Albany Watch

Democratic gubernatorial candidate Andrew Cuomo today said to withhold judgment in the case of embattled Rep. Charles Rangel, who faces a slew of ethics charges before a House panel.

Cuomo, the state’s attorney general, said after a campaign stop in Schenectady that Rangel’s side of the story should be heard.

But Cuomo, speaking to reporters after the stop, said Rangel deserved a fair hearing.

“Let’s get the facts and then we’ll make the decision once we have the facts,” Cuomo said. “I think we have to be careful jumping to conclusions before we have all the facts and we get both sides of the story. But I’ve been at this long enough to know there’s always two sides to a story—and sometimes there’s a third side.”

One of his Republican opponents, ex-Rep. Rick Lazio, has knocked Cuomo for attending a birthday for Rangel on Wednesday. His campaign released a grainy web video taken by a campaign operative known as a “tracker” on Thursday to draw attention to Cuomo’s attendance at the party.

Inside Cuomo’s campaign event, which was held at Proctor’s Theater, Cuomo railed against the cost of government and the state’s sky-high property taxes. He blamed the multiple layers of government for the state’s high tax burden. Cuomo also said that as governor he would try to rein in the lack of ethics in Albany politics and pledged to tame the dysfunctional Legislature.

“This isn’t about putting a man on Mars,” Cuomo said. “This about getting a group of people to work together.”