New York – Bad Day for Andrew Cuomo

New York – Attorney General Andrew Cuomo’s juggernaut campaign for governor of New York looked weaker early Wednesday morning than it has since he became the presumptive candidate for governor on or about the day Eliot Spitzer resigned. 

The results in New York cut at Cuomo in two ways, though he wasn’t on the ballot. The first and most obvious is an energized conservative base, which chose a real outsider — Buffalo developer Carl Paladino — as a more plausible, if extremely longshot, vessel for a “mad as hell” anti-Establishment campaign against the “status Cuomo” than would have been the Establishment Republican, a former bank lobbyist.

“This is the candidate that the base of the party wanted,” conceded State Republican Party Chairman Ed Cox, putting a good face on a terrible night that also included a third-place finish for his son in a congressional race on Long Island.

But Cuomo’s campaign to the center has also infuriated the left, and at the victory party for the likely Attorney General nominee, Eric Schneiderman, jubilation was mixed with an eagerness to rub Cuomo’s nose in it. Cuomo was widely thought to have preferred to share a ticket with a woman and a Long Islander, Kathleen Rice, though he never backed her publicly. 

The results were “a huge f*** you to Andrew Cuomo” said one senior Schneiderman supporter at the Midtown event (which I dropped by after Lazio’s party emptied out rather early).

“He’ll be looking over his left shoulder all the time,” said another liberal Democrat. 

The season seems to have exposed a certain weakness in Cuomo that’s common to attorneys general: He’s widely but shallowly popular, and without a clear, passionate base of support.

Cuomo remains the prohibitive favorite going into the fall, but in a season of revolt against the establishment, he’s facing that revolt on both flanks.