13 June 2021: Opinion - "Mediocre" Cuomo Fails New York

Mediocre Men Have Failed New York

This opinion piece by Alexis Grenell appeared in The Nation. If the name sounds vaguely familiar, she the former Cuomo aide who raked Governor Cuomo's character over the coals back on 27 November 2020.

New York state Senator Alessandra Biaggi recently said something that so completely encapsulated American patriarchy at this moment, it should be tattooed on every woman’s exhausted face: “We’ve got to move on past talking about the bad behavior of below-average men.”

Doing so is made eminently more difficult when they refuse to get out of the way, lining up instead like testosterone-addled lemmings to compete in the pathetic pissing match that now passes for our elections. In this case, I’m talking about the current field of candidates for governor of New York. That includes the incumbent, Andrew Cuomo, who’s resisted calls to resign while arming himself with no fewer than four taxpayer-funded law firms to defend against an equal number of investigations. Every week seems to bring some fresh outburst. Whether he’s undermining the integrity of the New York attorney general’s investigation of a sitting governor despite the fact that he did the same when he held that role (“I’m not telling anyone to have faith in [the results of the investigation]”); contradicting part of the state’s definition of sexual harassment that he himself signed into law (“harassment is not making someone feel uncomfortable”); or slapping down a reporter’s question about the ethics of profiting off a pandemic to the tune of a $5 million book advance (“that’s stupid”), the whole thing is one yawning display of entitlement. Former governor Eliot Spitzer at least knew when to get off the stage, perhaps because he had some sense of shame and a family business that wasn’t politics to fall back on. Cuomo, it seems, can’t do anything else, so why not stick around even if it’s a raging embarrassment for you and everyone else?

After deviating to discuss Republican candidates she would never support, the opinion piece turns to discuss Letitia "Tish" James role in the Cuomo scandal investigations and potential political future.

Which brings us to the current attorney general, Letitia James. Although she was Cuomo’s preferred replacement for Schneiderman, he’s recently started attacking her as too politically motivated to properly investigate him. After the comptroller made a referral allowing James to investigate whether the governor had misused public resources to write his book, a spokesman bellowed back: “This is Albany politics at its worst—both the comptroller and the attorney general have spoken to people about running for governor and it is unethical to wield criminal referral authority to further political self-interest.”

There’s no indication that James is doing anything other than her actual job. Indeed, Cuomo himself was an attorney general with designs on running for governor when he investigated then Governor Spitzer. And it’s very hard to imagine a Black woman getting away with soliciting underlings for sex, lying about Covid nursing home deaths, cashing in on her crimes, and refusing to resign after nearly the entire New York congressional delegation, both of the state’s US senators, and the majority leader of the state Senate called for her to do so. Should James decide to run, she’d be a serious political threat, considering that Cuomo needs her base—the disproportionately Black and female voters in New York City—to win another term.

At this point, Governor Cuomo's chief PR flack has been the leading proponent of a James run for New York's governorship. As a politician however, James has other options. She could, for instance, choose to endorse another candidate for governor, which would also limit Cuomo's ability to access "her base" as described by Grenell.

Whatever she decides, her voice will have greater influence after her office completes its investigation of Cuomo's alleged ethical liabilities. We view the calls to draft James to run for higher office as both premature and self-defeating. No one should have the ambition of becoming the next Andrew Cuomo by copying his route to New York's governor's mansion.