Cuomo strides outside Housing to fight battles (anti-gun while at HUD, 2000)

The Baltimore Sun ^ | June 03, 2000 | Susan Baer

[Mr. K]

WASHINGTON - Telling his audience he will be brief because he's got a plane to catch - "and Air Force One waits for no man except one" - Andrew M. Cuomo steps to the podium to accept the "Champion of Justice" award from a public interest group. This spring has brought a rush of such accolades for this man on the move. But the 42-year-old secretary of Housing and Urban Development is not being heralded for any new housing program. The issue that has put Cuomo front and center these days is guns. Cuomo has become the lead player in the Clinton-Gore team's effort to curb gun violence. A gun owner who often shoots waterfowl on Maryland's Eastern Shore, Cuomo has been the chief cheerleader for the administration's HUD-funded gun buy-back programs, such as the one today in Baltimore's Pleasant View Gardens development. He has attacked presumptive Republican presidential nominee George W. Bush on his gun record. And, threatening to bring a lawsuit on behalf of some of the nation's 32,000 housing authorities where gun violence has been especially rampant, Cuomo took the lead in negotiations with gun manufacturers that resulted in a landmark settlement with Smith & Wesson. In the process, the aggressive, ambitious Cabinet secretary has thrust HUD into the spotlight, elevating the typically glamourless second-tier department to a place of prominence within the administration. To the surprise of no one, he has polished his image at the same time. Cuomo's headline-generating activities have served to make one of the capital's more polarizing figures even more polarizing. His brash, combative style and at times brazen self-promotion have at once emboldened his department and created enemies in high places - and made it clear he has big plans.

[Mr. K]

"Andrew is a very aggressive player," says Cuomo fan F. Barton Harvey III, chairman and CEO of the Enterprise Foundation, a nonprofit housing and community development organization. "He's rankled a number of people - Democrats and Republicans are suspicious of his motives, especially as elections come near." A top aide acknowledges that Cuomo's high-profile endeavors, including his gun agenda and his campaign activities for confidant Al Gore and New York Senate candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton, have sparked a flurry of speculation about his next move: vice president or chief of staff in a Gore administration or, as is more likely, a New York gubernatorial run in 2002.

Cuomo's ANTI GUN activities while at HUD

How can Cuomo 'clean up' the government that HE HAS BEEN A PART OF for 30 YEARS!!!

HE *IS* EVERTHING THAT WE NEED TO CLEAN UP

[afraidfortherepublic]

Off topic, but related: Carl Paladino’s battle with Fred Dicker of the NY Post. Much has been made of Paladino’s charge that the NY Post has not investigated why Kerry Kennedy “threw” Cuomo out of the house when they were married because he was having affairs. Dicker says that there is no such allegation.

I remember that I read somewhere (probably here) that it was Kerry Kennedy who was having the affairs that led to their divorce and that Andrew was “devastated” at the break up. I remember it because I thought that she was another Kennedy who was a slut just like her brothers and her uncles.

Does anybody remember?

[Mr Ramsbotham]

Is this a news article, or a campaign ad?