Fracking good politics for Cuomo in New York

Fred Dicker:

Just as his gay-marriage victory boosted Gov. Cuomo’s support with Democrats, approving “hydrofracking’’ for natural gas Upstate will boost him with Republicans and independents, political experts agree.

 

By cautious estimates, gas drilling will create tens of thousands of jobs and produce billions of dollars in investment in a depressed region that includes the collapsing cities of Binghamton, Elmira and Jamestown. The area has lost tens of thousands of jobs in the last decade alone.

No governor in modern times has had such an opportunity to help so many Upstate citizens so quickly. The political rewards could be enormous.

 

“If Gov. Cuomo is able to turn around a chronically and economically depressed area like Upstate, that is potentially a sendoff down the road to the presidency,’’ said Marist College polling director Lee Miringoff.

Deputy Senate Majority Leader Thomas Libous, a Binghamton Republican, called Cuomo’s pending decision “a hundred-year opportunity that we cannot screw up.”

 

Leading Democrats, many of them hydrofracking opponents, conceded that Cuomo could reap great gains -- but also insist the risks are great.

“The jobs are important to New York and clearly the promised potential will, if brought to fruition, be a political plus for the governor,’’ said Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver. “But the environmentalists will be upset with the governor, and if there’s an accident with the drilling or significant contamination shows up, that will clearly have a major downside.’’

...

What is seen as a courageous  decision in New York is just common sense in Texas.  They definitely need the jobs which are tied to the land so they can't be chased off by the state's confiscatory tax policy.  As for Cuomo's presidential ambitions, he would be a remarkably bad choice since he almost single handily caused the financial debacle with  he housing policy he imposed while running HUD.  He was primarily responsible for requiring lenders to make bad loans to people who could not afford them which became a cancer in the financial markets around the world.  As someone who supports conservative Republicans I think we could make a pretty good case against him.