On Obama NY visit, watch Cuomo and Clinton

ALBANY -- When President Barack Obama comes to New York Tuesday as the leader of the free world, he will immediately become the second most popular Democrat in the state, after Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo.

Make that third most popular, after Obama's secretary of state, former Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Or perhaps fourth, after former President Bill Clinton, who has an office in Harlem. He was Cuomo's mentor from the governor's years as federal housing secretary and Clinton got an important early boost for his first presidential run 20 years ago from the endorsement by Andrew's father, former Gov. Mario Cuomo.

Obama, Andrew Cuomo and Hillary Clinton depend on, and sometimes compete against, one another. And people around the two New Yorkers are talking up 2016 presidential runs, though neither politician has publicly encouraged such talk.

So there is sure to be plenty of focus on Obama's visit to a computer chip plant north of Albany, where the governor will join him. The chemistry between the two inevitably will be scrutinized.

Obama can use Cuomo's entree to New York's big political donors. Sidling alongside Cuomo also gives the president some of the shine Cuomo has cloaked himself in as a fiscal conservative.

An upstate New York appearance and planned economic speech also give Obama a chance to try out measures to appeal to Catholics and voters in the Midwest who share some political and economic DNA with upstate New Yorkers.

"It's a way for him to get the message out, sitting next to a popular governor," said Hank Sheinkopf, a national political adviser who worked in the Clinton White House. "Obama has got to win some combination of Midwestern states."

For Cuomo, it's another way to be seen as presidential without talking about it.

"It absolutely tells people that Governor Cuomo matters in a state that doesn't usually matter for a Democratic president," Sheinkopf said. "It's a big coup for Andrew Cuomo."

Hillary Clinton, with a home five miles south of Cuomo's in Westchester County, keeps amassing foreign relations cred and global popularity impossible for Cuomo to gain from Albany.

"This presidential appearance proves by inference what is wrong in Washington, by showing what is right in Albany," said Bruce Gyory, consultant to governors and a political science professor at the University at Albany. "Cuomo is a prized commodity for President Obama."

But what exactly is the relationship between Cuomo and Obama?

"The governor has a strong personal and professional relationship with the president and will do anything he is asked in order to support his re-election," Cuomo spokesman Josh Vlasto said Friday.

"Both men share a desire to cut through political gridlock and get things done," said Michael Benjamin, a former Bronx assemblyman and now a good-government advocate.