Ex-Kathy Hochul aide Adam Sullivan had track record as sexual harasser before running her 2022 campaign: report
Gov. Kathy Hochul brought on shadowy political consultant Adam Sullivan to run her 2022 campaign several years after he was fired over sexual harassment allegations.
“I bet you slept with the whole Democratic Party,” Sullivan told a former co-worker at the liberal advocacy group Hub Project, according to a bombshell report by The New York Times published Wednesday night.
The Colorado-based consultant would also brag to co-workers, sometimes while drinking alcohol, about his supposed sexual prowess while asking questions about their personal lives and sexual activity, sources told the paper.
“I just was very numb and couldn’t believe what had just happened. And once it set in more, I felt really gross.” former co-worker Sarah Driscoll said about one early 2017 incident where Sullivan touted his purported penis size.
Hochul, then the New York lieutenant governor, reportedly recommended Sullivan for the job.
And less than a year after Sullivan got fired by Hub Project over sexual harassment allegations, Hochul brought him back to run her 2018 reelection campaign.
Sullivan did not deny the allegations to the Times while expressing general contrition about “anyone I made uncomfortable at any point.”
The embattled governor, who replaced disgraced ex-Gov. Andrew Cuomo in 2021, severed ties with the Colorado-based Sullivan on Sunday before denying she had any idea about his track record for toxic behavior despite her 12-year association with him.
She denied on Tuesday any knowledge of “harassing” behavior by Sullivan when pressed by The Post at a Tuesday press conference at the Capitol – or other alleged toxic behavior while the “egomaniac” served as her unofficial campaign manager in 2022.
When asked how she could not know about such allegations during her own campaign to become the first elected female governor in state history, Hochul claimed she only interacted with Sullivan “one-on-one” despite him calling the shots for her bid to become the first elected female governor in state history.
Sullivan, 42, formed a bond with Hochul after guiding her to victory in a 2011 special election for a Western New York-based congressional seat.
“Oh, Adam Sullivan is a great friend of mine,” Hochul told The Post weeks ago when asked about her relationship to the obscure political operative who lives in the small town of Leadville, Colo.
“He helped me win a seat that I was told by everybody, including the leaders of the state party at the time, that I would never win.”
But staffers for subsequent campaigns say that Sullivan would regularly bully subordinates, ask personal questions – all while talking up his unique relationship with Hochul.
“He was very, very much so condescending,” an ex-campaign operative previously told The Post. “Sometimes, I think several of us got the impression that he would counter something that we were suggesting just for the sake of countering it.”
Sullivan also had a track record for giving bad political advice, including a fateful decision to prioritize abortion rather than crime during her campaign last year against Republican Lee Zeldin in supposedly solid-blue New York.
His influence also extended to Hochul’s decision to nominate centrist judge Hector LaSalle to lead New York’s highest court, which became a political disaster after state Senate Democrats made her the first governor to ever have a judicial pick rejected.
“Sexual harassment is unacceptable under any circumstance, and these allegations are both shocking and deeply disappointing. No one should have to tolerate this type of behavior, and I condemn it,” Hochul said in a statement late Wednesday night.
