Cuomo in '22: He's Got to be Kidding

Andrew Cuomo

Early April Fool’s Day from CNBC… Andrew Cuomo, the disgraced former governor of New York, is thinking about running for his old job, reported CNBC on March 16.

C’mon, CNBC. That’s not funny.

Handy Andy, who resigned last year due to multiple allegations of sexual misconduct, is apparently buoyed by polls that found him in a tight race with his successor, Kathy Hochul, in a Democratic primary that is slated for June.

The Hill reported March 10 that Cuomo trails Hochul, his former lieutenant governor, by a 37 percent to 33 percent margin.

Cuomo certainly has the financial warchest needed to mount a run against Hochul.

His campaign has $16M in the bank compared to $20M for the current governor.

Cuomo has embarked on a reputational rehab tour, speaking at a Black church in Brooklyn and before the New York Hispanic Clergy Organization. He also has blanketed New York with television ads that tout his accomplishments in office.

The truth of the matter: New Yorkers were tired of their three-and-a-half term control-freak governor well before the allegations against him surfaced.

A primary contest against Hochul would turn out to be one of the nastiest campaigns of recent memory.

You can rest assured that Hochul would not have to twist many of the arms of the women who levied charges against Cuomo, to campaign for her.

Cuomo may run to gain a measure of revenge against Hochul, who called his alleged behavior “repulsive.”

He probably feels that Hochul, who had zero visibility since becoming the Empire State’s lieutenant governor in 2014, rose to national prominence only due to his resignation. “I made you,” thinks Andy.

Cuomo told the Brooklyn congregation: “I am blessed, I have many options in life and I am open to all of them, but on the question if I am at peace, No I am not.”

The people of the Empire State are at peace. We do not miss the political theater and backstabbing that characterized Cuomo’s time in Albany.

If he wants peace, Cuomo should book a pilgrimage to India to visit the Dalai Lama.

That would be a hoot.

With God on their side, PR doesn’t have a chance... The British media are howling over the shocking firing of 800 P&O Ferries workers who were canned without notice on March 17.

Dubai’s DP World, owner of P&O, claims the ships that connect Liverpool, Hull and Dover to France, Holland and Ireland lost $132M during the past year, a deficit that is not sustainable.

The Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby and Bishop of Dover Rose Hudson-Wilkin have weighed in on the labor squabble.

“Ill-treating workers is not just business. In God’s eyes it is sin,” they wrote in a joint letter.

Noting that DP World recorded record profits in 2021, the holy duo feel the sackings are “cynically timed for a moment when world attention is on Ukraine. Done without warning or consultation, it is inhumane, treats human beings as a commodity of no basic value and is completely unethical.”

They want the British government to intervene and “make urgent and forceful representations to the Government of Dubai, a historic and close ally of the UK.”

Who speaks for P&O Ferries? Its website lists New Century Media, a top crisis and issues management shop based in London as PR contact.

David Burnside, former PA director of British Airways from 1984 to 1993, chairs New Century Media.

He is a former member of parliament from Northern Ireland who claims to have played a key role in the process leading up to the Good Friday Agreement that ended the political violence in Northern Ireland.

He’ll have to muster up his best negotiating skills to make peace with Welby and Hudson-Wilkin.

Occidental Petroleum fails to muzzle shareholders… The energy company, which touts its plan to “Zero in” on global carbon solutions, wanted the Securities and Exchange Commission to reject an annual meeting proposal calling for shareholders to vote on emissions goals consistent with the Paris global warming agreement.

The activist group Follow This maintained that Oxy Pete’s emissions goals are vague and fall short of the Paris mark.

The SEC ruled in favor of the shareholder vote, according to a letter reviewed by the Financial Times.

While Oxy fought the shareholder resolution, similar proposals have been submitted at Chevron, ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips without being contested.

That’s not a good PR look for Occidental.

In a desperate bid to stave off sanctions on Sovcombank, former US Senator and Mercury Partner David Vitter said the Russian bank was staffed by executives who used to work for US companies, many of them women.

GE Money, MetLife and Liberty Mutual transferred clients and staffers to Sovcombank when they decided to exit Russia, according to a memo from Vitter.

Those “fluent English speakers have formed a unique community in Russia” and “have a strong adherence to international corporate values.”

It’s not clear if that community is the “third column” that Vladimir Putin has threatened to wipe from the face of the Earth.

He said Russians can distinguish between “true patriots from the scum and the traitors, and just spit them out like a midge that accidentally flew into their mouths.”

It might be wise for Vitter’s fluent English speakers who are bullish on global corporate values to lay low as the isolated and paranoid Putin threatens to fill the jails with those who adhere to western values.