Why did Dr. Frankenstein’s helper simply savage her mad scientist’s hand-crafted monster?
That's, why did Melissa DeRosa, a former prime aide to ex-Gov. Andrew Cuomo, go on the radio this week to assault present Gov. Kathy Hochul — Cuomo’s private reward to New York’s poisonous politics?
Was DeRosa’s assault a de facto endorsement of Republican Lee Zeldin’s steadily strengthening gubernatorial candidacy? Or, if not, what would such an endorsement really appear to be? DeRosa merely shredded Hochul’s absurd declare to be robust on crime — and in a marketing campaign that revolves nearly solely round New York’s chaotic streets, what else would there be to say?
“The truth is that folks need to really feel protected,” DeRosa advised radio host John Catsimatidis on Tuesday night. “Yesterday morning any person was pushed on the subway observe. Hochul says she was going to make an announcement … and I hoped they had been going to say one thing about crime. She does a press convention about catalytic converters.
“Except the politicians, Hochul particularly, get good to this,” she added, “they’re going to have an uncomfortably shut Election Day.”
Ironies abound right here.
DeRosa counseling pols to be “good” merely is scrumptious: She was, in spite of everything, Cuomo’s prime lieutenant — and look the place he's as we speak, and contemplate how he bought there.
The hypocrisy is fairly ripe, too. DeRosa’s former boss didn’t design the felony justice “reforms” largely driving the state’s crime wave — malign credit score there goes to the Legislature. However he supported the related payments, after which signed them. And whereas he had second ideas because the magnitude of this self-imposed disaster turned obvious, DeRosa is in no place to lecture anyone about protected streets.
However her evaluation is appropriate. The crime stats converse for themselves, and Hochul has been dumb as a stump about them. Plus DeRosa is a political advisor today, presumably in contact with prevailing public attitudes — and likely is courting future shoppers, even when that ought to harm present non-clients.
And what higher manner for DeRosa to distance herself from insurance policies she helped craft and defend than by hanging all of the blame round Kathy Hochul’s neck?
Which brings us to a different main irony — which is that the now-incumbent governor would nonetheless be a bit participant in Democratic politics had Cuomo not lifted her from Erie County obscurity in 2014. He wanted an ornamental, non-threatening second-term working mate — and who stuffed that invoice higher than Kathy Hochul?
Native expertise, political dexterity, and the braveness to face as much as ideologues having by no means been thought of, it’s unsurprising that Hochul comes up brief proper throughout the board. In that sense, she is as a lot a sufferer of Cuomo’s self-serving cynicism as New York state itself.
However let’s not lose sight of what DeRosa really mentioned — by no means thoughts why she might need mentioned it.
Is Hochul failing on crime, and public security usually?
She’s been in workplace for some 14 full months, and the stat arrows level sharply within the unsuitable path — and she or he not solely has no apparent plan for coping with that, however she refuses even to speak critically about it.
Let’s face it: Igor, er, Melissa is kind of proper about Cuomo’s creation. And if that’s not an endorsement of Lee Zeldin, it would simply as properly be.
Electronic mail: bob@bobmcmanus.nyc
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