N.Y. Attorney General Andrew Cuomo

Oh he’s so coy, that Andrew Cuomo. He speaks to the Conservative Party (a Cuomo!?!?). He starts to make the rounds of the civic group breakfasts (Citizens Budget Commission Wednesday, Crain’s soon, can ABNY be far behind?). He takes on the greedy Wall Street bums and the Medicaid cheats and the Health Insurance crooks. But he’s not running for Governor. No no no.

As Liz Benjamin gets very right, Cuomo is following the well-worn path of his predecessor Eliot Spitzer who ran for and won the Governor’s race with a very similar technique.

In his speech to the Conservative Party — irony alert! Remember Conservative votes were the margin of victory for George Pataki in his surprise ousting of Andy’s legendary dad Mario — Cuomo talked about consolidating local governments across the state and got a nice write-up from the Albany Times-Union editorial page for his trouble.

For CBC he rolled out more of the same with some added populism. Azi Paybarah at the Observer headlines the big quote from Cu, New York “should have a taxpayers revolt!” To the barricades!

But the clincher was this: “There’s a second concept called competence, called performance, and I want to introduce the topic of operational reform. Yes, the system shouldn’t be corrupt. The system should also be competent.”

Oooo snap! Who could that possibly be aimed at?

Cuomo insists he’s not running for Governor and has said repeatedly in recent weeks he thinks over the course of the rest of his term David Paterson will “do fine” as Governor. But Cuomo certainly noticed he was the public’s favorite for Hillary Clinton’s Senate seat (not Caroline Kennedy) and more recent polls testing a hypothetical Cuomo-Paterson Democratic primary have shown such a race thisclose.

Indeed there’s no reason for Cuomo not to start down this path based on Paterson’s uneven performance and the difficult times the state is facing. But before we get too far down this path remember this: It would be very hard for Andrew Cuomo to win a Democratic primary against Paterson if African-Americans didn’t split their support. And that could be a tough sell.

Cuomo’s primary challenge to Carl McCall in 2002 made him no friends in the African-American community where the feeling was McCall, who was then Comptroller, had earned the right to be the first black candidate for Governor of New York. Cuomo poured salt into the wound by dropping out of the race a week before the primary — having already forced McCall to spend money he could have used elsewhere and having spent months beating up on McCall so Republican incumbent George Pataki didn’t have to. Pataki won in a rout.

So would Cuomo really go after New York’s first black Governor? Not a chance unless party leaders believe Paterson is so weakened that Democrats would face a real risk of losing in 2010. That’s a decision they can wait on. In the meantime Cuomo can go about positioning himself to step in should the opportunity arise.

The key thing to watch for is any significant African-American leader (Rangel, Sharpton, Smith, Meeks) breaking ranks and suggesting Paterson might not be the right man for reelection. If that happens Andrew Cuomo is on deck, ready, willing, and eager to step up to the plate.