Earlier this week, Gov. Andrew Cuomo stood at a podium with Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., to announce the state Democratic Party’s intention to target Rep. Tom Reed, R-Corning, and seven other Republican members of Congress from New York state in the 2018 election.

According to a Buffalo News report on the rally, Cuomo said, “These are not moderate, responsible public officials. These are political pawns to the ultraconservative puppet masters in Washington.” Of course, Pelosi and Cuomo want to replace those political pawns with a new set of liberal pawns run by Pelosi in Washington — the same representative who infamously said Congress had to pass the Affordable Care Act in order to find out what was in the bill.

By at least one measure, however, Cuomo and Pelosi are dead wrong about at least three of the Republican Congress members they are targeting. The Lugar Center, led by former U.S. Sen. Richard Lugar, and the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University, recently released a bipartisanship ranking of the 114th Congress (2015-16) that indicates the degree to which Senators and Representatives work across party lines. Reed is ranked 32nd among the 515 members of Congress in bipartisanship while Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-Willsboro, was ranked 31st and Rep. Lee Zeldin, R-Shirley, was ranked 45th. By that measure, Reed, Stefanik and Zeldin are more than willing to work with Democrats in Washington, D.C., and Democrats apparently find the three representatives easy to work with as well.

Cuomo and Pelosi are well within their right to fight to defeat the eight Republicans they targeted this week, but we hope voters recognize what Cuomo and Pelosi are peddling by targeting Reed, Stefanik and Zeldin is more gridlock and partisanship in Washington, D.C.