Cuomo Starts Putting Up a Fight for Senate Seat

Does anyone remember the early days of the senate replacement talk, when it seemed like Governor Paterson's toughest dilemma in filling the vacancy left by Hillary Clinton was going to be which of his constituencies he could butter up the most as he used the pick to try to win voters for his reelection? Talk was that he might be giving the call to a household name like Nydia Velazquez or Brian Higgins. Well, somewhere along the way things got a little more complicated.

Today's Times revealed that those connected to State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo ave allegedly been doing some sabotage work against the "campaign" of Caroline Kennedy. Sources say the man known as Cuomo's enforcer, Joseph Percoco, made calls to upstate officials before Caroline Kenendy's "What's a Rochester like?" tour. Percoco told them, "Don’t you think it should be someone who understands upstate? Don’t you think it should be someone with experience? Shouldn’t it be somebody who knows New York better?" He then encouraged them to give her a cold reception when she arrived.

Around the same time, a union official says that Cuomo himself made a call to a labor leader suggesting that they hold off on making an endorsement until getting to see a little bit more of Caroline. Maybe since he had already known Caroline through his failed marriage to her cousin Kerry, he knew that they should get to know her first—you know?

Susan Lerner of Common Cause says that both Kennedy and Cuomo's "campaigning" methods are inappropriate. She told the Times, “The bottom line is, just like (NYC Deputy Mayor) Kevin Sheekey shouldn’t be making these calls on city time, anybody working for the attorney general’s office shouldn’t be making similar calls on state time.”

The news of Cuomo's push comes after weeks of him laying low about any interest he might have in the seat. Some say his lobbying is only fair after the big guns that immediately came to bat for Kennedy and began putting pressure on the governor to seat her such as Mayor Bloomberg, Senate majority leader Harry Reid and her uncle, Senator Ted Kennedy.

And if that list of Caroline backers wasn't big enough, you can add one more: Maureen Dowd. In an op-ed today, she defends Kennedy against recent criticism saying, "People are suddenly awfully choosy about who gets to go to the former home of Jesse Helms, Strom Thurmond and Robert Torricelli."