Gubernatorial hopeful Harry Wilson has bashed Republican rival Rep. Lee Zeldin for weeks over his past praise of ex-Gov. Andrew Cuomo — despite whipping up public support for the disgraced pol’s ideas years ago.
“Wilson has been spending millions of dollars lying about me on TV and radio and in mail, trying to connect me to exactly what he was lavishing praise upon at Cuomo’s feet in January of 2011 … I am pointing out the hypocrisy here, that Harry Wilson is time and again the opposite of who he is making himself out to be,” Zeldin told The Post Tuesday.
Indeed, a January 2011 Daily News op-ed by Wilson lauds the former governor’s State of the State address that laid out a plan focused on “cutting spending and capping taxes,” while slaying “sacred cows” that stood in the way of dealing with a multi-billion dollar deficit in his first term.
“Gov. Cuomo passionately laid out an aggressive fiscal reform plan for New York in his State of the State address yesterday, and now it is imperative that the Legislature, particularly the Assembly, live up to the statements of support its leaders made yesterday,” Wilson wrote in the op-ed.
The kind words for Cuomo are at odds with the incessant attacks launched by Wilson as he campaigns against Zeldin (R-Long Island) ahead of the June 28 GOP primary for governor.
“I make it very clear in the op-ed that the Senate Republicans needed to do more,” Wilson told The Post when asked to respond to Zeldin’s claims. “It is absolutely not true that I lavished praise on Cuomo.”
“I lay out specifically that “the senate should press for even more specific reductions…and none of those things ever happened in Senator Zeldin’s entire four years serving in Albany,” said the businessman.
Zeldin served in the state Senate for four years, beginning in 2011 when Cuomo entered office as a centrist Democrat during the presidency of the relatively progressive Barack Obama.
During a 2011 press event with Cuomo, Zeldin even said the US would be a “better place” if Cuomo were president.
“Putting all politics aside, I would honestly say that if you were in the White House right now, our nation would be in a better place today than it is,” Zeldin said, according to a video posted online.
Wilson has used the comment like a cudgel against Zeldin in TV adds while campaigning in the GOP primary this year despite his own past support for Cuomo’s policies that same year.
He called Zeldin a “Cuomo-clone” and a “failed politician.”
“He never even proposed, much less implemented the important fiscal changes our state desperately needs, and even today he still does not understand what needs to be done,” said Wilson.
He also hit Zeldin for siding with hard-left, socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in March 2022 and voted against a huge federal spending bill, even though it contained $2.9 million in funding for the NYPD.
Zeldin is the establishment-backed frontrunner in the campaign against Wilson, former Westchester County Executive Rob Astorino and former White House aide Andrew Giuliani based on endorsements from party leaders, polling and fundraising from donors.
But Wilson — who lost a 2010 race for state comptroller against Democrat Tom DiNapoli – is aiming to pull off an upset in a race that still appears far from over for any of the candidates.
The millionaire businessman, who previously advised Obama, has also attacked Zeldin for voting for the state budget on multiple occasions before his 2014 election to Congress.
“He will do anything and say anything to distract from his terrible record as a quote Cuomo clone, which defines his time at Albany,” Wilson said at Monday’s GOP gubernatorial debate.
Cuomo make a leftwards turn in his second and third terms in office before resigning last year amid accusations of sexual misconduct and a cover-up of COVID-19 deaths among nursing home residents.
Zeldin told The Post Tuesday that his past votes were in line with political realities in Albany where the budget process reflected lots of give-and-take at the time between the GOP-controlled Senate, Democratic-controlled Assembly and the governor.
Now Zeldin is similarly trying to use Wilson’s own words against him as they campaign with days to go before early voting begins June 28.
“The irony of the way they’ve run their campaigns with messaging and imagery is really coming back to bite them at this point because people don’t want to be misled, they don’t want to be deceived.
