Cuomo enters third term as governor with warnings about America’s future

Jan. 02--ALBANY -- Commencing the first day of his third term in office, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo on Tuesday used a federal park dedicated to the nation's storied immigration history to launch yet another blistering rhetorical assault on President Trump and federal policies that have created what the Democratic governor called a "great social depression."

Cuomo said Americans are increasingly concerned about a "deteriorating democracy" and hold "grave new doubts" about the country's direction.

"It is impossible to overstate how dangerous, how malignant this condition is. It is like a cancer that is spreading throughout our society," Cuomo told the audience at the Ellis Island National Museum of Immigration located in the shadow of the Statue of Liberty.

Cuomo stuck to a mix of addressing national themes and touting his own record instead of delving into the nitty-gritty problems facing the state. Of the upcoming 2019 session in Albany, Cuomo promised to propose "the most progressive agenda this state has ever seen."

"We will make history," Cuomo said.

Ellis Island, located just off the tip of lower Manhattan, was used as a photo op location for the swearing in of Cuomo along with Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul, Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli and Letitia James, the new state attorney general.

The setting for Cuomo's inauguration speech -- and its timing considering the federal government's ongoing partial shutdown over an immigration dispute between Trump and congressional Democrats -- can be expected to keep alive speculation by some Cuomo supporters who envision him as a viable 2020 presidential candidate for the Democratic Party.

Cuomo has insisted he will not be a candidate for president in two years, though Cuomo, as he has done for a year or so now, also used his speech to give his vision on broader, national issues rather than a singular focus on New York State matters.

The governor used Tuesday night's speech to touch on some of his priorities for 2019 at the Capitol, which he's already trickled out over many months.

Unlike other federal parks, Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty have been kept open courtesy of New York taxpayers, who are spending $65,000 a day to keep the two sites open during the partial federal shutdown. Cuomo announced before the shutdown that the state would again step in and pay to keep the popular tourist facilities open.

Ellis Island is owned partly by New York, though New Jersey 20 years ago successfully won a case before the U.S. Supreme Court declaring that it was the rightful owner of what essentially amounted to about 90 percent of the island. Cuomo aides said the building the governor gave his speech in Tuesday was on land owned by New York. The federal government administers the site.

The governor's speech came 127 years to the day after the first immigrant -- 17-year-old Annie Moore of Ireland -- became the first immigrant processed at Ellis Island. From that day in 1892 through its abandonment in 1954, Ellis Island processed more than 12 million people who would go on to become U.S. citizens.

When he was sworn in on New Year's Day in 2015 for his second term, Cuomo promised three priorities for the following four years: "create economic opportunity for all," "create the best education system in the world" and "restore confidence and trust in the justice system."

On Tuesday, for his third term, Cuomo, 61, focused on what he called a "justice" agenda coming for his next four years in office on everything from defendant-leaning criminal laws to additional protections for organized labor -- a major source of support in his recent re-election campaign.

It's been a busy speechwriting season for Cuomo and his aides. Last month, he gave what his advisers called a major policy address in which he outlined, with few specifics, the "justice" agenda that he wants accomplished in the first part of the 2019 legislative session. In that speech, he called again for legalization of recreational marijuana, a host of criminal justice changes, additional gun control laws and expansion and protection of abortion access. He ticked off those issues again on Ellis Island.

Lawmakers from both houses open their 2019 session on Jan. 9 at the Capitol. Cuomo, sometime in January, still has his annual State of the State speech to give, along with the unveiling of his proposal for the 2019 state budget for the fiscal year beginning April 1.

Cuomo begins 2019 in an entirely different position from where his last term ended. For his first two terms, he angered fellow Democrats by helping Senate Republicans -- directly and indirectly -- stay in control of the 63-member chamber.

This year, however, Albany is an all-Democratic town. Besides keeping control of all four statewide offices and the state Assembly, the Senate will be overwhelmingly dominated by a Democratic conference that will total 39 members -- most from New York City and the downstate suburbs. Cuomo has vowed to use the shifting power structure in Albany to push through a series of left-leaning social and fiscal measures that Senate Republicans blocked over the years.

So, it was a bit ironic when Cuomo told his invited audience Tuesday: "Our new legislature is now thankfully governed by Democrats."

Of the exit from power by Senate Republicans, he added, "I feel liberated. I felt like I was fighting with one arm tied behind my back."

Cuomo was politically assisted by the Senate GOP, which helped him get through a host of measures -- such as a property tax cap -- during his first two terms in office.

Conspicuously missing from Cuomo's inauguration ceremony were the Legislature's two top Democrats: Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie and Sen. Andrea Stewart-Cousins, the incoming Senate majority leader.

A Heastie spokesman did not give a reason for the Assembly leader's absence and a Stewart-Cousins spokesman said she had previous commitments in her Westchester County district. Cuomo has enjoyed hot and cold relations with Democrats in the Legislature, and some Senate Democrats' memories are fresh with the help Cuomo provided to keep the GOP in power over the years.

With just a handful of references about some of his coming plans for 2019, the Tuesday night speech by Cuomo largely repackaged a series of initiatives and positions that the governor took during his 2018 re-election campaign. Indeed, some positions go back years, and Assembly Democrats say they were the original proponents of many issues Cuomo is pressing, such as additional abortion rights protections and permitting children of undocumented immigrants to receive New York State college financial aid.

The speech came a day after Cuomo pardoned 22 immigrants whose relatively minor criminal convictions blocked their ability to become U.S. citizens or made them face possible deportation.

"While President Trump shuts down the federal government over his obsession with keeping immigrants out, New York stands strong in our support for immigrant communities," Cuomo said on New Year's Eve in announcing the pardons.

In her own remarks before Cuomo spoke, Hochul thanked the Democratic governor for "remaining" by her side. Some Democrats last spring tried, unsuccessfully, to try to remove Hochul from the ticket in favor of a downstate Democrat.

"We come here renewed, reenergized and recommitted," Hochul said Tuesday night.

James on Tuesday became the first African-American woman to take over a statewide office. In brief remarks, she railed against "powerful corporations" and corruption, though she did not linger with any specifics about Albany's ongoing corruption problems.

"Today, my friends, we take that power back," she said.

Cuomo did not mention Trump by name, though he noted Trump's grandfather came through Ellis Island when he moved to America. But the non-stop Trump references were made clear, such as when he talked of government leaders in Washington who act like "looters during a blackout" by trying to exploit the nation's divisions.

"I fault them for a failure of leadership and for government malfeasance," Cuomo said.

In his 30-minute speech, Cuomo was soaring in his descriptions about New York State and the accomplishments achieved since he has become governor in 2011. But he talked of Americans being "troubled, frightened" as underway today there is a "fundamental questioning of the viability of the American promise."

"There is no other nation that can threaten us. America's only threat is from within: it is the growing division among us," Cuomo said.

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