ALBANY — Gov. Cuomo Thursday unleashed a scorched-earth attack on state lawmakers, branding them hypocrites and highlighting what he sees as the inconvenient truths of their approach to redistricting.
Setting flame to turf on both sides of the political aisle, Cuomo fumed that he has had enough of what he called the “political theater” surrounding the once-a-decade redrawing of legislative district boundaries.
He ripped into Senate Democrats for a letter first reported Thursday by the Daily News in which the minority urged him to veto the redistricting proposals created by the majorities in both chambers.
Cuomo questioned why his fellow Dems didn’t manage to pass an independently crafted redistricting bill during the two years they held a majority in the chamber.
“Because they were in power,” Cuomo said, answering his own question during his tirade on Albany’s Talk 1300-AM.
“They conveniently forget that.”
He also asked why the Senate Dems have not exerted more pressure on their “buddies” in the Democrat-controlled Assembly to refrain from passing redistricting models that are not independently drawn.
“You want me to veto the bill?” Cuomo said bitterly. “Don’t pass the bill.”
But the Senate Democrats were not the only faction to incur the popular governor’s wrath.
Cuomo blasted the Senate Republican majority for going back on a campaign pledge to former Mayor Ed Koch in which they vowed to pass partisan-free redistricting this year.
“They signed a pledge to Mayor Koch and they just did a 180 on it,” Cuomo railed.
“They conveniently forget about that.”
And Cuomo mocked Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver — even going so far as to imitate the Manhattan Democrat’s slow, baritone vocal delivery — for staying silent on the Senate-drawn district lines, noting that the longtime power broker is not usually the type to defer to the Senate GOP on anything.
Cuomo called all the talk about redistricting “hypocritical” and “political theater.”
“It’s just coarse, base politics and it’s true on all of their fronts,” the governor said. “It’s just Albany Capitol theater and, frankly, it’s something I don’t want to engage in.”
Cuomo reiterated his threat to veto the new legislative lines as currently proposed — even as the Legislature is preparing a set of revised district boundaries that leaders hope will be more to Cuomo’s liking.
Ultimately, no matter what the Legislature chooses to do, Cuomo said, the courts will decide the redistricting issue.
“It’s up to the Legislature and the courts, basically,” he concluded.
klovett@nydailynews.com
