The Daily Signal - Cuomo Ducked Impeachment, but These Governors Didn't

Episode Date: August 26, 2021

Andrew Cuomo left the New York governor's mansion in disgrace this week after multiple controversies, including his poor handling of the COVID-19 pandemic as well as credible allegations that he sexually harassed 11 female state employees. Cuomo, who was in his third term, resigned before facing near-certain impeachment in the New York State Assembly and a likely humiliating removal after a trial held by members of the state Senate and judiciary. However, throughout U.S. history, other governors chose to stay and fight—sometimes with success, such as the legendary Louisiana Gov. Huey Long, and sometimes not, such as Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich. The first governors of Nebraska and Kansas both were impeached. In the 1920s, Oklahoma saw two governors impeached and removed. In Cuomo's state of New York, one governor has been impeached and ousted from office: William Sulzer in 1913. On today's episode of "The Daily Signal Podcast," Fred Lucas and Jarrett Stepman talk about the nation's 15 impeached governors going back to the very first in 1862, when the country itself was at war. We also cover these stories: Efforts continue to ensure no Americans or local allies are left stranded in Afghanistan. A Supreme Court ruling reinstates tighter controls over immigration at the southern border. Delta Air Lines announces that it will charge unvaccinated employees an extra $200 per month for health insurance. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Daily Signal podcast for Thursday, August 26. I'm Doug Blair. And I'm Virginia Allen. Andrew Cuomo resigned as New York governor to avoid being impeached. However, 15 U.S. governors have been impeached in the past, and of those, eight were removed from office. On today's show, the Daily Signals Fred Lucas and Jared Stetman discussed the history of impeaching governors in America. And don't forget, if you enjoy this podcast, please be sure. to leave a review or a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts and encourage others to subscribe. And now on to today's top news. With just five days left until the formal withdrawal date for U.S. forces in Afghanistan,

efforts continue to ensure no Americans or local allies are left stranded in the country. During a press conference on Wednesday, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken gave an update on America's evacuation efforts, stating that the U.S. military and allies have evacuated around 4,500 American passport holders so far. Blinken also attempted to justify the uncertainty surrounding the exact numbers of Americans still stranded in Afghanistan, saying that Americans are not required

to report their location to the government. The Biden administration has come under fire for being unable to provide precise statistics on the amount of Americans trapped abroad. Here's some of Blinken's statements via Reuters. It's hard to overstate the complexity and the danger of this effort. We're operating in a hostile environment in a city and country now controlled by the Taliban

with the very real possibility of an ISIS-K attack. We're taking every precaution, but this is very high risk. As the President said yesterday, we're on track to complete our mission by August 31st, provided the Taliban continue to cooperate, and there are no disruptions to this effort. Major General Hank Taylor, the Vice Director for Logistics of the Joint Staff, said per CNN, 88,000 people have been evacuated from Afghanistan and a plane departed Kabul Airport every 39 minutes on Tuesday for a total of 90 flights. The general also added that there are more than 10,000 people waiting at the airport for evacuation. The updated statistics on evacuations come as U.S. troops begin leaving Afghanistan in anticipation for the August 31st withdrawal deadline,

Despite pressure from both G7 allies and bipartisan U.S. officials, President Joe Biden has declined to extend that deadline. A Supreme Court ruling has reinstated tighter controls over immigration at our southern border. On Tuesday, the Supreme Court ruled to reinstate a Trump air policy that requires migrants on the southern border to remain in Mexico while their asylum claims are processed. The Trump administration put the remain-in-Mexico policy in place. in an effort to stop what is referred to as catch and release. Under catch and release, asylum seekers are given a court date, often months or even years in the future, but then released into America.

The problem was many of the asylum seekers never returned for their hearings. So in 2019, Trump instituted the remain in Mexico policy. But President Joe Biden ended the policy when he took office, meaning that once again thousands of asylum seekers, were entering America, but never showing up for their hearings. On Tuesday, the Supreme Court ruled to uphold a fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals order to reinstate the Trump Air Policy. The three more left-leaning justices, Justice Kagan, Sotomayor, and Breyer dissented.

Delta Airlines announced on Wednesday that starting November 1st, it would begin charging unvaccinated employees using the employee health insurance plan and extra $200 per month in a bid to get more staff fully vaccinated. The airline claims the extra fee is meant to pay for additional medical costs and hospital bills from COVID-19. In a memo released company-wide, Delta CEO Ed Bastian wrote, quote, The average hospital stay for COVID-19 has cost Delta $50,000 per person. This surcharge will be necessary to address the financial risk the decision not to vaccinate is creating for our company.

In addition to the increased health care fees, the airline is ending COVID-19-related pay protections, as well as requiring weekly COVID-19 tests for those who haven't taken the vaccine. All employees will be required to wear masks inside, regardless of vaccination status. Unlike rival business United Airlines, Delta has not instituted a vaccine mandate for current employees, though new employees will be required to be vaccinated. Now stay tuned for Fred Lucas and Jared Stetman's discussion on the history of impeaching governors in America. conservative women, conservative feminists. It's true. We do exist. I'm Virginia Allen and every Thursday morning on problematic women, Lauren Evans and I sort through the news to bring you stories and interviews that are particular interests to conservative leaning or problematic women. That is women whose views and opinions are often excluded or mocked by those on the so-called feminist left. We talk about everything from pop culture to policy and policy. and politics. Search for problematic women wherever you get your podcasts.

This is Jarrett Stepman. I'm joined by Fred Lucas for both of the Daily Signal. And we're on to talk about a somewhat pertinent issue. A tale of governors in American history who've been impeached actually. And there have been quite a few. Fred has a great piece in the Daily Signal about a history of impeached governors, which is a fairly lengthy list of, I would say interesting characters, Fred, definitely some interesting stories here. So we're going to hear some stories about these governors. Yeah, yeah. There were actually, we almost saw a gubernatorial impeachment that was stopped when

Governor Cuomo in New York resigned to avoid being impeached and probably almost certainly removed in a Senate trial had he been impeached. But yeah, he could have, he avoided joining a fairly exclusive club, but there are a good number. There were 15 governors total who were impeached, and many of them were, eight of them were removed from office over since the nations began. Interestingly enough, the first governors of both Kansas and Nebraska after they became states were impeached. And there were actually, you know, going to the early days of impeachment when it was first used, there were a number of Reconstruction-era impeachments in the South when you had some Republican governors that were elected there and the Democratic legislatures. So that ties in pretty well with what we were seeing in Reconstruction at the national level

when you had the very first presidential impeachment with Andrew Johnson. Yeah, very interesting. Let's go to that first impeachment that took place in Kansas. This was Kansas Governor Charles L. Robinson, who was a Republican at the time. Can you talk about that story? I know this was in the 1860s when this occurred. Kansas was, well, an interesting place. obviously this is right in the middle of the Civil War.

Yeah, right, right, yeah. This came after, I mean, of course, there was bleeding Kansas and so forth that led up to this. But on some level, they did find activities that he was involved in. But it was largely a – they were going after him in this case, and they did get him. And that's been the case, I think, with a lot of these governments. governors throughout history that there was, oftentimes they were guilty, but at the same time, they made some enemies along the way, and it was very convenient to go after these people. And I think that's similar to what we've seen during presidential impeachments.

Yeah, that definitely seems to be a theme that runs throughout. There were certainly a number of governors who have committed, certainly, I would say, high crimes in office. but others there's definitely seems to be a gray area where it just seems to be that there may have been crimes have taken place or it's just that

the legislature really had an issue with the governor either that he was a different party or there was some personal squabbles and battles going on that definitely seems to be a case. I think it was interesting in the case of Nebraska that just after they had their first governor

impeached they actually had the second not too long after in 1867, I think it was, David Butler, another Republican, impeached again. It's like the state's so, well, we impeach one. Why don't we just try it again?

Yeah, yeah. That's been the case that you've had Nebraska, like you mentioned, Oklahoma in the 1920s. They impeached two, pretty much two governors in a row. They were Henry Johnston. He was impeached and removed from office

for general incompetence. That was towards the later end of the decade of the 1920s. Before that, you had John Walton, and he was impeached for a, actually what most of us would think is a good thing. He was tough on the Ku Klux Klan. The Ku Klux of Klan was very powerful in the Democratic Party during the 1920s. and when he, but they were just going roughshot, very violent. Of course, you had the Tulsa massacre during that time.

And he at one point sent law enforcement after them, rounding people up at. And at one point, he declared martial law in Tulsa and had military trials. And that's when the legislature, many who were beholden to the clan or were elected because of the clan, decided to impeach him. And that's a pretty, I think, nefarious tale when you look back at things. Yeah, pretty wild. Oklahoma definitely a lot of racial tension in the 1920s. What's amazing, of course, is they went after second governor, Henry Johnson in the late 20s, but it seems maybe there, I guess that the justification was general incompetence, but things got pretty wild when it seems like he actually called out the National Guard to shut down to legislature. Can you talk about

that? Yes, yes. Right. Yeah, to start with, I think, this general incompetence, they said he was allowing his secretary to do too much, which I think that seemed like they were maybe looking for pretext to start with. Of course, I mean, we often talk about how such and such governor, or president in some ways might be relying too much on staff. In some ways you hear people say that about President Biden today. But in this case, yeah, they impeached him twice. The second time, there was a viable chance at conviction. And that's when Johnston actually called up the National Guard in the state to surround the capitals to try to keep them from coming in.

He waited it out. That didn't look very good. bad optics, I think. And I think if there wasn't an impeachable offense before that, there probably was after that. So, yeah, and they ended up removing him from office. One thing, we did talk about Nebraska, Oklahoma, had multiple impeachments. You did have some of those, again, those reconstruction-era impeachments in the state of Louisiana, but also going into the 30s, you had Huey Long,

who was a just synonymous with corruption in Louisiana. And he was among those. He survived impeachment. And it was sort of the tale here. He was involved in all sorts of corruption among the charges where he was bribing legislators. and he was, you know, bullying, cajoling in some cases. But he ended up making a lot of enemies.

But the story behind the story is that he apparently blackmailed or scared a lot of U.S. Senator into saying that we will not vote under any circumstances to remove him from office. And after Long's impeachment, they put this letter forward saying that they won't vote for impeachment, or not for conviction, not to remove him from office. And at that point, there was a determination by the Senate leadership that a trial would be pointless if there was zero chance. And so they didn't even have a trial. And so he just stood as being impeached. Now, one might argue it would have been better to at least have your record acquitted. As opposed to just, you know, as we saw Donald Trump's boasted about being the most acquitted president ever,

Huey Long didn't even want to bother with that. But Long, he's really legendary, and a list of corruption in office wouldn't really be complete without pointing to Huey Long, I don't think. Yeah, it almost goes with Longism. When people think about it, they certainly think of his populism, a little bit of corruption. and certainly his popularity there in Louisiana too. I mean, he was definitely a popular and populist figure. He was also, I don't think he necessarily used the word socialist, but his policy was called Share the Wealth.

And basically it was just large redistributionist scheme. So he was also in a way like Bernie Sanders would be today. But, you know, but really, very, very corrupt and ran a political machine. The impeachment, by the way, didn't hurt him politically. He went on to be elected to the U.S. Senate. Yeah, it's very interesting in the case of Louisiana and a few other states. It seems that corruption, to a certain extent, was so endemic.

I mean, it's like, you know, I mean, there was another Louisiana governor, I believe, in the late 19th century who was also impeached. I think he also made your list. It seems to be that, you know, no matter who it is from that time period, there's some accusation of corruption or misuse of office. Long, of course, seems to be the best at it, if you can call it the best. But it seems like some states, some legislatures and governor's offices in certain states, it seems like the corruption is really endemic and that a lot of these battles are simply political. you know, which corrupt guy has, you know, crossed the wrong people in the party and ends up being impeached. But the choices for the people are mostly just a series of corrupt guys. Isn't that right?

Yeah, for the most part, I mean, I think we've, there have been some political prosecutions. Impeachment, whether it's at the federal or the state level, is generally both a legal and a political process. And I don't want to get necessarily on all 15 of these. I want to highlight these. And I do encourage folks to please read the story and see the list with some more in depth on DailySignal.com. But if you talk about a state where there is a high tolerance for corruption, that would probably be Illinois, too, which the most recent governor where he was impeached and removed from office, and that was Rod Blagojevich.

Of course, he was in the news just last year. He was commuted by President Trump, his sentence. He got a fairly lengthy sentence and served out much of it. But yeah, he was primarily, he had a number, actually, of schemes going on, various pay-for-play schemes. The one that really, really stood out was he wanted to sell Barack Obama's Senate seat. And the famous quote from that was a, well, the FBI actually had him on a tape saying

a Senate seat is a valuable thing. and I'm leaving a word out there. It's a valuable thing and you can't just give it away. And so he was looking for the highest bidder on that type thing. And so that is something that he was just a very colorful character. And I think he ended up being sort of arrogant, being very similar to Andrew Cuomo in a sense that he just made enemies, and wrote to people the wrong way.

And once he got in trouble, sort of easy for people even within his own party to want to give him the boot because he was impeached and then it was a unanimous vote in the Senate to remove him from office. Yeah, that really is incredible. I mean, it shows you kind of the depth of what he had done and how bad it looked for the entire, well, it looked bad for the Democrat Party. Yeah, you know, this guy is out of control. He's, I mean, if you want to talk about clear case of high crimes and misdemeanors in office trying to sell a Senate seat is a pretty clear-cut case. And I think it looked really bad probably for Democrat Party both in the state-wide

level, but also the national level where he became, I mean, this was a really famous case. I mean, I think everybody in America, you know, this was on the news constantly, especially when President Barack Obama was first coming in office and he was kind of like this guy, he was saying, oh, you know, I'm going to, as many do, saying that he's going to drain the swamp, that he's going to be something different. And here's the state that he comes from. And you have possibly the most corrupt governor in America is certainly quite something. It seems amazing that that was one of the big things.

I mean, it was directly connected to this incoming president, which was sort of the shocking aspect of it. Certainly. What's amazing about it. But Gluyvich is he actually ended up, you know, being convicted on these counts. And something that you wrote about in your story is that, you know, he wasn't even the first governor of Illinois to serve time in jail that there had actually been four governors that had conned to jail from the state of Illinois, which I mean, the percentage-wise, if you think about the number of governors in their history, that seems kind of high. Yeah, yeah, it is. And I believe Begoeuf, which is immediate predecessor. Republican governor in that case, had gone to prison.

Yeah, like I said, it's pretty high tolerance. People, there has been almost an expectation, sort of an embarrassment, I think, for some people in Illinois and maybe Louisiana, New Jersey, too. I mean, I think there's been a lot of corruption there. but I mean those are states where people just, there's almost people have gotten used to it to some degree. Maybe some people even think it's enduring. It's a trademark. For sure. So in your assessment, having gone through all of these various impeachments in American history,

what do you think is ultimately the way these guys get impeached? Is it just being in a bad spot politically? Is it the higher the crime, the more likely to be impeached? Or is it some combination? What ultimately seems to be the trigger where a legislature not only impeaches but removes a governor from office? What do you think, Fred? Well, something I wrote about in my book, Abuse of Power, which was about the first Trump impeachment, I wrote that it was applicable to almost all the past.

impeachment at the presidential level and to some degree with the one lone impeachment of a Supreme Court justice and lower officers, even governors. And that happens in the midst of sort of a political culture war. Or in some cases, when the governor just makes some really strong enemies. And I think if you look at the presidential level, you had sort of culture war, post-Civil War with Johnson. You had this Nixon came during the upheaval, late 60s, early 70s, and Clinton sort of immoral issues there. And then Donald Trump, naming the president's hair. But also with these guys, there was, you know, more recently with Cuomo, it was the Me Too movement, I think, ended up finally upending him. But also coming out of the COVID issues as well.

But with Blago, I think he just rubbed too many people the wrong way. I think Huey Long made enemies. It's just largely, if a governor can make too many enemies, then they're gone. If they have a strong coalition, then they can hold on. And that's the same with a president too. One thing I think is very interesting. And if you want to contrast Andrew Cuomo and he's near impeachment with Donald Trump and his two impeachments, I think you have, it's a big irony that the,

The Cuomo, who is the ultimate political insider, came from a political family, basically inherited his, the governor's office in some sense, had no political base to speak of when he got in trouble. He just alienated so many people, whereas Trump on the other end came into office as the ultimate political outsider had sort of, you know, when he won and 20, 16, he had half the Republican Party against him at the, certainly at the establishment level, at the congressional level. People were very skeptical of him. Over time, he ended up being more conservative than a lot of people anticipated. He ended up working better and enacting some conservative policies that a lot of people didn't anticipate who were in Congress. And and also I think there was a counterreaction from Republicans to the sort of hair on fire attitude of Trump's enemies. And that contributed to a coalition.

So Trump actually, the ultimate political outsider had a solid political coalition when Democrats came after him with impeachment, whereas the ultimate political insider, Cuomo, had no coalition behind him. left to defend him. Well, that's very interesting, Fred, and it speaks to how impeachment is both a criminal matter and a political matter. Those two things are definitely wrapped together as far as how impeachment even gets brought up and what the ultimate resolution behind it is. And I think you're absolutely right in saying that they tend to be more common in more culturally fraught times where there are these sharp divides.

in the American population and certainly on the state level where some guys can get the boot because of those very powerful forces. So a very interesting piece, Fred. I encourage listeners to read through it and read through all these stories. I think some of them are absolutely incredible, shows how many colorful characters are in American history, how nothing new is under the sun. And again, it's very much well worth of read.

Thanks, Fred. Yeah, thanks. And that'll do it for today's episode. Thanks for listening to The Daily Signal Podcast. You can find the Daily Signal podcast on Google Play, Apple Podcast, Spotify, and IHeartRadio. Please be sure to leave us a review and a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts and encourage others to subscribe. Thanks so much for listening. We'll be back with you all tomorrow. The Daily Signal podcast is brought to you by more than half a million members of the Heritage Foundation. It is executive produced by Virginia Allen.

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