his tenure in office, resigned this summer after a number of sexual harassment allegations, and other reports of ethical lapses. The party's candidate questionnaire says that Cuomo has "indicated he may use his $18 (million) campaign war chest to attack those who voiced opposition to him," then asks candidates if they’ll support an Assembly bill that prohibits an elected official convicted of a crime committed in office, impeached and convicted, or who resigns while subject of an impeachment inquiry, from using a campaign account for any political purpose. There was an impeachment inquiry into Cuomo when he resigned. But Cuomo's spokesperson denies that the former governor ever threatened his political enemies in this way. The story that Cuomo would use his campaign funds in retaliation against political enemies was only reported by Politico. “If anyone wants to change the law going forward that’s their prerogative, but the premise of their question is a lie as we never said nor ‘indicated’ anything like that — we can’t help it if we continue to take up valuable real estate in people’s heads,” Cuomo's longtime spokesperson Rich Azzopardi said on Dec. 9. Read more about this story in the Times Union.