The Democratic Party has been captured by corporatists. In New York, the populists are fighting back.
Liberal lawyer and activist Zephyr Teachout has grabbed the pitchfork and is storming the governor’s mansion in Albany, in a fight against the corporatism and cronyism embodied by Gov. Andrew Cuomo. It’s a Tea Party on the Left, and it’s a good thing for our politics.
“The system is rigged, and Andrew Cuomo is part of the broken system,” Teachout proclaims on her campaign website. Sounding like Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, Teachout proclaims “New York can have an economy that works for all of us — not one which works only for the wealthy and well connected.”
This populism has a long tradition on the Left, but these days, you hear that sort of talk more at the Heritage Foundation than at the Center for American Progress. Democrats like Chuck Schumer and Barney Frank see the rise of free-market populism in the GOP not as something to be emulated, but as a fundraising opportunity for Democrats.
Will the Left stand for it?
I called Teachout Thursday and asked her to say more about her knock on Cuomo as a “corporatist.”
“I’m actually very pro-business,” she said. “What I’m concerned about is when the market gets distorted, because some businesses get special favors. And that’s what we’re seeing in the Cuomo administration.”
She’s right. Cuomo has doubled the amount of business tax credits the Empire State hands out, reaching nearly $1.8 billion this year, according to a study by the Rockefeller Institute’s Donald Boyd and John Jay College professor Marilyn Marks Rubin. Many of these “tax credits” are “refundable” — meaning they’re really just handouts, and businesses get them whether or not they owe taxes.
So when Teachout rails against “tax cuts for banks and billionaires,” she’s not just talking about tax cuts that billionaires happen to get. She’s talking about Cuomo handouts to the well-connected.
Cuomo, for instance, signed a bill that gave $35 million in tax breaks to just five developers. He received six figures in contributions from one of the developers days before signing the legislation.
Cuomo expanded the film tax credit — a pointless giveaway to flush Hollywood studios.
Ira Stoll reported in Reason magazine in July that “Governor Andrew Cuomo just bet $135 million of New York taxpayer dollars on backing GE’s silicon carbide manufacturing efforts and IBM’s gallium nitride efforts.” Stoll noted that GE had given “$90,000 to the state Democratic Committee in less than seven months, shortly before the state’s Democratic governor announces a plan to subsidize a new silicon carbide factory for GE in Albany.”
Cuomo’s corporatism is the rule, rather than the exception, among today’s elected Democrats. The Obama administration and congressional Democrats are unified in support of the Export-Import Bank. Democratic governors are as likely as their GOP counterparts to throw “economic development” money at businesses with connections.
The difference: within the GOP, the base is pushing back hard against corporatism, providing a serious counterweight to the business lobby. Democratic officials nationwide haven’t really faced much progressive anti-corporatist pressure. Teachout is changing that.
Teachout also pushes against the Democratic tide when she warns of the dangers of “centralized power” in both industry and government. Cuomo has more power than most governors, and Teachout thinks that’s destructive. “What we know from our founding era,” she tells me, sounding like she could be wearing a tricorn hat, “is that the closer you inch towards monarchy, the closer you inch towards monarchy.”
She said many groups and businesses in New York are terrified of getting on Cuomo’s wrong side. “Centralized power in Andrew Cuomo is creating too much dependency,” she said.
For this reason, among others, Teachout is a long-shot in Tuesday’s primary. But her primary is a good thing in any event. Primaries keep incumbents honest. It’s bad for democracy when incumbents feel too safe. Republican incumbents don’t feel very safe these days. Democrats in office are far more secure. Teachout hopes that this is about to change.
“I hope this is the beginning of thousands — not just hundreds,” she emphasizes, “but thousands of challengers within the Democratic Party.”
The Democratic Party establishment, looking at the headaches Republican Party leaders face these days, is praying she’s wrong.
Timothy P. Carney, the Washington Examiner’s senior political columnist, can be contacted at [email protected]. His column appears Sunday and Wednesday on washingtonexaminer.com.
