Increasingly, for Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York, all politics are national.
With a deadline for issuing guidelines for hydraulic fracturing in New York State approaching at the end of February, a group of organizations opposed to the practice are running an ad about him in … Iowa.
“Not one well,†the full-page ad, destined for Tuesday’s Des Moines Register, urges in large block print. The closing line: “Your choice now will be remembered forever.â€
Or at least until the 2016 Democratic caucuses, is the implication.
“The ad in Iowa is not to just put Cuomo on notice but anybody who has national political ambitions,†said Kyle Ash, a senior legislative director for Greenpeace, one of more than 135 environmental, public health and liberal groups behind the ad.
The groups also ran a similar ad closer to home, in The Albany Times Union, on Monday, but they have sought to embarrass Mr. Cuomo in front of national audiences before, with an ad in The Charlotte Observer the day he arrived at the Democratic National Convention last summer.
The governor has reportedly been torn about whether to allow fracking in the state, and he has tacked left in recent weeks. At a news conference Monday evening, however, Mr. Cuomo said he was not going to read the ad “because I’m not going to be in Des Moines.†Asked if he “had any plans to be there in the next couple years,†he simply replied, “Nope.â€
Mr. Cuomo has been the main target of the antifracking movement, but it is a! lso trying to exert primary pressure on other Democrats. Food & Water Watch, for example, has a petition also aimed at Govs. Martin O’Malley of Maryland and John W. Hickenlooper of Colorado. (Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey is also on their list, but environmentalists’ ire is not likely to hurt him in a Republican contest.)
