Albany watch: Questions about a mandate

In a published piece last week, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo's former top aide, Steven M. Cohen, noted that Mayor Bill de Blasio won election with fewer than one in five registered city voters casting ballots for him.

While it was a landslide, Cohen wrote, "the nature of his victory hints at the possibility that his mandate is something less than robust and may be a little bit precarious." De Blasio got 795,679 votes, or 17.3 percent of the city's 4,609,905 registered voters.

Just to fill out the picture a bit: Cuomo became governor in 2010 with fewer than one in four state enrollees voting for him. (He got 2,910,876, or 24.7 percent, of a total 11,806,744).

Viewed in terms of turnout, neither man's "mandate" looked all that robust. -- Dan Janison