How Cuomo won over women

Gov. Cuomo’s full-court press for women’s votes has grated on some feminists, including me, like fingernails on a blackboard.

The Women’s Equality Agenda he rolled out last year — a 10-point legislative package including measures to bolster abortion rights, promote equal pay and crack down on domestic violence — struck me as a smarmy attempt to beef up his third-year agenda while winning back alienated liberals.

The Women’s Equality Party he created this summer felt like a naked effort to undermine his female primary challenger, Zephyr Teachout, while reminding everyone that his Republican opponent, Rob Astorino, opposes abortion.

As City & State columnist Alexis Grenell pointed out, the party was the brainchild of Cuomo’s male-dominated campaign team. The women featured at the rollout press conference “were not involved in the decision-making process.”

Women are going to see through this, I thought — and resent being pandered to.

Boy — or rather, wow — was I wrong.

New York’s women have responded to Cuomo’s courtship by supporting him in vastly higher numbers than men — a disparity that just might make all the difference next Tuesday.

If this were pre-19th Amendment New York and only men could vote, Cuomo would be fighting for his political life. An Oct. 22 Siena College poll showed him losing to Astorino among male voters by two points, 41% to 43%.

But the same poll showed Cuomo romping by an astonishing 40 points among women, 65% to 25%. Thanks to that 42-point gender gap, Cuomo was cruising in Siena’s overall results, 54% to 33%.

While the exact numbers vary in other recent polls, all confirm a vast disparity between males and females — a powerful vindication of Cuomo’s strategy.

NARAL Pro-Choice New York President Andrea Miller says women voters love to hear the governor speak out strongly for reproductive rights as Texas and other states try to shut down abortion clinics, and as the Supreme Court rules against mandatory insurance coverage for birth control.

Women also appreciate him pushing bread-and-butter issues like pay equity and mothers’ rights in the workplace, Miller says. “It really resonates with women because it’s like, ‘Yeah, that’s my life.’ “

The fact that women tilt heavily toward Democrats is nothing new, of course. It’s why Democrats never tire of accusing Republicans of waging a “war on women,” and why Republicans cringe every time an elected official says something clueless about rape or birth control.

But Cuomo has capitalized on the phenomenon more aggressively and effectively than most.

So scoff, as I did, at the soft-focus TV commercials showing a pastel-sweater-wearing Cuomo in the home he shares with Food Channel host Sandra Lee, surrounded by his daughters and white pumpkins.

Cluck over his choice of former congresswoman Kathy Hochul as his running mate.

Wonder about his sudden interest in sexual assault among college students — and his rushed imposition of a new policy for SUNY campuses.

The polls strongly suggest that these and other tactics worked exactly as intended — at least for Cuomo’s political fortunes.

His 42-point spread in the Siena poll is the widest in any statewide race this year, and almost three times the gender advantage Cuomo enjoyed over Republican Carl Paladino in 2010.

So Cuomo’s savvy tactics have undeniably paid off for him. Whether women see anything in return remains to be seen.

It should be remembered that Cuomo could easily have won 90% of his Women’s Equality Agenda last year — if he and his allies had been willing to drop a controversial proposal to codify Roe v. Wade in state law, as a fail-safe lest a conservative Supreme Court roll back abortion rights.

Republicans were willing to vote for every other plank, including measures they had long resisted, but balked at the abortion bill. Cuomo and fellow Democrats held out for an all-or-nothing deal — and got nothing.

Arguably more significant measures — such as those aimed at protecting battered women or ending discrimination against pregnant women — were left sitting on the table.

What Democrats did walk away with was a powerful wedge issue — one that Cuomo has masterfully put to use in the current election.

whammond@nydailynews.com