Rob Astorino, Republican candidate for governor: An underdog with strong resolve

ALBANY -- Rob Astorino, the Republican candidate for governor, is running an underdog campaign against Andrew M. Cuomo with a resolve steeled by personal setbacks and political upsets.

Cuomo has $20 million more in campaign funds and had a 20-point lead in recent polls in the state with a 2-to-1 Democratic voter enrollment.

Given those numbers, calling Astorino an underdog may be kind. And he wouldn't have it any other way.

"I'm used to that headwind," said Astorino, 47, the Westchester County executive. "I ran races nobody thought I should run."

He began when he 23 years old, fresh out of Fordham University with a communications degree. Running for a town board spot in his hometown of Mount Pleasant, he took on an incumbent in his own party on a platform of ending corruption and overdevelopment. He won.

He continued to pursue politics -- on the local town board, the school board -- while he built a broadcasting career. He took chances in broadcasting, too, taking part in the start-up of ESPN radio in New York City as a producer, and later with The Catholic Channel on SiriusXM radio.

In 2005, he ran for Westchester executive in the Democrat-dominated county against an entrenched Democrat, Andrew Spano, and lost.

His next campaign began the following day.

Four years later, promising to end "the tax madness," he beat Spano. Then, four years after that, in 2013, he defeated another Democrat, New Rochelle Mayor Noam Bramson, decisively to win re-election. Astorino was 30 points behind on Labor Day, 13 points behind days before Election Day, and won by 13 points.

That election was the best grading of Astorino's job in Westchester, said political science Professor Doug Muzzio of Baruch College.

"Clearly, a guy who ran the way he did, the people of Westchester felt he had done well enough to win the job," Muzzio said.

BUILDING COALITIONS

Astorino did it by fashioning the same unlikely coalition he is trying to amass against Cuomo. Fluent in Spanish, he brought together Latinos, voters not enrolled in any party, African-Americans, liberal minor parties and Democrats, along with Republicans and Conservatives.

"I've always enjoyed trying different things, taking chances," Astorino said.

To some degree, Astorino also benefitted from voters who were feeling "Spano fatigue" after three terms and years of recession and tax increases, said veteran columnist Phil Reisman of the Journal News in Westchester.

In office, as the national and state economy tanked, Astorino held the line on county taxes for four years, and with the legislature, cut the county tax in one year, according to state records.

He reduced the tax levy -- the amount raised by taxes -- by $7.4 million in his first two years in office. State records show that 1.1 percent cut was the deepest among counties, most of which saw their levies rise.

"We kept our promises, we cut county taxes more than any county in New York State," Astorino said. "We have a budget today that's smaller than when I walked in the door. But we never turned our backs on the people most in need."

He also opted into a new, optional pension program offered by Albany to, in effect, borrow $43.5 million to avoid deeper cuts in staff.

And he cut the county workforce by 17 percent -- including 19 percent of his staff -- and trimmed just about every spending area by taking some unpopular stands.

Astorino also fought public labor unions, seeking givebacks to save money and threatening deeper layoffs and position cuts, to the point that some union leaders accused him of using union-busting tactics.

In 2010, he vetoed hundreds of bills passed in the legislature, including additional funding for the human rights commission.

In 2012, after one of many clashes with the legislature, Astorino agreed to a compromise budget that restored 28 jobs he would have cut. Astorino also had required parents to pay a share of subsidized day care, but the compromise lowered that cost to families.

Under Astorino, the county reached the highest- or second-highest credit ratings from top ratings agencies, beginning in 2010. The county is ranked higher than other New York City suburbs, including Nassau and Suffolk counties.

Fitch Ratings credited Westchester's "strong fiscal management" and willingness to cut costs to close budget gaps, rather than raise taxes. Moody's Investors Service slightly downgraded Westchester last year -- as it did other counties that chose to participate in the optional pension plan. But Moody's gave the county its second highest-rating and still praised its fiscal management and control of debt.

"We ran a government that's smarter, more efficient," Astorino said.

'SENSIBLE' APPROACH

Bishop C. Nathan Edwers, president of the Westchester United Black Clergy, saw his day-care center's funding cut. He said most parents were required to pay more for his service. But Edwers said it was a response to hard times as all governments were cutting back.

"He's not malicious at all," Edwers said. "He's sensible."

But Westchester County Legis. Kenneth Jenkins (D-Yonkers) said Astorino's insistence that families pay more for subsidized day care drove some into unregistered, private day care without the academic element of a government-funded program. He also said he believes families had to return to social services because of the increased cost, and he blames Astorino's near-obsession in cutting government spending.

"He was inflexible about the majority of issues we had," said Jenkins, who was the county legislature's chairman through Astorino's first term. "Stubborn might be a good word."

"From a political perspective, there are people who appreciate that, they think it is a redeeming quality that you do what you said you would do," Jenkins said. "But in the world of politics and government, you have to negotiate and be pragmatic, and that's something Rob Astorino hasn't done and Governor Cuomo has."

This year he announced the latest plan to revive Rye Playland, a county-owned amusement park, but only after the park lost millions of dollars, saw a big drop in attendance and was the subject of political tussles with the legislature.

Astorino also took on the federal Housing and Urban Development Department, a move that is haunting him through Cuomo attack ads today. HUD accuses Westchester of being out of compliance with fair housing laws and HUD's order to build more subsidized housing in certain neighborhoods under a settlement agreed to by Astorino's predecessor, Spano. HUD has stopped $12 million in grants to the county over two years which go to local nonprofit agencies and municipalities.

"Nothing would please HUD more than for the funding allocated to Westchester County to stay in Westchester County," HUD regional administrator Holly Leicht said in a statement. "This cannot be legally achieved because Westchester County has not fulfilled the terms of the fair housing settlement agreement they entered into in 2009."

Astorino said he is building the housing and no court has found him out of compliance with law, but that federal bureaucrats shouldn't "overreach" to overrule local zoning laws. He insisted that it's the high cost of housing in mostly white neighborhoods, such as the ones where Cuomo, and Bill and Hillary Clinton live, that keep even middle-income New Yorkers out, not, as Cuomo's ads have claimed, racism.

Astorino also has been criticized for hiring political supporters for county jobs, including the county Conservative Party chairman who helped seal the county party endorsement that Astorino needed in 2009. The chairman, Hugh Fox, resigned from his $105,740-a-year job as a labor specialist in August after a crash in his county car and a charge of driving while intoxicated. Astorino has said he employed people he trusted and who have often worked with him for years.

A CAREER ENDER?

Astorino's political career could have ended in 1994, when he was a 27-year-old Mount Pleasant town councilman and embarking on an ambitious political career. His father, Robert A. Astorino, Mount Vernon's head of detectives, was convicted in a corruption sting by the FBI and sent to prison.

Cuomo supporters resurrected the issue this year.

"First of all, he's my father and that transcends anything," Astorino said. "He made a mistake, paid the price, but I love him. He's my dad."

Then came his first marriage, to a high school girlfriend, which ended in annulment after three years. They remain friends.

None of it shook his political career.

"He made himself representative of the class of people really feeling besieged by the economy and felt the elites weren't concerned about their worries," said Reisman of The Journal News. "He tried to make himself synonymous with the average middle-class homeowner."

Astorino said, "I tell them to vote their values, not necessarily their party."

"Someone who lives in Westchester is very similar to someone who lives in Nassau and Suffolk counties," said Astorino, who lives in Mount Pleasant with his wife, Sheila, and their three children. "Often the husband and wife are working, just to stay ahead because the taxes keep going up, the energy costs and utility costs are crazy high, and the vast middle class feels like they are just taking the arrows from every direction and never moving ahead."

Michael Kay, the Yankees play-by-play announcer on the YES network, worked with Astorino on ESPN Radio in New York a decade ago, where Astorino was somewhat of an enigma.

"He would always disappear around midday for an hour or so, and I wondered where he went," Kay recalled in an interview. "He wouldn't say. I kept bugging him, I pestered him. . . . I was thinking maybe it was something weird.

"But eventually he told me. He was going to the church around the corner," Kay said.

His religious beliefs have been used against Astorino in the form of attack ads from Cuomo. They seize on Astorino's opposition to abortion and gay marriage, although he said he wouldn't try to touch the measures well protected by the Democrat-led Assembly.

"He gave Cuomo all the ammunition he needed," said Michael R. Edelman, a longtime Republican political commentator in Westchester. "If all we talked about was jobs in New York and in Cuomo's stewardship, this would be a different race."

"This is what distinguishes Rob from other politicians," Edelman said. "He wasn't going to change his beliefs to run for office. I told and plenty of people told him: you can't win in New York with that."

Edelman said Astorino's management style is as a delegater, relying on his chief of staff, Kevin Plunkett. "He lets his departments pretty much run themselves, except for budget matters," Edelman said. "But he hasn't upset a lot of people."

"All the charm and eagerness he has been able to muster doesn't help for a guy who is an austerity bug and anti-choice and anti-gun control," said Richard Brodsky of Wagner Graduate School of Public and a former Democratic assemblyman from Westchester who has known Astorino for 30 years. "The problem he faces is insurmountable as a matter of electoral strategy."

Still, Astorino says he is heartened by a slight gain in the polls and his small lead over Cuomo in the New York City suburbs. He said he likes where he is, because he's overcome obstacles beaten the odds before.

"The passion is on our side," he said. "We're peaking."

About Rob Astorino

REPUBLICAN

AGE: 47

RESIDENCE: Mount Pleasant

EDUCATION: Bachelor's degree from Fordham University.

EXPERIENCE: Reporter for a Westchester County radio station. Worked for ESPN Radio in New York City and later was the first program director for the Catholic Channel on satellite radio. Elected to the Mount Pleasant town board, then the Westchester County legislature. Lost a bid for Westchester County executive in 2005, but scored an upset victory in 2009. Won re-election in 2013.

PERSONAL: He and his wife, Sheila, have three children.

By Michael Gormley

michael.gormley@newsday.com@GormleyAlbany

Michael Gormley has worked for Newsday since 2013, covering state government, politics and issues. He has covered Albany since 2001.