Andrew Cuomo raised an enormous amount of money for his re-election campaign against hapless Westchester County Executive Rob Astorino (remember him?). He raised somewhere north $45 million from a freakishly small number of people and still lost 46 counties in New York.
Aside from big wins for Eric Schneiderman and Tom DiNapoli, it was a pretty bleak year for New York Democrats. It probably could’ve been a bit better for down ballot Dems if Andrew Cuomo wasn’t sitting on an astounding $9 million dollars on election day.
Yeah. $9 million bucks.
One thing that clearly could have helped these losing candidates was more money. And – according to the governor’s campaign filing – Cuomo hoarded plenty of it. It turns out that he sat on a pile of cash going into Election Day, leaving an astounding $9 million in his campaign coffers after Election Day.
….
For whatever reasons, Cuomo found that he had more money than he knew what to do with. The airwaves close to the election had all but become Cuomo TV – and the governor certainly had plenty of mailings.
But better planning could have better utilized that $9 million – including giving some of it to the state party and PACs and Super PACs that were trying to prop up the struggling candidates for Congress and the State Senate.
You think?
State Senate Republicans spanked Democratic candidates from Long Island to the North Country, securing an outright IDC proof majority. Louise Slaughter came very, very close to losing her seat. Dems all over the state, many of whom could’ve really used some cash, got hammered.
And Andrew Cuomo was sitting on $9 million bucks.
To put that in perspective, Rob Astorino raised around $6 million total for his entire campaign.
Of course, this is Andrew Cuomo we’re talking about. Everything Andrew Cuomo does he does for the solely for the benefit of Andrew Cuomo. (Just ask the poor Nassau County Dems)
And he (and his deep pocketed mega donors) never wanted a Democratic state Senate anyway.
Originally posted at The Albany Project.
Follow The Albany Project on Twitter and Facebook.