Tensions Flare as Cuomo Confronts Democratic Rift

As he looks to heighten his national profile, criticizing the Republican health care bill and President Trump’s immigration policy, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York has been forced to confront a political schism far closer to home.

For five years, a group of renegade Democrats has enabled Republicans to control the State Senate, even though they are in the minority. Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat, has at times benefited from that strange reality: Having a divided Legislature allowed him to position himself as a deal-making centrist.

But after the election of Donald J. Trump, pressure has mounted on Mr. Cuomo to reunite his party.

Reunification was the agenda of a strategy session last month in Mr. Cuomo’s Midtown Manhattan office, attended by nearly two dozen Democratic state senators. When the discussion turned to how to best win elections, Mr. Cuomo suggested to the assembled lawmakers — many of them from New York City — that the leader of eight breakaway Democrats, Senator Jeffrey D. Klein, had a better understanding of the suburbs than they had.

That was all Senator Andrea Stewart-Cousins, the Senate minority leader who represents the suburbs of Westchester County, needed to hear.

“You look at me, Mr. Governor, but you don’t see me. You see my black skin and a woman, but you don’t realize I am a suburban legislator,” Ms. Stewart-Cousins said, according to the accounts of five people who were in the room. “Jeff Klein doesn’t represent the suburbs,” she said. “I do.”

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Mr. Cuomo reacted in stunned silence.

The pointed exchange, which has not previously been reported, captures the raw tensions around the fractured Democratic coalition in Albany that threaten to dog Mr. Cuomo as he looks to his 2018 re-election, and possibly beyond.

Dani Lever, a spokeswoman for the governor, played down the moment.

“The comment you describe was not of particular note,” said Ms. Lever, who was not at the meeting. “Certainly no one took any offense because it was a friendly and positive meeting on all levels.”

That is not how those in attendance reacted, describing it as profound moment in a fractious relationship.

Ms. Stewart-Cousins herself said in a statement, “My comments were in the context of suburban representation — there was no racial tension whatsoever; it was a good and productive meeting.”