Andrew Cuomo got himself elected Governor of New York last fall promising lower taxes and spending cuts, and as governor he’s enacting spending cuts and lowering taxes. And for his trouble, he’s got good poll numbers:

The poll offers the newest evidence of the political coup that Mr. Cuomo, who marked his 100th day in office on Sunday, achieved with the budget that lawmakers approved two weeks ago.

Seventy-three percent of voters in the poll, by the Siena Research Institute, said they viewed the governor favorably, compared with 69 percent last month and 70 percent shortly after he took office in January. Even two-thirds of Republicans said they looked happily upon Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat.

It tells you a lot about the state of American politics that this is where things stand in what’s clearly a left of center state. On the one hand, there genuinely is an electoral appetite for spending cuts and on the other hand self-identified Democratic voters are much, much more tolerant of ideological deviation from incumbent politicians than are self-identified conservatives.

Sandra Lee, host of the Food Networks’s Semi-Home Cooking, is sort of history’s greatest monster. But as Sarah Laskow says, she’s also in many ways a great feminist role model as New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s significant other:

In the real world, women like Lee who have very, very successful careers of their own do not have to give them up when their husbands or partners happen to land an important job. In the political world, that’s not true.

Lee is the first partner of a high-profile politician to opt out of her assigned role altogether, that I know of. She can do this partially because she is legitimately more famous than Cuomo. She’s made multiple appearances on The Today Show and The View; her own show, according to The Food Network, has millions of viewers; her cookbooks have made The New York Times’ bestseller list. She gets more Google hits than Cuomo. Acting as New York’s official hostess would actually be a waste of her time (and probably a violation of some sort of in-kind gift law, given the price she would be able to charge to provide similar services to anyone else). But if everything was right with the world, anyone whose romantic partner was elected to political office would have the freedom to decide they’d rather spend their time in other ways.

I would add that part of what makes this work is that Lee is both super-successful and also has a kind of weird job. If she were hospital administrator like Michelle Obama or a lawyer like Hillary Clinton, then her career might be fraught with potential conflicts of interest. But as an entertainer and TV personality, what she does has nothing to do with New York State government, which is convenient. Ultimately, I think only the election of more high-profile women to office will really shift norms in this area. People don’t seem to expect that Joachim Sauer will act as national hostess for Germany, which should change expectations for the wife of the country’s next male Chancellor.

Looks like David Patterson may just kick the can down the road:

Sen. Bill Clinton? Sen. Mario Cuomo? Don’t completely rule it out. The former president and the former New York governor are among several boldface names being touted as possible “caretakers” for New York’s Senate seat — people who would serve until the 2010 elections but wouldn’t be interested in running to keep the job.

That’s probably a decent idea. But I have to say that in my view both the Illinois situation, the Delaware situation, and the New York situation all basically serve to illustrate the over-arching point that states would be well-advised to adopt a rule whereby Senate vacancies will be filled by special election. The constitution lets them do this, they just need to walk through the open door. Meanwhile, as a pure tactic matter I’m baffled that Patterson didn’t just act quickly to designate NY Attorney General Andrew Cuomo. That would have been the obvious thing to do, and nobody would have serious second-guessed it had it been done swiftly. Instead, dawdling created this Caroline Kennedy opening and how Patterson’s put himself in an awkward position that he could have easily avoided.