Mayor Bill de Blasio and Governor Andrew Cuomo have been sparring publicly over the last several weeks but the tense mayor-governor dynamic seems to be one example of history repeating itself. NY1's Zack Fink filed the following report.
Governor Andrew Cuomo set expectations high when the man he often describes as his close friend became the mayor of New York City a year and a half ago. But fault lines quickly surfaced, before fracturing this month.
Tensions between mayors and governors are nothing new of course. Rudy Giuliani began his relationship with George Pataki by crossing party lines and endorsing Pataki's 1994 opponent, Governor Mario Cuomo.
But it didn't begin there either. Even Mayor Ed Koch had his issues with Cuomo, a fellow Democrat.
"Mario often did not answer Koch's phone calls. He usually had someone else return the phone call. So, things were always tense," noted George Arzt, a politcal consultant.
And Mayor John Lindsay and Governor Nelson Rockefeller had a well-documented feud. The common thread is that all of these relationships involved Mayors and Governors of the same party, just like Cuomo and De Blasio.
"This tends to be less about partisan politics and than it has to do with hurt feelings, personal slights. Credit taking," said Randy Mastro, a former deputy mayor under the Giuliani administration.
But observers say the Cuomo-De Blasio war is a bit harsher.
"The tone today is much more outspoken. Much more brutal than it was with Lindsay and Rockefeller," Arzt said.
In the end, it could be the mayor who loses out.
"At the end of the day the inherit powers of the Governor of New York - he controls the purse strings, he controls the legislative process - many, many items that any mayor of New York City needs. And that is why this a particular problem for this mayor," said Tom Doherty, a former Pataki administration adviser.
"It's unclear at this point what the long-term damage will be, if any, from the mayor's broadside against the governor.
The governor's response which was two sentences and included wishing the mayor well on his vacation was described by people close to Cuomo as basically a shrug.