Cuomo rallies black, Latino voters to his side

Andrew M. Cuomo barnstormed through black and Hispanic neighborhoods of New York City Saturday, seeking to drum up turnout in Tuesday's election and rebut his Republican foe Rob Astorino's refrain that the incumbent Democratic governor has ignored minorities.

Headlining indoor rallies on a rainy Saturday in Harlem, East Harlem, the Bronx's Hunts Point and Brooklyn's Bushwick, Cuomo again lumped Astorino, the Westchester County executive, with "extreme" Republicans who Cuomo says shun immigrants, disenfranchise voters, reject President Barack Obama, worsen income inequality, and put guns in the hands of the mentally ill.

"Everything we want, they want the opposite," Cuomo said.

To burnish his minority-community bona fides, Cuomo's campaign brought big names in black and Latino political leadership to the rallies, including Bronx Borough President Rubén Díaz Jr., City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito, U.S. Reps. Charlie Rangel and Nydia Velázquez and Puerto Rico's governor, Alejandro García Padilla.

Rangel took to the pulpit of the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem and invoked Obama, Nelson Mandela and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. before saying: "Indeed, Gov. Andrew Cuomo's name is our name that's on that ballot."

"¡Cuatro años más! [Four more years!]" cheered the crowd at the Casita Maria Center for Arts & Education in the Bronx.

"Boricuas con Cuomo," read a placard distributed to crowds at several of the rallies, or "Puerto Ricans for Cuomo," using a word from the island's indigenous language.

Astorino, asked in upstate Rensselaer County about Cuomo's push with minorities Saturday, said: "It's about time. It only took him four years."

Cuomo left many of the hits on Astorino to surrogates, who more often than not refused to utter Astorino's name.

"Why even bother?" Mark-Viverito said at the Silberman School of Social Work at Hunter College, referring to him as an "individual."

Padilla labeled Astorino "the other guy" who once joked that if Medicaid recipients lost benefits covering dentures, they could eat soup.

Velázquez, noting that New York has a big Puerto Rican population, criticized "someone out there" who questioned the propriety of Cuomo's recent trip to the island. Astorino, who is fluent in Spanish and has courted Latino voters, had called it a "panic-and-pander tour."

"The other guy speaks a lot of good Spanish," Díaz said. "But we don't want words, we want action. He hasn't given us the action that we need, right?"

Cuomo has had rifts with black and Latino politicians in the past, dating back to 2002, when he mounted a Democratic primary challenge to Carl McCall, the state comptroller who was seeking to become the state's first black governor.

There have also been clashes on legislative issues, such as Cuomo's abandonment of efforts to decriminalize possession of small amounts of marijuana, an offense that results in what advocates say are disproportionate arrests among minorities.

Cuomo has accused Astorino of thwarting fair housing for minorities in Westchester.

With Michael Gormley

By Matthew Chayes

matthew.chayes@newsday.comchayesmatthew

Matthew Chayes, a Newsday reporter since 2007, covers New York City.