Politicos always have soft spot for Garden

THOUGH the Dolan Family/ Cablevision/Madison Square Garden empires have rarely if ever been popular with consumers, politicians — and from both sides — have long held Dolan operations in greater esteem than their constituents.

Late last week, Gov. Cuomo named Jimmy Dolan to his New York Re-Opening Advisory Board. Jeff Wilpon also made Cuomo’s wish list, so go figure.

In 1995, when Cablevision and ITT purchased the Garden and its teams, Gov. Mario Cuomo, at a news conference, was delighted to announce to New York the “great news,” though Cablevision’s cutthroat business practices led to far more consumer groans than grins. Gov. Cuomo’s presence and effusive praise of Cablevision seemed as inappropriate as it was preposterous. In between, in 2015, Joe Percoco, among the current Gov.

Cuomo’s top aides and best pals, left the Cuomo administration to become a senior executive VP at the Garden, under Jimmy Dolan. Last year, Percoco was sentenced to six years in prison for accepting $300,000 in pocket-stuffing while employed by New York State under Cuomo.

Interesting, the mutual attraction and affection, no?

So if we read the timeline correctly, a Giants’ first-round draft pick last season, DeAndre Baker out of Georgia, allegedly developed into an armed robber with aggravated assault charges last season, his first in the NFL.

Either that or the Giants had no idea who they’d drafted.

Both Baker and alleged stickup companion Quinton Dunbar, a cornerback with Seattle, are both college men, the latter from the University of Florida. Why do the same colleges, year after year, produce the most criminal suspects? Don’t the states’ governors ever wonder? Or are they looking forward to games in the luxury suites, thus willing to dismiss it all as an unfortunate annual coincidence?