Gov. Andrew Cuomo is trying to make a career at McDonalds more lucrative. He wants to raise the minimum wage to $11.50 in new york city and $10.50 in the rest of the state, and he’s specifically targeting the fast food market, a subset of the restaurant industry.

While many are concerned that Governor Cuomo is abusing his authority by attempting to raise the wage “all by himself,” others find it odd that he is targeting one specific subset of an industry as opposed to all businesses state-wide.

The most visible and symbolic target within that subset has been McDonalds.  Much of the “raise the wage” protests have been centered around the restaurant chain, the largest in the fast food market, and news reports often use McDonalds as the starkest example of the apparent disparity between profit and employee wages.

One particular McDonalds franchise owner was used as the poster child for the debate.  In September of 2014, William Finnegan wrote an extensive piece at The New Yorker on the minimum wage fight, highlighting one particular franchise owner.

Speaking to McDonalds employee Arisleyda Tapia, Finnegan asked who she felt was the one capable of giving her the pay increase she believed she deserved.

Bruce,” she said immediately. “He’s rich.”

She meant Bruce Colley, the owner of the McDonald’s where she works. Colley owns twenty-nine McDonald’s franchises, including nineteen in Manhattan.

As Finnegan notes in the article, Bruce Colley is not new to being mentioned in the news.  In 2003 he was identified as having had an affair with Kerry Kennedy Cuomo, the now ex-wife of Andrew Cuomo.  As one of the largest McDonalds franchise owners in the state, Colley stands to be impacted disproportionate to smaller franchise owners or businesses not targeted by Governor Cuomo’s proposed increase.

The affair, covered extensively in the media, ultimately led to the end of Cuomo’s marriage of 13 years.

This has raised the question for some as to whether or not Governor Cuomo is using his current position, which he did not hold at the time of the affair, to target what could objectively be described as a key player in a major personal feud that disrupted the lives of his family and himself and could have left lingering bitter feelings.

Colley was referred to as a spokesman for McDonalds as recently as 2013 on CBS New York, and for Cuomo’s part, he’s not shied away from specifically targeting McDonalds in his appeals to raise the wage.

Upon announcing his plan to convene a wage board, Cuomo said:

So think about what we have really been doing. The taxpayers of this nation have been subsidizing the workers at McDonald’s and Burger King at a cost of over $7 billion annually and that’s just wrong. Here in the state of New York, we pay more than any state in the nation to subsidize welfare. We pay an average of $6,800 per worker – per worker – through public assistance. It costs this state $700 million a year to subsidize the profits at McDonald’s and Burger King and that is wrong and that must stop. It is not like government subsidizing small businesses or mom-and-pop businesses. This year McDonalds made $4.67 billion and Burger King made $291 million, they don’t deserve subsidies from the taxpayers of New York State.

This wouldn’t be the first time a governor has been accused of using his position to attack personal opponents or settle vendettas. Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey has been battling claims that he was involved in a bridge closing that caused huge traffic problems as a way of settling scores with political apostates.

And while it seems that there is at least a reasonable connection that can be made that Governor Cuomo targeting a specific subset of an industry that would – to the exclusion of all other businesses in the state – create a major disruption in normal business for a franchise owner that has been publicly documented as having an affair with Cuomo’s ex-wife, most media outlets have not connected these dots in the same way they did with Christie’s “bridge gate.”

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