Cuomo Doesn’t Deny Being Paper’s Critic of de Blasio

ALBANY (AP/Hamodia) —

Gov. Andrew Cuomo isn’t denying he’s the unnamed administration official quoted criticizing Mayor Bill de Blasio as taking politically oriented and unrealistic positions in Albany.

The example cited in Thursday’s Daily News concerns the mayor calling for legislation to give his office long-term control of city schools, while state Senate Republicans insisted on one year, which is in this year’s final bill.

Asked if that unnamed official was him at a press conference, Cuomo said that it may have been.

“Sometimes we talk on the record. Sometimes we talk on background,” the governor said. “It’s just variety, it depends on the context. Sometimes it’s a little faster to talk off the record, as you know.”

The paper, quoting a “Cuomo official,” said that de Blasio “is more politically oriented in terms of his approach … and then he makes it almost impossible for him to achieve success.”

“How did the mayor think he was going to get mayoral control? ‘Well the Assembly will support me.’ They didn’t,” the Cuomo source said. “I think he puts himself in these situations.”

Journalists immediately seized on the quote’s question-and-answer style to suggest that it must have been Cuomo himself.

The governor says he and the mayor remain friends, have disagreements on policy matters, are both “tenacious advocates” and “feelings run high.”

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