Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez’s decision to endorse Gov. Andrew Cuomo, D-N.Y., has enraged the party’s progressive wing. And as the committee works to rehabilitate its reputation among jilted progressives after the Democratic establishment’s losses of 2016, that’s not exactly what the DNC needs.
Cuomo is running against actress Cynthia Nixon, and their match-up is perhaps the most high-profile of the many Democratic primaries where an establishment candidate is pitted against an anti-establishment progressive this cycle. In some cases, national groups like the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee have sought to boost the establishment candidate in these races. This has generally served only to inflame the wounds of 2016 infighting that party heads have failed to heal.
In that context, the DNC chairman’s endorsement invites all the same scathing criticism that the party has rightfully attracted since the split opened between supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Hillary Clinton two years ago.
And Perez’s timing made things worse. L. Joy Williams, a Nixon adviser, tweeted out: “This is particularly interesting considering when we asked for help for #StaceyAbrams we were given the ‘we can’t get involved in primaries’ line. I wonder what the bar is and who decides who meets it?”
Abrams, the candidate further out on the left wing, won her primary on Tuesday by a resounding 53-point margin over an establishment Democrat.
The question Williams floated has an obvious answer, and it’s that Cuomo meets the bar because he’s one of the Democratic Party’s old boys. A DNC official confirmed as much in a comment to Politico, explaining, “Tom has a decades-long relationship with both Gov. Cuomo and Lt. Gov. Hochul. From knocking on doors for the governor’s dad in Buffalo to their work together on fair housing in the Clinton administration to their collaborative work during Tom’s tenure as labor secretary, the two have many shared accomplishments and developed a strong personal bond.”
Those are the perks of being a member of the establishment, where the people at the top have been rubbing elbows with other power brokers for decades.
Perez’s Cuomo endorsement is essentially a confirmation that progressive DNC skeptics are right to complain about the party’s failure to address their concerns.
