Earlier today, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo commented on the passing of former New York City Mayor David Dinkins.

VIDEO of the Governor's remarks is available on YouTube here and in TV quality (h.264, mp4) format here.

AUDIO of today's remarks is available here.

PHOTOS will be available on the Governor's Flickr page.

A rush transcript of the Governor's remarks is available below:

We got some bad news. We lost really a political giant, a political pioneer in Mayor David Dinkins. I was relatively young fellow watching Mayor David Dinkins. I learned a lot from him. I worked with him many times for many years. He was extraordinary. He was beautiful, charismatic, principled, had a gentle but strong way about him.

And you want to talk about pioneers and groundbreakers, when he ran for mayor, you know, this was really such a step forward. David Dinkins, Percy Sutton, Basil Patterson, Charlie Rangel, they were really barrier breakers extraordinaire when they were doing it. They were cutting the brush and forging a path for so many to follow. But they went first, and the first person down the path, you catch all the briars, and all the scrapes, and when Mayor Dinkins was mayor, the city really had issues.

But we're all going to miss him. And he was really a New York champion and a beautiful New Yorker, and a mentor to me and a mentor to so many of us. So God bless David Dinkins. 2020 was a bad year, my friends. We're going to look forward to a new year.