Cuomo speaks at 60-acre apple orchard, but no room for reporters


    ALBANY — Just as he has dozens of times over the past few months, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo streamed a carefully produced speech on his website Tuesday, this one broadcast from a parking lot at Angry Orchard, the Orange County hard cider producer. He talked about the ongoing vaccination effort and rural New Yorkers.

    These events always have strong political undertones, with Cuomo reiterating the importance of vaccinations as he’s flanked by an American flag or a New York flag. Several events have been held at Black churches or community centers in heavily Black neighborhoods, a constituent group which polling has shown has broadly supported him despite the numerous scandals and investigations confronting him.

    Cuomo is often surrounded by people. But no reporters are allowed to attend. The governor hasn’t taken a question in-person from a reporter since December.

    Through the state’s winter battle with a new coronavirus spike, the announcements of in-person events held by Cuomo contained a boilerplate line barring the media due to COVID-19 rules. That language disappeared over the past week, but the ban stayed in place even as other elected officials — including U.S. Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer and even Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul — have conducted outdoor Q&As.

    Tuesday’s event was held outside Angry Orchard, which according to one speaker covers more than 60 acres — more than enough room for the entire press corps, and then some.

    The head-down crisis management approach is a stark reversal from the loquacious daily press conferences of a year ago, in which Cuomo dilated on everything from public health policy to his long-ago stumbles as a parent, and took questions at length from reporters seated in socially distanced fashion in the Capitol’s ornate Red Room.

    But two political consultants with decades of combined experience working in Albany politics — both speaking on the condition of anonymity due to concern for professional reprisal — noted that the new Cuomo is actually the old Cuomo, only far more embattled.

    “This is a strategy by design, but also by necessity,” one consultant said Tuesday. “One of the things about Andrew Cuomo long-term is that he has the ability to open mouth, insert foot.”


    “All of these stories have opened up a feeding frenzy. … And now either he and/or his people recognize he’s not well-equipped to go out and do a wide-ranging press conference right about now,” the consultant said.

    When Cuomo does take questions a few times each week, it’s in tightly controlled conference calls in which his aides are able to select reporters and cut off any attempts at follow-up questions. (The Times Union hasn’t been called on in months, though few members of the Capitol press corps have been selected in recent weeks.)

    In one such Q&A last week, Cuomo defended his approach by again citing COVID protocols. “We try to keep the number of people down, and we try to keep social distancing mandates,” he said. “Answering questions with the press, I can do through other means — like this. Next question, operator?​”

    Cuomo is reading the same polling numbers that are publicly available, which have shown his popularity and chances for reelection damaged by the scandals, but the approval for his handling of COVID-19 relatively unchanged. Majorities in those surveys don’t want him to resign, but they don’t want him to seek another term in office next year.

    The consultant said that Cuomo has correctly surmised that the public wants him to focus on vaccines, reopening the state and recharging the battered economy. The less he talks about his overlapping troubles, the theory goes, the less coverage they’ll generate.

    “All they’re getting is him talking about what he wants to talk about, and what they’re getting is what he thinks — and he’s not wrong — the people want to talk about,” the consultant said.

    A second consultant summed up the strategy as “just persistently putting out other news so that people move on … because most voters simply are not paying attention to the level that we are — we in Albany and the news media. I don’t put it past him to believe that he can survive this and ride out his current term.”

    “I don’t think he’d ever admit it, but: Do I think this guy is thinking about running for a fourth term? … Yeah, I do,” the second consultant said, laughing.



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