Andrew Cuomo found himself face to face with a man he wanted no part of on the campaign trail - the much-maligned Vito Lopez
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Andrew Cuomo came face to face Sunday with embattled Brooklyn powerbroker Vito Lopez, making for a "very uncomfortable" encounter, witnesses said.
Cuomo, the state's Democratic attorney general, who is running for governor, had set up a meeting with Hasidic leaders in Brooklyn.
One of the Jewish leaders invited Lopez, an assemblyman slammed in a city report that found his social services empire, Ridgewood Bushwick Senior Citizens Council, billed for $340,000 in questionable expenses.
Ridgewood Bushwick is also the subject of two federal probes.
"It looked to me that Andrew Cuomo was totally surprised to see him, and I don't think he was too happy," said Rabbi Moishe Indig, who witnessed the meeting. "I watched the look on his face. ... He was very, very uncomfortable."
As he runs for governor, Cuomo has worked hard to distance himself from pols linked to Albany's dysfunction.
Cuomo "said specifically he [didn't] want to have any pictures with Vito Lopez," one source said. But Cuomo couldn't block the photo op with Lopez, who is also Brooklyn's Democratic Party boss.
The two men were snapped in a picture outside the home of Rabbi Zalman Teitelbaum, the head of one of the warring Satmar sects in Williamsburg.
"It was a meeting with the leaders of the Jewish community in Brooklyn attended by over 50 people, and [Lopez] was invited by the Hasidic leaders who organized it," a Cuomo spokesman said.
Lopez, who is about to enter the hospital for cancer treatments, asked the rabbis' blessing for the radiation treatment, a source said.
Rabbi David Niederman, who invited Lopez, said, "We regularly invite elected officials to our community for such discussions."
"Assemblyman Lopez was one of the local elected officials we invited to our community today to discuss issues of importance to us," Niederman said.
Earlier yesterday, Cuomo said he was still reviewing a new audit submitted by Lopez's Ridgewood Bushwick nonprofit.
The new audit reports that Lopez's girlfriend and campaign treasurer - who are both staffers at Ridgewood Bushwick - earned $40,000 more than earlier stated. Ridgewood Bushwick had failed to file the audit earlier, causing its state nonprofit registration to lapse.
The city has put all new contracts with Ridgewood Bushwick on hold until the attorney general gives the all-clear.
The Paterson administration has also frozen all state funding for Lopez's nonprofit empire.
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