Amazon's Exit Forces a Reckoning for New York Political Leaders

The turn of events Thursday represented a reordering of New York’s political power structure, as one of the world’s biggest companies was driven from the city by a group of rabble-rousing activists and elected officials who objected to a suite of corporate sweeteners and tax breaks.

But as this reality settled into New York, the architects of the uprising faced a backlash of their own, as 25,000 jobs — potentially remaking Long Island City as a high-tech hub — had vanished in a blink, and with them the chance to inject billions of dollars in tax revenues in the coming years.

The victory of the resurgent left also placed a new target on its back, especially with polls showing that the deal offering Amazon tax incentives remained largely popular with New Yorkers.

Some Democrats, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, whose district bordered the Amazon site, cheered the deal’s demise, with one leading opponent calling it a “shakedown;” others, such a Queens councilman, called it “the greatest economic loss and missed opportunity ever” for New York City.

The Amazon fight has exposed deep fissures within the Democratic Party between business-friendly centrism and unalloyed populism, in New York and beyond, as the party’s economic policies and positions are reconsidered, signaling the tricky path going forward into 2020.

One presidential candidate quickly waded into the thicket. Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts declared Amazon “just walked away from billions in taxpayer bribes, all because some elected officials in New York aren’t sucking up to them enough.”

“How long will we allow giant corporations to hold our democracy hostage?” Warren asked.

For Cuomo, who had gone so far as to joke that he would rename himself “Amazon Cuomo” to lure the company and its jobs to his state, the collapse of a deal that he helped negotiate in private represented perhaps the most severe setback of a governorship that has long been driven by a more moderate and pro-business approach.

For de Blasio, who has fashioned himself as a movement politician of the progressive left, the episode marked an uncomfortable moment in which he was at odds with the movement he claims to lead. (The tension for the mayor in the Amazon deal was apparent from the start, as he welcomed the company’s arrival even while maintaining that he refused to shop there.)

On Thursday, de Blasio did not sound overly wistful about the deal’s demise.

“We gave Amazon the opportunity to be a good neighbor and do business in the greatest city in the world,” the mayor, who was traveling to appear at a conference at Harvard University, said in a statement. “Instead of working with the community, Amazon threw away that opportunity.”

Cuomo was far more irate at his fellow Democrats for the deal’s collapse. “The New York state Senate has done tremendous damage,” he said in a statement. “They should be held accountable for this lost economic opportunity.”

The fierceness of the opposition seemed to catch both the mayor and governor by surprise, and in their rare moment of unity, they failed to convince Amazon skeptics of the deal’s merits. Try as they might, they could not communicate effectively enough that the $3 billion in tax breaks that Amazon was to receive were, for the most part, reductions in future taxes that the company would have paid had they moved here.

In Albany, Amazon’s decision could fully poison the already souring relationship between Democrats in the state Senate, newly in the majority, and Cuomo.

One of the leaders of the Amazon opposition was Sen. Michael Gianaris of Queens, the No. 2 Democrat in the state Senate and long a thorn in Cuomo’s side. The Senate appointed Gianaris to a crucial state board with authority over the Amazon plan, seen as a key signal of the depth and seriousness of the opposition.

Cuomo called the opposition from Senate Democrats “governmental malpractice” even before Amazon’s withdrawal.

There could be political fallout within the state Senate where some of the Democrats who just gave the party their majority were in favor of Amazon’s arrival.

Sen. Monica R. Martinez, a Democrat who won a swing district on Long Island, said constituents had already called to voice their disappointment. “There was a potential for them to get jobs. That opportunity has escaped them,” she said.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.