#Good riddance to fake-moderate Cuomo, but beware hard left’s pounce

As his own biggest fan, Gov. Andrew Cuomo is the only New Yorker who doesn’t seem to understand that he’s toast. Whether he preserves a scrap of grace by stepping down, or forces the Legislature to remove him, Cuomo’s political career is kaput.

The departure of the Creepy Guv will create an executive power vacuum, likely to be filled with the ambitions of Albany’s corrupt lawmakers and hard-left ideologues who look to Cuba and Venezuela as models for the Empire State.

Still, the image of Cuomo-the-bulwark was often just that: Cuomo sold himself as a pragmatic moderate who was a bulwark against socialist excesses. To a certain extent, this was true, and his backdoor dealings with breakaway Democrats in the state Senate provided bipartisan balance in Albany.  

But the bulwark image was also a lot of bluff. After all, look at where we are.

It was Cuomo who wasted billions in fatuous plans to turn Buffalo — Buffalo! — into the nation’s solar-energy capital, and millions more to make Syracuse, of all places, Hollywood East. Cuomo banned fracking, depriving the Southern Tier of an industry that could have generated thousands of good working-class jobs and cheap energy for the state and region.

Cuomo signed the disastrous criminal-justice “reform” bills that eliminated bail in most arraignments, and it was he who emptied the prisons, dumping thousands of felons back on the streets. Just this week, he signed new legislation banning the word “inmate” from state usage, because “incarcerated individuals” find it “degrading.” (It remains to be seen if the Creepy Guv himself will end up an, er, inmate.)

He raised taxes just when job-creating New Yorkers were fleeing for Palm Beach. Cuomo also approved a multibillion payout for illegal immigrants, who can now sign up for $15,000 checks to make up for the federal COVID-19 relief they weren’t eligible for.  

All that being said, and much more that isn’t, why should we really care that Cuomo is headed for a premature exit? New York is already in a tailspin — could it get any worse? 

Unfortunately, yes.

Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul was the Erie County clerk, then served part of one term in Congress. Cuomo tapped Hochul as his running mate in 2014, the same year he cynically formed the Women’s Equality Party, to ballast his candidacy among women against Zephyr Teachout’s primary challenge. Since then, Hochul has flown under the radar as a typically undistinguished lieutenant governor. 

As chief executive, Hochul will be outmatched by veteran Albany operatives who have been licking their chops for years at the thought of seizing control of the state’s levers of power. Though Cuomo gave the hard left a lot of what they wanted since Democrats took control of the state Senate in 2018, there are still plenty of items on their wish list. 

Without Cuomo around at least pretending to be a moderate, expect the Legislature to push through higher taxes again next year. They will likely try to resurrect the Stock Transfer Tax on Wall Street transactions, which the major exchanges have already sworn will drive them from New York permanently.  

The pandemic lockdown showed corporate America that distance working, while not ideal, works pretty well. The 20th-century model of thousands of employees beavering away in office cubicles in 50-story buildings in midtown Manhattan isn’t totally dead, but it’s also no longer necessary to successful enterprise. There is no guarantee that these companies will wait patiently for socialist legislators to skin them, so expect to see more corporate departures soon. 

Downstate radicals think merit is a racist plot, so they will be thrilled to repeal Hecht-Calandra, the 1971 state law that governs admission to New York City’s elite schools. Rollbacks on charter schools are a top teachers-union priority, so working-class families of color will soon have fewer choices as to where their kids go to school. 

Statewide single-payer health care, voting rights for illegal immigrants in all but federal elections, a permanent ban on evictions, a statutory right to housing for anyone who demands it and the elimination of local single-family zoning laws — does this sound too bad to be true? Guess again. These items are all on the agenda. 

We shouldn’t shed too many tears over Cuomo’s imminent departure, but be aware that what’s in the wings is hardly any better. 

Seth Barron’s new book is “The Last Days of New York.”

Twitter: @SethBarronNYC