The Biden team is considering controversial New York Governor Andrew Cuomo for the role of attorney general should the vice president win the 2020 election, per a recent report.
According to Axios, aides at the National Governors Association, which Cuomo chairs, have begun looking for contingencies to replace him, a move that has prompted speculation of a potential role within a Biden administration.
Some Democratic donors in Cuomo’s network told Axios that the governor is being “pushed for the job” of attorney general and that Biden would consider him due to their long friendship.
A Cuomo appointment to the role of AG would be significant, as he could use the office to investigate Trump administration officials and even President Trump himself. Additionally, Biden’s AG could pressure local police agencies to conform to “social justice” demands advocated by the Black Lives Matter movement, threaten to cut funds to states that restrict abortion, and further other hot-button left-wing agendas.
Cuomo’s aides, however, deny that he is seeking the position.
“100% he’s made zero outreach, has had zero conversations about this and has made his desire to stay in New York clear as day and be governor as long as people want him,” Cuomo’s senior advisor Richard Azzopardi told Axios.
Cuomo himself has also seemingly shot down the possibility, saying earlier this year on Good Morning America, “I am governor of New York and that’s all I want to be.”
“I was in a cabinet, I was in Bill Clinton’s cabinet, been there, done that,” Cuomo added. “I don’t want to go to Washington. They couldn’t drag me, they couldn’t force me. I only represent the people of the state, I have no agenda besides theirs.”
Biden and Cuomo have a long history together. The governor has known the former vice president, initially through his father, Mario Cuomo. The two Democrats worked together during Hurricane Sandy reconstruction efforts and Cuomo’s time serving in Bill Clinton’s Cabinet as secretary of Housing and Urban Development.
“When one of them needs something, it’s automatic,” says a person familiar with their relationship. “It’s not a calculation.”
It remains to be seen whether Biden would offer the attorney general job to a friend such as Cuomo or whether political expediency and pressure would force him to select an individual who would meet the check boxes for gender and racial diversity so important in the Democatic Party’s contemporary “woke” politics. Names such as former acting AG Sally Yates and Stacey Abrams are also likely on a list of AG candidates
Of course, all of this presupposes that Joe Biden will win on November 3, which is far from certain despite polls that continue to place him ahead of President Trump less than a month before election day. Did all the talking heads who are already calling the election for Biden forget the polls’ projected certainty of a Hillary Clinton win in 2016?
Should Biden win and appoint Cuomo attorney general, it would be disastrous for the American republic and anyone interested in preserving our constitutional liberties.
The New York governor’s dedication to statism and totalitarianism has been seen clearly in recent months amid the COVID-19 outbreak. From shutting businesses down while letting inmates free to enacting privacy-invading contact tracing (that conveniently does not ask individuals about their participation in Black Lives Matter protests) and forcing nursing homes to accept coronavirus patients (contributing to the deaths of over 5,000 New York nursing home residents), Cuomo’s policies have made New Yorkers less free and less safe.
But an Attorney General Cuomo would first necessitate a President Biden (or Harris), and that looks unlikely with the former vice president’s long list of scandals and gaffes. Moreover, voters are leery with Biden’s recent refusal to say whether he will pack the Supreme Court by pushing for more justice seats to be opened up.
Despite repeated questions about whether he would support adding more positions to the Supreme Court (and thus giving him the ability to nominate new judges for those positions, so as to alter the ideology of the Supreme Court to his views), Biden has refused to say what he would do. The former vice president went so far as to say voters don’t deserve to know what his position on the matter is.
One thing is for certain: If Americans want to keep the reins of government out of the hands of a statist such as Andrew Cuomo, it is imperative that they vote “NO” on his buddy Joe Biden.
