Missing the Pissing

I was starting to panic. 

The apparent respectful relationship between New York City Mayor Eric Adams and New York Governor Kathy Hochul, was going on way too long.  

I was really worried they wouldn’t carry on the New York tradition of mayors and governors pissing on each other likes dogs at a fire hydrant.  

I was actually nostalgic for the Andrew Cuomo-Bill de Blasio era of relentless dissing and sniping. 

But this past week, whew, was I relieved when Adams and Hochul finally, publicly broke their love connection!

Their battle is over the new immigrants that have flooded New York City due to the Federal Government’s lenient southern border policies.

More than 100,000 new immigrants have crushed New York City’s shelter system, and have put a mammoth financial burden on the city.  For months, Eric Adams has been calling out the Biden administration for not ponying up a lot more federal cash to help out, and for not speeding up work permit authorizations.  

But he has gone softer on Governor Hochul. She’s been standing in his way and not letting him ship the city’s burden to other parts of the state.

He was easy on her until this past week, that is.  On Tuesday, Adams let loose on Hochul.  “I think the governor’s wrong,”  the mayor said about Hochul’s refusal to distribute the migrants.  “She’s the governor of the State of New York.  New York City is in that state.  Every county in this state should be part of it.”

New York City has what’s called a right to shelter mandate.  What that means is anyone who is homeless, and that includes new immigrants, must be provided with a place to live.  

Adams says that mandate should apply to the entire state.  Hochul says, nope, not gonna happen.  Why?  Because she needs to cover her political posterior in the state’s other 57 counties.  So she’s blocked Adams from putting his excess immigrants on a Greyhound to, let’s say, Oswego.

Kathy Hochul doesn’t want to export New York CIty’s radical progressivism because she almost lost her election to Republican Lee Zeldin.  He came within five percentage points of taking over the governor’s mansion.  Zeldin got the most votes of any GOP candidate since Nelson Rockefeller, more than half a century ago.  And, if you look at the map of the 2020 presidential election, yes, Joe Biden won New York State, but the suburban and rural counties mostly went for Trump.

The newly awakened New York GOP picked up three seats in the House of Representatives, with a sweep on Long Island, where Nassau and Suffolk counties are now pretty much solidly red.

While it’s been easy for Kathy Hochul to be lovey-dovey, kissy-kissy with Eric Adams about issues that are confined to the borders of the five boroughs, she knows that rolling out the city’s leftist largesse to the rest of her state won’t win her any votes.

So, it’s deja-vu all over again in New York, mayor vs governor, and I am so relieved.

But Hochul vs Adams has a long way to go to top the Cuomo-de Blasio, Texas death match.  Kathy Hochul is not nearly as devious and control-freaky as Cuomo.  Eric Adams isn’t as overtly creepy as de Blasio.   

Can you remember back in January, 2015 with a blizzard in the forecast, when Cuomo gave de Blasio a mere 15 minute heads up before ordering the subways shut down for the first time in history?  BTW, the blizzard was a bust.

Throughout the COVID pandemic, Cuomo and de Blasio tried to one-up each other with conflicting, head-spinning announcements on school closings and shelter-in-place orders.

The blood between them was so bad they wouldn’t even appear together at the same event.

When the roof caved in on Andrew and allegations of bullying and sexual harassment were leveled against him, it gave a smug de Blasio a clear path to rip him.

De Blasio called Cuomo a “narcissist,” saying he had “too much power” and called on the governor to “get the hell out of the way.”

Fun times.

But with Hochul and Adams, there’s a bigger reason apart from personalities why their rift won’t be as vicious or as durable as the Cuomo-de Blasio feud.  

De Blasio was such an unpopular mayor, Cuomo didn’t need or want his downstate support to get reelected. In fact, jabbing de Blasio probably scored Cuomo points with some New York voters (and there were lots of those) that despised de Blaz.

Unlike Cuomo, Kathy Hochul is entirely an upstate entity.  She needs Eric Adams’ deep ties to the Black, Latino, Jewish and centrist communities of NYC to fend off the suburban and upstate appeal of her next Republican opponent, not to mention the ever present threat of a leftist Democrat challenger.

Among the things Eric Adams needs Hochul for is long-term control of the city’s public schools, and to keep pushing the legislature to further reform the lenient criminal justice laws they love and he hates.

So while I was hoping for some good old political pugilism to pique my end of summer ennui, it doesn’t appear that a Hochul-Adams dust up will do it.  They’re flyweights compared to the Cuomo-de Blasio brawlers.

Oh , Andrew and Bill, I never liked either of you enough to believe I would actually miss you, but now, I think I do, I really do.  

How about getting back together and resurrecting that great chemistry the two of you had.  

It happens all the time.  Kim Cattrall hated the Sex in the City cast, but she’s come back to the show.  Jen’s gotten back with Ben.  Justin and Jessica fell back in love.

You both need jobs so how about teaming up and calling yourselves, Cuomo and the crackpot?  Billy and the Bully?  Dis-honor and Hizzoner?  

On second thought, maybe we’re all better off to just let sleeping, pissing dogs lie.