Across New York, dedicated liberals such as myself were quite shocked by Governor Andrew Cuomo’s State of the State. During his first two years as governor, the purportedly Democratic Cuomo appeared to be more rightward leaning. In his 2011 State of the State Address, Gov. Cuomo proposed cutting state government by 20%, downsizing Medicaid, and encouraging a test-based performance incentive system for public schools, something that has been proven time and time again to be a poor indicator of the capability of educators. In 2012, Gov. Cuomo claimed that raising taxes was not the solution to closing the deficit, capping them at 2%; he has also remained frighteningly ambivalent about such polarizing issues as hydrofracking and union rights.

Yet despite these far from liberal ideals, Gov. Cuomo’s 2013 State of the State revealed a previously uncovered Progressive agenda. The Governor advocated for protecting abortion rights, passing a Women’s Equality Act, actively fighting climate change, making education a priority, decriminalizing marijuana, raising the minimum wage, and perhaps most strikingly, enacting stricter gun laws. Cuomo was one of the first governors to speak publicly about the necessity of gun control following the Newtown massacre, and the only one (thus far) to enact a stricter gun law, which passed early Tuesday evening. The act, which Gov. Cuomo signed into law almost immediately after it passed through the House of Representatives (104-43), requires state registry of assault weapons, bans possessions of all high-capacity magazines, stipulates that stolen guns must be reported within 24 hours, requires background checks for all gun sales, and finally (and in my opinion, most notably) requires “any therapist who believes a mental health patient made a credible threat of harming others to report the threat to a mental health director, who would then have to report serious threats to the state department of Criminal Justice.”

While nearly everything Cuomo discusses in his State of the State address falls pretty far left of moderate, his fast action on gun control is by far the most progressive (and controversial) new policy. Though the NRA has already publicly denounced the legislature as “draconian,” Gov. Cuomo’s immediate and very effective response to the Newton shooting is the act of a responsible politician. An unregulated gun market has caused thousands of deaths over the past year alone, and Gov. Cuomo has been the only governor courageous enough to take meaningful action. Hopefully this new law will, one year from now, find New York a safer state.

The question that remains, of course, is whether or not this abrupt progressive shift is motivated by Governor Cuomo’s national office ambitions. Pessimistic liberals suggest that the man has given up on any hope of a 2016 run, and thus risked the alienation of the right with his strikingly progressive agenda. I believe, however, that we will be lucky enough to see someone with Gov. Cuomo’s tenacity and commitment to sensitive issues run for President in another four years. Perhaps it is this future endeavor that motivated such left-leaning laws as the assault weapons ban. Either way, if he continues along this liberal path, I, for one, am not complaining!