Politicians are never publicly happier than when they are announcing the creation of new jobs—well, with the possible exception of when they’re delivering a campaign victory speech for themselves. So the glee displayed Tuesday by New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio was as breathtaking as the promises attached to the plans they unveiled for a new Amazon headquarters in Long Island City, Queens: more than $27 billion in tax revenue! Four million square feet of commercial space! And up to 40,000 new jobs!
Expanding employment opportunities is indeed a great and necessary thing for every state and city. For politicians, the value is compounded: Not only are they on the side of the angels by boosting the economy, they believe they are increasing the pool of happy constituents who can vote to keep them in their own jobs. Or to give them a promotion. Cuomo and de Blasio both have presidential ambitions, and narrow, bordering on impossible, paths to reach that goal in 2020. One reason for their giddiness Tuesday was that the Amazon deal could widen those paths—if, that is, Cuomo and de Blasio haven’t badly miscalculated the direction of the Democratic political zeitgeist.
For Cuomo, the Amazon deal is very much in character, ideologically and tactically—for better and worse. During his first two terms, the governor has cut business taxes and showered tens of millions of dollars in “incentives” and state grants on private companies, especially upstate. Cuomo styles himself a “pragmatic progressive” who makes state government function, and he’s not shy about using hardball methods. Asked about awarding Amazon nearly $2 billion in taxpayer funding, Cuomo responded coolly: “We had to win the competition.” The deal helps Cuomo build his centrist, get-it-done brand, which combines a liberal tilt on social issues (gay marriage, gun control) with a pro-business economic agenda.
That straddle results in some glaring gaps in the daily reality for millions of New Yorkers, however. Cuomo has spent big on new bridges and airports—and is now handing Amazon $48,000 in subsidies per new job—even as New York’s subway system collapses. “Where does Andrew’s head go?” a longtime Cuomo adviser says. “Buildings and structures that people can see. A lasting legacy.” During his recent re-election campaign, Cuomo claimed he is now deeply engaged in rebuilding the subway; after Cuomo’s landslide win, the chairman of the M.T.A. quit, and the governor seems in no hurry to name a replacement. The Amazon deal is supposed to eventually throw off money dedicated to mass transit. In the short-term, though, Cuomo could enjoy the biggest financial boon. The governor is a prodigious campaign fund-raiser, but his main source has been an old-school combination of financial industry and real-estate donors. Enabling Amazon’s HQ2 might—coincidentally—open a rich new vein of support for Cuomo, not simply from the company itself, but the larger tech world.
The governor took a press-conference victory lap, then craftily retreated out of sight, leaving it to the mayor to initially defend the Amazon deal and absorb the brunt of the criticism. De Blasio eagerly embraced the opportunity to raise his national profile, something he’s been struggling to do for years. In early November, for instance, the mayor’s wife, Chirlane McCray, hit the road to push her ideas for improving mental-health care—a subject well worth discussing most everywhere, but McCray just happened to travel to Iowa, which just happens to host those key presidential caucuses. Early in the morning after the Amazon press conference, de Blasio was on Morning Joe arguing that subsidizing Amazon will advance his vision of New York as “the fairest big city in America” by generating middle-class jobs.
The Amazon deal has genuine merits, but the case for it is complicated. Creating a new, non-Manhattan business district is a good thing, as is reducing the city’s dependence, for jobs and tax revenue, on New York’s shrinking financial industry. And de Blasio, in negotiations with Amazon, added park space, a school, and job training to the package while successfully standing against the company’s demands to reduce city real estate and income taxes. (“The biggest factor driving our selection process was access to available talent and ability to attract talent,” Amazon spokesman Jay Carney says.) Amazon could receive more than $1 billion in city tax breaks, but only through programs that are available to any business creating new jobs. “From a city standpoint, I feel great about this. I think we got a fantastic deal. We have an employer who is going to be paying billions and billions of dollars in taxes and hiring tens of thousands of New York City residents,” says James Patchett, the head of the city’s economic-development corporation. “God forbid there is another financial crisis like 2007 and the city can’t afford to pay its bills. We have to diversify our economy. And it was not always the case that the five largest companies in the world were headquartered on the West Coast.”
Yet the Amazon deal remains a tough sell for de Blasio, because it seems to contradict his lofty progressive ideals.
In 2011, as the city’s public advocate, de Blasio fought to keep Walmart out of the city, in the name of protecting unions and local retailers; in 2013 he ran and won an upset campaign for mayor on the theme of reducing New York’s income inequality. Now he’s advocating on behalf of an anti-union, retail-killing corporate behemoth, and the mayor agreed to a maneuver that spares Amazon from going through the city’s mandated land use public-review process. And de Blasio is running smack into the growing anger at the outsize role of those West Coast tech companies in American lives. The noise is building particularly on the left, where the mayor is being eclipsed locally and nationally by Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, the firebrand congresswoman-elect who just happens to represent part of Queens. Kirsten Gillibrand, New York’s junior U.S. senator, is testing the waters for a presidential run, and she clearly sees which way the Democratic primary winds are blowing: on Wednesday night, Gillibrand came out against the Amazon subsidies.
Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s founder and C.E.O., did not appear at either the New York or Virginia announcements of his company’s massive expansion, an absence that only underscored his importance. As did a seemingly small detail in the New York deal: the state agreed to help Amazon in “securing access to a helipad” in Queens, even as the city’s mass-transit system falls apart. Bezos is the one major player in this deal who shows no sign of interest in running for president. And why would he? Bezos already has real power, and he doesn’t need to answer pesky questions in public.
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