How Andrew Cuomo Holds On to Power

On Tuesday, New York State Attorney General Letitia James released a voluminous report that catalogued numerous instances of alleged sexual harassment by the state’s governor, Andrew Cuomo. Currently in his third term, Cuomo is said to have harassed eleven women; the report includes cases that had been widely discussed in the media as well as previously unreported instances of harassment. The report concludes that “the Executive Chamber’s culture—one filled with fear and intimidation, while at the same time normalizing the Governor’s frequent flirtations and gender-based comments—contributed to the conditions that allowed the sexual harassment to occur and persist.” In response, Cuomo—who has been ignoring calls for his resignation for months—released his own report, which disputed James’s findings. Still, Democrats across the country, including President Biden, have called for Cuomo’s resignation.

I discussed the report with Casey Seiler, the editor of the Albany Times Union, who has been at the paper for over two decades. He makes an appearance in the report, owing to his newsroom’s investigation of Cuomo’s misconduct toward a state trooper. (The appendix of the report also includes a transcript of a contentious exchange between Seiler and Melissa DeRosa, one of Cuomo’s top aides, about Lindsey Boylan, who accused the governor of sexual harassment.) During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we discussed how Cuomo has been able to wield power in Albany for so long, how the Governor’s office has responded to unfavorable press, and the legacy that Cuomo will leave behind.

The picture of Governor Cuomo in the report seems to follow on many things we have heard about the Governor. How much of this behavior was already known, in terms of both sexual misbehavior and his way of interacting with people generally?

It was well known that the Governor placed an extreme premium on loyalty, which is not surprising for powerful elected officials, or even people in leadership positions in business, to be sure. But, for the Governor, it was something that was especially prized. You saw that in the way the Governor comported himself during the criminal travails of Joseph Percoco, his former executive deputy secretary. [Percoco was convicted of corruption charges in 2018.] And you saw that in the way he would go after people who were critical of those in his inner circle. And that, of course, is a reciprocal arrangement, in that those people would remain devoted to the Governor, even after leaving the executive chamber.

That was one of the most stunning revelations in the report—the degree to which people who have been out of the executive chamber, who had escaped to comfortable corporate jobs in public relations, were perfectly happy to be brought back in to do crisis public-relations work for the executive chamber, up to and including advising and playing a role in the dissemination of information that was clearly meant to undercut the credibility of one of the women who had accused the governor of criminal misconduct.

Do you have a sense of whether this loyalty was based on fear or on genuine affection, because we hear frequently about the former? Was there more to it than that?

I think for people who go back to the administration of Mario Cuomo, a lot of it is based on affection. I think there are also people of more recent vintage who believe that the Governor is, or has been, an effective leader of the state, and think that in the early months of the pandemic he provided a national foil to the mixed messages and chaotic health advisories that were emerging from the White House. I think there is a large number of state lawmakers and even local officials whose relationship with the Governor is based on the transactional nature of politics. You are going to provide reinforcement and support for the politician who keeps the gravy train running.

How has he managed to remain in power over the past few months? When some of these accusations were first aired, there was a sense that he might be finished.

In that it is worth remembering that Donald Trump is another Queens boy. And a lot has been made comparing Cuomo’s response to that of Governor Ralph Northam, of Virginia, but the allegations made against Northam were kind of penny ante compared to those that have now been made against the Governor. Cuomo is now facing a half-dozen investigations or so, with this one wrapped up, at least that we know of. There is also a new one from the Manhattan District Attorney’s office, but we don’t know yet what it involves.

But, yes, it was very surprising to many people when, during the first weeks in March, the stream of statements calling on the Governor to resign became a torrent. That was when our managing editor for investigations, Brendan Lyons, broke the news of the allegation that the Governor had groped a female aide at the Executive Mansion, which, I think it is still fair to say, is the most serious allegation against him. That week ended with Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand saying Cuomo could no longer hold on to his office. He tied himself to the argument that we should let the investigation play out, and that ended up winning the day. The Governor basically did his best to deflect questions about his conduct and say the investigation should run its course, and that enabled him to buy time to return to governance.

After a little while, more and more people were happy to appear onstage with him in press conferences and announcements. In recent weeks, you even had people angrily denouncing reporters—a state assembly member, Diana Richardson, denounced the reporter who brought up that she and a state senator, Zellnor Myrie, had once claimed Cuomo could no longer hold on to his office, and asked why they were standing with him now. Richardson responded with venom—that it wasn’t an appropriate question, and how dare you bring up political matters when we are here to talk about whatever the issue of the news conference was. And it worked.

So, was this about some sort of loyalty to Cuomo?

It almost doesn’t matter if they have loyalty to Cuomo or not. What matters most is their actions. In other words, were they lying to the public when they said in March that Cuomo should resign, or were they lying to the public when they showed up to praise him for funnelling state funding their way, while angrily denouncing questions about their prior statements? Who was being political in that exchange? Was it the reporter, or was it them?

The speaker of the New York State Assembly, Carl Heastie, released a statement saying, “It is abundantly clear to me that the governor has lost the confidence of the Assembly Democratic majority and that he can no longer remain in office.” He was someone who was unwilling to go this far for a long time. What is his role in Albany, and his relationship to the Governor?

He has had a very good relationship with the Governor. Carl Heastie has faced questions about the propriety of that relationship. My paper has reported at length about a leak investigation from the state’s Joint Commission on Public Ethics. There was a vote about whether to proceed with an ancillary matter to the Percoco case. That vote narrowly decided against calling for a formal ethics investigation, but the speaker’s appointees apparently did not vote the way the Governor would have liked for them to have voted. Somehow, the Governor got wind of how it went, called Heastie, and read him the riot act. Heastie and one of his top aides then reached out to two of their appointees to the commission and let them know that the Governor was upset with them. And, of course, these members of the commission, realizing there had been a leak about what was supposed to have been a closed meeting, reported it to the state inspector general’s office, which they were supposed to do.

The inspector general’s office then did an investigation, which didn’t include any interview of either Carl Heastie or Andrew Cuomo. And, for the longest time, Heastie would not discuss, even in vague terms, the content of his call with the Governor that day. In other words, it is a case that revealed—at least as I like to think of it—the rather threadbare nature of ethics enforcement in the executive chamber, the State Assembly Democratic conference, the Joint Commission on Public Ethics, and the inspector general’s office.

What do you think Cuomo’s legacy will be as governor?

That is, of course, a very tough question, but I am a fan of Robert Caro. The Governor claims he is a fan of Robert Caro. I would not be at all surprised—even if Cuomo has only been in office for ten and a half years now—if, somewhere down the road, there might be a Robert Moses-like position for him, albeit in a much shorter window of time and power. In “The Power Broker,” Robert Moses is presented in many ways as a master of the political game. I think it is undeniable that Cuomo is an accomplished worker of the gears and levers of politics, at least in New York. But, at the same time, Robert Moses is remembered as somebody who did a lot of damage to people he claimed to be attempting to serve, and left a lot of ugliness behind: physical ugliness in the sense of his projects, as well as a great human toll as well.

Cuomo will obviously be remembered as someone who cut the ribbon on a whole lot of big infrastructure projects that people said—or at least Cuomo said people said—would never be done. For example, the Mario Cuomo Bridge, which replaced the Tappan Zee Bridge, and was the one for which he was most proud, which is why he hung his father’s name on it. I think, as the years go by, we will see whether it is just a long list of shiny things, or whether there were fundamental policy changes that were sufficient to maintain his reputation.

But there is no doubt that the legalization of marriage equality in June of 2011 in New York was a remarkable political accomplishment that you must ascribe to Cuomo’s work. He brought all of his considerable skills to bear for arm-twisting and transactional politics and wheedling and cajoling, and all that good Robert Caro L.B.J. stuff. And he pulled it off. But since then there has been a lot of darkness to go with it.

If Cuomo leaves, what would be the state of the Democratic Party in Albany, and who do you see as its future leaders?

God, I do not know. That is a very hard question. What is it they said about Tiger Woods, when he was on top of the world? That it was really hard to be the second-best golfer in the world. I think there is a comparison to be made to what it would mean to be a runner-up in terms of power within Democratic circles in New York. One of the most fascinating things about Cuomo, in addition to the pathological horror of these independent investigations, is that he viewed any Democrat with a base of power—really anyone, but particularly any Democrat—as someone who needed to be knocked down several pegs. You saw that in his interactions with Bill de Blasio as the most obvious case, but you also saw that with Thomas DiNapoli. You saw that with Eric Schneiderman before Schneiderman’s fall. You saw it with Michael Gianaris, who remains No. 2 in the New York State Senate. You saw it with Andrea Stewart-Cousins, who was denied the chance to become majority leader because Cuomo basically went along with the Independent Democratic Conference’s partnership with the Republicans. Any Democrat with power was seen as a usurper of power that should, by right, be Cuomo’s.

So who now steps up? It’s a good question. The Governor has said that Letitia James wants to run for governor. I don’t know if she does or not. Certainly, she has been smart enough not to make any sort of overt moves in that direction. If Cuomo is forced to resign, or is impeached, which I think is exceedingly likely at this point, the next year in New York politics is going to be fascinating.

Your name appears several times in the report. Can you talk about why?

My name appears in the report primarily because Brendan Lyons, our managing editor for investigations who runs our statehouse coverage, and is as good an investigative reporter as anyone I have ever worked with, was pursuing a story about whether or not the Governor had essentially called up a young female trooper and used his influence to get her on his protective detail, despite the fact that she did not have the sufficient number of years of experience. Brendan Lyons had been asking about this. He had a source who said it was true—that the regulations had been dodged in her case. He went to the executive chamber and asked about it.

He then received heavy-duty pushback from the executive chamber. I got a call from Melissa DeRosa, the Governor’s executive secretary, irate beyond belief at the very notion that we would be asking those questions, and that it was sexist to even pose the question. I pushed back by using a line that Brendan uses: judge us by what we publish, not by the questions we ask. I thought she was being unprofessional in response to a straight inquiry. It was a heated exchange, but it didn’t start heated on my side.

Then, a couple of minutes later, I got a call from the Governor, and had probably the most pleasant conversation with the Governor I have ever had. I hasten to say that I do not discuss off-the-record conversations, but this one has been described in the attorney general’s report, so I think that prohibition has been lifted. As noted in the report, the Governor apologized, or at least sought to explain Melissa DeRosa’s extreme ire, and that she took these things very personally. I think I was on the phone with him for forty-five minutes.

Why do you think he was so pleasant?

[Laughs.] You would have to ask him. There was a definite feeling of having been good-cop-bad-copped that evening. The Governor had been pissed off at me for a year and a half at that point, after I wrote a column that he did not appreciate, and that resulted from his brother getting into an unpleasant altercation at a bar in Long Island and getting called “Fredo.” I think I started off the conversation by noting that it was Friday night and I was just about to knock off and go have a beer and dinner with my wife. But as off-the-record conversations with Andrew Cuomo go, that one was relatively pleasant.

An earlier version of this post misstated Diana Richardson’s title.