It might be a bit awkward at time for CNN New Day‘s coanchor Chris Cuomo — who happens to be the younger brother of New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo and son of former Gov Mario Cuomo — when issues of New York politics arise on his show. In the past while the active Governor has phoned-in to New Day, interviewing duties have largely fallen on Alisyn Camerota and Michaela Pereira, while Chris Cuomo sits the segment out altogether.
But on Wednesday morning, it was Chris Cuomo locked firmly in a one-on-one sitdown with Steve Lonegan, the former New Jersey pol who is a fervent supporter of the Ted Cruz campaign. And when the issue of failed Democratic politics in the state of New York came up, Lonegan lumped Cuomo’s own brother into the mix, perhaps quite literally forgetting who he was talking to.
The issue at hand in the interview was the delegate count after last night’s Wisconsin primary, where Cruz defeated Donald Trump and narrowed the margin of victory. As the attention in both parties shifts to the New York primary, Cuomo pressed Lonegan on how the Texas Senator is ever going to move past his “New York values” slam from several months ago and perform well with an electorate of proud New Yorkers. Lonegan spoke for the conservative New Yorkers (presumably upstate, of course, because there aren’t many in the city) who would identify with the failed policies of Democratically-elected politicians in the state.
“Conservative Republicans in New York know exactly what that means,” Lonegan said of the infamous values-critique from Cruz. “That’s the values of comrade Bill de Blasio that Donald Trump said would be a great Mayor, would make New York great again. Those are the values of Andrew Cuomo and Hillary Clinton and Charlie Rangel and Anthony Weiner and [Eliot] Spitzer and all the Democrats that Donald Trump has supported over the past twenty years from his cocktail parties to his penthouse.”
The New York primary is scheduled for Tuesday, April 19, and candidates from both parties are investing energy into courting voters in the Empire State. On the Republican side, Trump leads in the delegate count 740 compared to Cruz’s 514, while Ohio Governor John Kasich trails in third with 143. Former New York state Senator Hillary Clinton is hoping to make a hometown appeal of sorts against Brooklyn-born Bernie Sanders and continue to add to her delegate count, which currently sits at 1,743 to Sanders’ 1,056.
Check out the above clip from CNN’s New Day.
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