Cuomo Focuses on Gay Marriage While also Keeping the Eye on Fund Raising
Mike Groll/AP
Gov. Andrew Cuomo has steadfastly called for gay marriage and made it a top issue.Gov. Cuomo says he wants to clean up Albany ethics and bring gay marriage to the state.
It's not always easy for him to do both at the same time.
In the gay marriage battle, Cuomo and his team pushed four organizations to unite this month under one banner and message - and then they hired one of his best friends.
New Yorkers United for Marriage, as the group is called, hired veteran Cuomo adviser Jennifer Cunningham as their strategist, barely six months after she got out of the lobbying business so as to avoid conflicts of interest.
Six days after the groups announced their coordinated push, Cuomo happened to hold a fund-raiser for deep-pocketed gay and lesbian backers.
Held on Tuesday at the swank SoHo loft of Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes and his fiance Sean Eldridge of Freedom To Marry, the event raised an estimated $250,000 for Cuomo's next election - which is 3-1/2 years away.
"In our community, we've had so many elected officials that talk a good game and don't deliver," said one gay supporter. "People are genuinely thankful that the governor has made this such a top priority."
It's not that gay and lesbian money suddenly turned Cuomo into a believer on the issue: He has steadfastly called for gay marriage and made it a top issue.
"You can't accelerate a commitment that's already at the top level," said Cuomo spokesman Josh Vlasto. "He laid out his agenda on the first day of the campaign, including making marriage equality a reality."
And Cuomo isn't just singling out gay and lesbian donors for special attention: He's raising money from everybody.
On April 13, the governor raised $220,000 mingling with business figures at the apartment of uber-publicist Howard Rubenstein.
Two days later, he called together his fund-raising committee at a Regency Hotel breakfast to set goals for how much they will raise for his 2014 campaign.
"He recognizes that he's got to do it while he's on a roll," said one person who deals with Cuomo regularly. "His poll numbers are at an all-time high, and everybody wants to be his friend."
Cuomo started the year with $4.2 million in the bank, but he's not necessarily saving it all for 2014 - he's said he may spend on off-cycle ads to push his reform agenda, and to counter any attacks he may face before then.
Still, nothing deters a challenge like millions of dollars sitting in the bank. So he has a major fund-raiser with women later this month, he's targeting labor - and he's using a June performance of "Priscilla Queen of the Desert" on Broadway to sell tickets up to $15,000 a head.
Cuomo isn't the only pol raising cash years before he needs it, of course - just the most powerful.
Four years ago, Gov. Eliot Spitzer started his first term by raising over $3 million in the first six months of 2007, said NYPIRG's Blair Horner.
We won't know how much Cuomo raised in his first six months until July.
But we know the most powerful man in Albany is tackling big issues at the same time he's raising money from people involved in them.
"They're all out shaking the money tree as soon as possible," Horner said. "The line between policymaking and fund-raising has largely been erased."
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