New York Governor Andrew Cuomo is being called out by black leaders and members of his own party for his lack of respect toward State Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie. Heastie recently made history as the Assembly’s first black speaker, but Cuomo has been dismissing him as nothing more than a puppet of the recently indicted ex-Speaker Sheldon Silver.
Sources recently told the Daily News that Cuomo believes Silver is still running operations in the Assembly, referring to Heastie as Silver’s “instrumentality” in keeping power.
The insinuation that Heastie serves as little more than Silver’s puppet led professional race huckster Al Sharpton to label Cuomo’s comments as “very disturbing.”
Another legislator claims that Cuomo is “developing a real blind spot on race issues.”
State Assemblyman Steve McLaughlin recently stated that if Cuomo were a Democrat “he’d be getting called a racist right now” for his comments.
Making matters worse was an incredibly ill-advised photo of Governor Cuomo engaging Heastie in a bear hug which some of insisted was meant to demean the Speaker.
This is twice in a week that Cuomo has demeaned Speaker Heastie. Doubt it’s unintentional http://t.co/YKND2Ln4Hv pic.twitter.com/zO5q9YOe9X
— Steve McLaughlin (@SteveMcNY) March 22, 2015
It’s not simply Republicans that have noticed either. Deborah Glick, a Manhattan Democrat, accused the Governor of “inappropriately lift[ing] the speaker off his feet in a show of dominance.”
A gracious interpretation of the liberal reaction to Cuomo’s behavior toward Heastie is that the left is willing to call out their own for improprieties. A realistic interpretation is that the left is becoming more paranoid in its perceived abuse of “protected classes” with each passing day.
Cross-posted at the Mental Recession
