8 August 2021: Dysfunctional Thinking by Assembly Leader Threatens to Paralyze Cuomo Impeachment

The Worry in Albany Democrats confess they need a perfect impeachment to get rid of Cuomo.

This report features some very dysfunctional thinking on the part of the Democratic Party officials who will be tasked with forcing Andrew M. Cuomo out of office through impeachment should he not resign. The official with the most dysfunctional thinking? NY Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, who has been forced to abandon his strategy of saving Cuomo through slow-walking the Assembly's impeachment probe:

Multiple sources familiar with Heastie’s thinking say he is deeply concerned with getting impeachment exactly right given that Cuomo has resisted calls from all corners to resign, over sexual harassment allegations he vigorously denies, showing he will only be removed from office by force. Heastie badly wants the Assembly’s Judiciary Committee to create an airtight, legally bulletproof, and dispassionate case against Cuomo, so the famously slippery governor can’t somehow escape on a technicality, or distract from the shocking sexual harassment charges against him by nitpicking holes in the legal proceedings. It’s a burden no living legislator has faced before: The last impeachment in New York took place more than a century ago.

We think his concerns are not relevant because impeachment is a legislative function, not a judicial one. The article describes other aspects of his thinking process that seem destined to paralyze the Assembly's impeachment process.

The report also provides information on the discussions that forced Heastie to abandoned his Cuomo salvage strategy.

Heastie called a Zoom conference for his members after the report’s release, and some 50 lawmakers spoke over a somber two and a half hours — none of them stood up for Cuomo. “I would say there was wall-to-wall strong support for Tish James and the report, and I don’t think anyone expressed any hesitation about impeachment,” said Assembly member Dick Gottfried. “I think that was, for everybody who spoke, that was the starting premise. The only real question going back and forth was how quickly could we get articles of impeachment written and voted on.”

Members were pleased with the meeting’s result: an unequivocal statement from Heastie that “after our conference this afternoon to discuss the Attorney General’s report … 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.”

Now the biggest outstanding source of internal tension within the conference is timing. How many days and weeks does “expeditiously” and “as quickly as possible” translate into?

The report concludes by describing Assemblyman Dick Gottfield's assessement of one of the likely consequences to allowing Heastie's slow-walking tendencies to paralyze Cuomo's impeachment.

“The one thing that was frequently talked about in the conference as compelling speed was that many people mentioned that, as long as [Cuomo]’s in the executive chamber, it is an unsafe working place for women,” Gottfried said.

“That adds a very real element of emergency here.”

New York's lawmakers are finally coming to the realization that Cuomo has been a very toxic presence in Albany during his tenure in office as New York's governor.