Coumo Backs Stavisky: Perfect Together

As YNN is reporting Governor Cuomo has enthusiastically backed relic Toby Stavisky, now being challenged in a state senate primary:

“I am proud to support my good friend Toby Stavisky because she has been a fierce advocate for her community in the State Senate,” Cuomo said in a statement this morning. “As a former public school teacher, Toby has worked to make quality higher education accessible to all New Yorkers. I know that whether it is raising the minimum wage, enacting new laws to curb gun violence, or passing historic ethics reforms, her constituents can count on Toby Stavisky to represent them with distinction.”

Let's get the breathalyzer out for this one. A "fierce advocate for her community?" Until the recent change of lines Toby was the representative for Willets Point and so fierce was her advocacy that she just about advocated the property owners right out of their own land. There she was at every event lending her own particular brand of inner beauty to her long time partner in deception, the lovely Claire Shulman-engaged as it turned out in an illegal lobbying scheme that Stavisky glowingly attributed to the successful passage of the development plan.

And why shouldn't she. After all, son Evan was the lobbyist for the Shulman LDC-and, so strong is her devotion to the young man that when Stavisky chaired the higher education committee she never recused herself when he repped a client with interests before her committee.

Coumo would understand this kind of conflict of interest. It was bad enough that the then AG deep-sixed the investigation into the illegal lobbying after the mayor endorsed him at a time when the election for governor appeared closer than it eventually was. But after his election Cuomo miraculously picked someone who used to be an executive for the NYC EDC to become the DOT commissioner whose role was to give oversight to the application for the Van Wyck ramps that EDC was promoting. When WPU reported that coincidence to the NYS Inspector General-a Cuomo appointee-she did what the governor did to the Willets Point investigation: she ignored it.

So, as the commercial goes: Cuomo and Stavisky-Perfect togetherr!