Mayor de Blasio isn’t the only local progressive to be exposed as a bit of a fraud by the ongoing WikiLeaks dump: Zephyr Teachout comes off soiled, too.
De Blasio looks terrible for privately telling the Clintonites that he was on board with Hillary but wanted “special access” in order to lift his own profile — even as he was publicly pretending he might back uber-progessive Bernie Sanders.
But Teachout arguably looks even worse.
The Fordham prof rose to semi-fame back in 2014 with a spirited primary challenge to Gov. Cuomo, running as the anti-corruption candidate and pushing hard for “clean” (that is, taxpayer-paid) campaign finance.
She wound up pulling 33 percent of the primary vote — and damaged Cuomo enough that he wound up winning only 54 percent in the general.
In 2015, she moved up to Dutchess County, carpetbagging into the 19th District race for an open House seat. She kept pushing hard on her issues, even denouncing Hillary Clinton as corrupt and endorsing Sanders.
Which — according to the Wiki dump of Clinton campaign chief John Podesta’s e-mails — left Team Hillary aiming to have her “not be a pain in the ass to Hillary” in the runup to this year’s New York primary.
They reached out to Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, who (wrote Clintonite Robby Mook) agreed to keep Teachout from being “too vocal.”
The kicker, however, is Teachout’s reward for her silence: Gillibrand sent out a fund-raising e-mail on Zephyr’s behalf.
In other words, the clean-money principled progressive sold out — abandoning the Sanders rebellion against big-money politics in exchange for help funding her own campaign.
Just like a professional politician.
Voters have plenty of other reasons to choose John Faso, her Republican opponent. He’s actually lived in the district for decades and is backed by retiring incumbent Rep. Chris Gibson.
He’s also opposed to the tax hikes (on energy, homes, incomes and probably everything else) that Teachout embraces. She is, after all, a New York City lefty.
Albeit one who’s willing to go quiet on her principles — for a price.