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Chris Hayes. Photo courtesy of MSNBC
For the past two weeks, MSNBC host Chris Hayes has made his disdain of Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s decision to abandon the state Senate Democrats a prominent feature of his widely watched weekend morning political talk show.
And there’s more to come.
“Yes, I will,” Mr. Hayes said when The Insider asked if he would continue to cover the intrigue in Albany. “I will probably do an update on the [state Senate] deal, to keep viewers filled in on the deal that was struck this week, and the [governor's] op-ed. But I think we’ll continue to cover it, particularly [the push for] public [campaign] financing, because that’s extremely important, and it’s a structural shift, and it’s a shift that I think we really need.”
Mr. Hayes’s initial comments about Mr. Cuomo not helping Senate Democrats touched off a firestorm of reaction across the Internet. Since then, prominent progressive voices like Markos Moulitsas, the founder of the influential Daily Kos blog network, and The Nation’s Katrina vanden Heuvel have taken Mr. Cuomo to task for accepting a coalition-style governance in the Senate rather than push for Democrat control.
In his op-ed, Mr. Cuomo said the new Senate coalition was a work in progress. He laid out a “litmus test” of policy priorities for lawmakers, including campaign finance reform, women’s reproductive rights, increasing the minimum wage and reforming stop-and-frisk, among others. But despite briefly stating his preference for a Senate Democratic majority in 2010, he has avoided getting involved in the leadership mess, opting to remain above the fray.
Mr. Hayes said his primary concern wasn’t for the Senate Democrats, a conference that he admitted was dysfunctional, but for progressive legislation like campaign finance reform and marijuana decriminalization that could stall under a Republican-leaning Senate.
“Let me say this: If it were the case, hypothetically, that Andrew Cuomo saw a political opportunity to essentially thread a very difficult needle, which is to be on the record supporting a host of progressive pieces of legislation, but also saw ways that he could make explicit, behind the scenes decisions—essentially tacit decisions of omission—that would bring about a situation in which he would never actually have to make good on his stated support for things . . . One could conceive of that to being a very attractive profile for someone with ambitions for national office,” Mr. Hayes said.
His main beef with Mr. Cuomo, he said, was that New York is not fulfilling its potential as a bastion for liberal ideas and policies.
“There is a general frustration, which is that New York state should be a kind of laboratory for ambitious, progressive solutions to problems—the demographic profile, the party ID numbers. And it has not been,” Mr. Hayes said. “And these are words that Andrew Cuomo has himself said. Cuomo’s people will tell you, ‘Look, we have this agenda, and the progressive part was really stonewalled by the Republicans last time around and that’s why it didn’t happen.’ This is not about teams. It’s not about how sufficiently partisan you are. It’s really about the outcomes. And I agree with the governor in that respect. The outcomes are what matter.”
As a national pundit, Mr. Hayes may seem like an unlikely figure to be attacking Mr. Cuomo from the left on parochial issues like the state Senate. But he is a native New Yorker and says he cares deeply about the politics of the state. And the power-sharing deal that was recently announced left him with anxiety about the future.
“I was born and raised here. I live in New York. I’m very connected to New York politics. I’ve been talking to members of both houses. The point being, my judgment of the politics is that the prospects of strong versions of those priorities, particularly public financing, have been diminished by the deal that was cut.”
Mr. Hayes said he has been in contact with Mr. Cuomo’s notoriously truculent staff about his comments, but won’t be deterred from further analyzing the governor’s moves, especially as he is seen as a probable candidate for president in 2016.
“I’m completely un-entangled in the ecosystem of New York state politics,” he said, laughing. “If the governor’s people decide that they’re mad at me and they never want to talk to me again—which they haven’t, I’ve been in contact with the office—but if they decide that I’ll never be able to interview Andrew Cuomo, that’s fine. I’m operating in a universe where I just don’t have to worry about that stuff. I cover what I want to cover, and I say what I think is true.”