The Many Emotional Sides Of Governor Andrew Cuomo
I almost cannot believe I am writing a column of this nature. This column is not in defense of Governor Andrew Cuomo or an attack on him. It is to put matters surrounding the governor in perspective from my point of view.
Leaders in government, like most of us, have multiple personalities. Some keep their varying personalities in check better than others.
Those who launch political attacks are mostly political foes and members of the print media. Sometimes unnecessarily, like vultures, they tend to gravitate towards the most vulnerable parts of a wounded warrior. Others who are scared of retribution and a good fight sit on the sidelines and watch, saying nothing out loud.
Any leader of a household experiences the same circumstances. The way you speak with co-workers is not the same way you speak to family members. Sometimes bread winners treat co-workers better than family members.
Such is the case with our dear governor, Andrew Cuomo. I have known the governor since he was 25 years old and living with his father in the penthouse of the Wellington Hotel across the street from the Capitol when Andrew was attending Albany Law School and his father, Mario, was Lt. Governor. In 1982, the two, along with a few others, planned the elder Cuomo’s run for governor from the penthouse of the stately hotel.
From a personal standpoint this governor, while not perfect, has the integrity and fairness of an angel. His father once told me Andrew is as honest as the day is long. I believe this to be true in his role as the leader of his household and how he treats his friends.
When it comes to his co-workers and those he interacts with professionally – whether legislative leaders, rank-and-file legislators, lobbyists, advocacy groups or the media – he can be as ruthless as the next one because that’s what the job entails for him to be. If you don’t hit back, in the proverbial sense, in a political environment you are considered to be milquetoast and taken advantage of, almost to the point of being blackmailed. It’s this type of behavior that friends and acquaintances have told me turns them off from politics and government. It’s a reason why some elected officials get fed up and don’t run for reelection.
In recent days a small group of former Cuomo administration officials and a few state lawmakers have spoken out to the media saying they have felt the governor’s wrath, either in person, on the phone or from the governor’s staff members. Staff can be loose cannons if not reigned in. In this administration you do not hear about leaks from the Cuomo team. If someone is authorized to speak they do so on the record and not anonymously. For the most part, with rare exception, you have a team of reporters assigned to the Capitol who parrot back what the governor says and do little if any enterprise reporting uncovering the dirt below the surface.
Personally, I have thankfully never received the governor’s wrath. In fact, I feel I have had a welcoming relationship with the Cuomo family. Here are just a few remembrances that demonstrate where the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.
In 1985, NASA was screening people for a “Citizens in Space” program. The application required three letters of recommendations. Mario Cuomo wrote one of those letters for me with the proviso, jokingly he said, that I only go one way. When the space shuttle Challenger exploded on January 28, 1986, the phone in my home rang. It was Governor Mario Cuomo. He called to apologize and wanted to make sure that I knew all the times he joked about sending me to the moon on a one-way ticket, was just his sense of humor and he didn’t mean it to end the way the Challenger did. I was taken aback and thanked him for the phone call. He didn’t have to do that but he did.
Each December, Governor Mario Cuomo would have a holiday gathering for reporters at the Executive Mansion in Albany. It was an informal, off-the-record party but of course, I needed a comment from First Lady Matilda Cuomo about what she got her husband as gifts for their holiday on December 25th. She said only if I held the comments until their holiday. I agreed.
At the time I was working for 50 radio stations across the state customizing news reports from the Capitol. December 25th is always a slow news day for radio news reports so having Mrs. Cuomo tell me exclusively what holiday gifts she got her husband was a real coup for me. The only problem is where to record the interview in the Executive Mansion. There was a large walk-in closet off the foyer. We went in there, locked the door and recorded the brief interview with no one knowing about it. It was the first and only time I interviewed someone in the closet. Mrs. Cuomo trusted me with not releasing the story and we carried on doing these holiday stories for many years.
When my mother passed away from COVID-19 on April 29, 2020, I mentioned it to Governor Cuomo at a news conference. At first he said, sorry for your loss. Then minutes later, after thinking of something more appropriate to say, he offered these words of comfort at the news conference: “There’s an Italian expression. The two things in life that will never leave you are the eye of G-d and the love of a mother. She’s still here.” He didn’t have to say that but he did. It was probably the most comforting expression of sympathy I have ever heard.
I always believed that success at the Capitol was to gain trust among the people you speak with regularly. Many people are suspicious of one another at the Capitol. Relationships are difficult to develop in the halls of the Capitol when trust is not at the basis of your desire to speak with people.
I saw this first hand when I worked in the communications office for the Senate Democrats in 2007 and when I worked for three members of the Assembly Republican conference. Having to watch every word I said or say nothing at all, was not an environment I enjoyed.
The tone of the rank-and-file staff members and elected officials has changed over the 40 years I’ve been covering government and politics. It’s gotten worse as more people are afraid to say the wrong words to the wrong person.
I don’t know exactly when the culture changed but it could have been around the time when lawmakers became lawbreakers. During the 1990s and 2000s there were an unprecedented number of convictions of lawmakers. Since 1975 there have been more than 60 lawmakers, seven who are Jewish, who have resigned from office or charged, convicted and sent to jail, including two Speakers of the Assembly and a Senate Democratic Leader, all Jewish. Two other Senate Democratic Leaders, both Black, were also on the list of bad apples and sent to federal prison. That doesn’t include three statewide officeholders, former Comptroller Alan Hevesi who spent time in prison, former Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and former Governor Eliot Spitzer, all Jewish.
So, the next time you hear about Andrew Cuomo or his staff throwing a hissy fit and threatening someone with their job, maybe there is good reason for their ire. Some purists will say there is never a good reason to speak that way to another person. Well, we’re all human beings and we all have emotions that can rise to the occasion of going overboard. Question what you are reading in the media and take it with a grain of salt. Most of time the media tends to blow up small items into major catastrophes because their bosses tell them to do so.
