Keep your eyes on Tim Wu. He’s a candidate for Lieutenant Governor of New York. He’s running in the Democratic primary against Governor Andrew Cuomo’s preferred candidate Kathy Hochul. You may remember Ms. Hochul as the politician who won a surprise victory in a May 2011 special election for the 26th District. Most people thought that Hochul won by campaigning against Paul Ryan’s plan to turn Medicare into a voucher system. She lost her bid for reelection in 2012 in part because her district was redrawn. While she was in Congress she did some things, like voting to hold Eric Holder in contempt of Congress, that most progressive Democrats are not inclined to forgive.
Mr. Wu won the endorsement of the New York Times and Daily Kos, and he’s polling well enough that the Cuomo team is freaking out. Hopefully, you are familiar with New York’s unusual ballot system that allows a candidate to run simultaneously on multiple party lines. That gets complicated when the Governor and Lieutenant Governor are running as a team.
Gov. Cuomo’s political operatives are eyeing a “painful scenario’’ to dump Kathy Hochul, a moderate upstater, as the governor’s running mate for lieutenant governor amid growing signs that leftist law professor Tim Wu is picking up momentum in the Sept. 9 Democratic primary.
Such an action could be needed because a Wu victory would result in a Cuomo/Wu ticket on the Democratic line in the November election but potentially disastrous Cuomo/Hochul tickets on the Working Families, Independence, and Women’s Equality lines, where no primaries are slated.
Under the state Election Law, votes for a Cuomo/Hochul ticket in November would not be added to the tally for the Cuomo/Wu ticket, potentially costing Cuomo hundreds of thousands of votes.
Cuomo would have until Sept. 16 under the election law to swap Wu for Hochul, using a technique that would allow the former Buffalo-area congresswoman and lawyer to be nominated instead for a judgeship, according to an expert on legislative election law.
If you are familiar with the term “Network Neutrality,” you have Mr. Wu to thank. He’s running on a Teddy Roosevelt-esque platform of trust-busting. Hochul boasts about her 100% rating from the National Rifle Association.
This should be interesting.