Gov. Kathy Hochul has revealed she’s as shameless as her predecessor. Challenged by the press Wednesday on her rancid COVID-test deal with campaign donor Charlie Tebele, she doubled down: “I would do that all again.”
Is she holding any staff accountable? Nope: “They did what they did,” Hochul told The Post.
Give the gov props for accidental honesty: She’s basically promised endless, brazen pay-to-play shenanigans. No heads will roll because her minions did exactly what she wanted.
Again, her campaign reaped nearly $300,000 from Tebele and his family. Meanwhile, her staff took less than a day to “review” and accept his company’s offer to sell tests at a unit price more than double what the state was paying other vendors. (And twice what California paid for the exact same tests, by simply going to the wholesaler.)
She’s since claimed she was “not aware that this was a company that had been supportive of” her when the deal was signed when Tebele had thrown her an in-person fundraiser just weeks before the deal went down.
Indeed, it was merely four days after that event that she suspended the competitive-bidding rules that would have blocked the $637-million no-bid deal.
About the same time, Hochul’s campaign hired Tebele’s son — and it later promoted him, tripling his salary, apparently right after dad hosted a second fundraiser for the gov in April.
It’s hard to know what’s worse: Hochul’s shadiness or the fact that she seems 100% confident she’ll get away with it.
Any New Yorker who cares about the state needs to vote for her opponent Lee Zeldin on Nov. 8. Otherwise, she will do it again.