When Mommy and Daddy fight, the kids always lose

De Blasio vs. Cuomo: The gloves are off!

New Yorkers were treated to an early July Fourth fireworks show last week when New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio began a verbal sparring match with Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

The mayor, in an interview with my friend Errol Lewis, an NY1 TV host, took on the governor, no-holds-barred-style, and attacked him, claiming that he showed a “lack of leadership” by not pushing for the mayor’s progressive city agenda in the waning days of the state legislative session.

De Blasio continued his offensive jabs, stating, “What I found was, he engaged in his own sense of strategies, his own political machinations, and what we’ve often seen is, if someone disagrees with him openly, some kind of revenge or vendetta follows.”

There’s an old saying: “When Mommy and Daddy fight, the kids always lose.” In the case of de Blasio vs. Cuomo, the kids are the people of New York, and mark my words, if this fight continues, they will indeed be the biggest losers. I have known both of these fine public servants for a number of years and consider both to be my friends, so in the name of friendship and sanity, I propose a Pasta Peace Summit to bring the two together.

I know it won’t be easy.

As mayor of the largest city in the country, de Blasio realizes that the governor of the fourth-most-populous state has a lot to say about what can and can’t be done. The governor is responsible not only for the 8.5 million residents of New York City, but the other 11.2 million residents of the state as well. So it’s safe to say that although both are looking out for their respective constituencies, they won’t always agree on policy or politics.

When de Blasio was elected, he and Cuomo vowed that things would be different because they had a 20-year friendship going back to the days when Cuomo was secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development. That wasn’t the case, however, as the usual behind-the-scenes fighting and political positioning continued.