Gov. Andrew Cuomo this morning side-stepped questions about the status of his presumed presidential ambitions in a rare national television appearance on FOX (FOXA) Business Network.
“I’m sorry, I’m losing you, we have a technical difficulty,” he jokingly told host Maria Bartiromo when asked whether he was still eying a run for the White House in 2016.
Ms. Bartiromo also pressed Mr. Cuomo on his re-election prospects later this year, when he is expected to cruise to victory in the largely Democratic state.
“I’m trying to stay away from the politics until I finish the government, because once you start political speak, the government stops, you know,” explained Mr. Cuomo, who said that he wants to avoid “talking any politics” until June, when the legislative session ends.
“But if I was doing a political market forecast, Maria, for your show, I would say my long-term projection is that Andrew Cuomo may run for re-election in the State of New York,” he said with a laugh.
Later, he was more definite in his phrasing. “I’m running for governor of the state of New York,” he said.
Mr. Cuomo also discussed the phenomenon of people fleeing New York for lower-tax states like Florida, which he insisted was nothing new.
“This is not a new thing. They didn’t discover a new migratory pattern,” he said. “We’re aware that we are in a competition. We get it. … We understand there’s a tipping point, and we’ve been responding accordingly and we will continue to do just that.”
As for his tiff with Mayor Bill de Blasio over how to fund universal pre-K–in Ms. Bartiromo’s characterization, Mr. Cuomo’s agenda is “going right in the face of a completely different agenda from your friend who is running New York City”–Mr. Cuomo stressed the fact that, in the end, the two men share the same goal.
“I agree wholeheartedly with the mayor,” he said. “We both want the same thing. What he wants for the children in his city, I want for the children in my state. The question becomes how do we pay for it. That we’re working through.”
“The mayor is a friend in the truest sense of the word. We have a disagreement about how to finance pre-K, which in my book doesn’t mean you’re no longer friends,” he added. “It’s not really something that would abort a friendship. And we will work out this issue.”