The Press Box - Andrew Cuomo Resigns With New York Mag Contributor David Freedlander

Episode Date: August 10, 2021

Bryan Curtis is joined by New York Magazine contributor David Freedlander to discuss the news that New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has resigned. They break down the events that led up to his resignation, the way in which Cuomo’s team decided to handle the news, and how this affects New York’s political climate.  Host: Bryan Curtis Guest: David Freedlander Associate Producer: Erika Cervantes Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Bacari Sellers podcast tackles the most pressing current events through conversations and interviews with high-profile guests. Building upon his experience in South Carolina government and politics and his experience as a lawyer, Sellers will talk to his guests about all topics from the world of politics. Check out the Bacari Sellers podcast on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, media consumers. Brian Curtis here, along with Erica Servantes, with an emergency edition of the press box, Andrew Cuomo, the governor of New York, announced his resignation Tuesday. one week after a state attorney general's report found he had sexually harassed 11 women. Cuomo said he took, quote, full responsibility for his actions, even as his lawyer tried to cast doubt on the AG's report.

Let us bring on New York Magazine reporter David Friedlander, who has been writing about what turned out to be Andrew Cuomo's final days. David, thanks for coming on the press box. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. You didn't think you were getting at a vacation after covering the New York City mayoral election, did you? No, of course not. There's always something in this town that keeps you from whatever it is you want to be doing with your life, you know? Five days ago, I was reading a piece you published, and you quoted an aide to Andrew Cuomo, who was pretty definitive. The aide said he is not resigning.

It is just not in his nature to ever do that. What do you think changed between then and now? So, yeah, I think what happened was, I mean, I think they wanted to stay in office and they wanted to fight. But it really became clear that he didn't have any allies left in the legislature. The State Assembly, which is the sort of equivalent of the House of Representatives, where impeachment proceedings were going to begin. There was just no one there who was really willing to negotiate with them by many more time. They really give them much of a hearing.

And so they were moving to impeach him. And I think they just found that, you know, there was not a lot that could be done. I saw The New York Times as Maggie Haberman tweet this. if you have covered Andrew Cuomo even for a short time, it is stunning that he's stepping down instead of fighting something out. What do you make of that? I think that's exactly right. I mean, Andrew Cuomo is such a political animal.

He's someone who, against the advice of everyone in the state, ran for Attorney General in 2002, I ran for governor in 2002, ended up dropping out a week before the primary in kind of humiliating fashion. And four years later, he was elected attorney. general. Four years after that, he was like a governor. He's really ruled the state kind of with an iron fist. He's, you know, boxed out his enemies. He's kind of boxed up his allies, too. He doesn't

have any of those left. And he's someone for whom just, you know, politics is in his blood. And I think this was very hard for him to finally give in here. And I, you know, somehow don't think we've seen the of Andrew Cuomo. I would be very surprised if this is the sort of the end of his political career somehow. So I've seen that theory going around on Twitter today that he is resigning rather than letting himself be impeached so that he could possibly run for another office. And you think that's possible. I mean, if you've ever known Andrew Cuomo, I mean, he's the most sort of strategic political person you'll ever meet who's always kind of playing all the angles and figuring out everybody else's strengths and weaknesses.

If he were impeached, if he went through with the impeachment and fought it all the way to the end, the impeachment would have included an article that said he could never seek state office again. By resigning, there will be no impeachment. So that will never happen. He still has more money than anybody else in his campaign account in the state. And I don't think he has so much. It's hard to imagine anyone matching what he has. I mean, he'll have $20 million heading into next year.

He has the most famous name in New York politics. He was governor for 10 years. His father was governor for 12 years. So, you know, it's like, what's Andrew Cuomo going to really do? Go practice law somewhere. I mean, start a nonprofit. You know, he's just, he's a political person and political people tend to run for political office.

I mentioned at the top of Latisha James, the New York Attorney General. She released that report one week ago, which set today's events. in motion. What struck you most about that report? I got to say, I did not think that report was going to be the bombshell it was. And it was like, it was a nuclear blast. You know, a lot of the allegations that were included in it, I think we already heard back in March when they were first came to light. But I think that one really crucial detail that that report had, was it had details of Andrew Cuomo sexually harassing a state trooper who was assigned to his protective detail, making comments about the way she looks, talking to her about her love life,

touching her inappropriately at various moments, which he claimed were incidental, but certainly didn't seem that way. And I think even some of his sort of closest aides and advisors were kind of quite, they were taken aback in that allegation. I think that was unexpected. And then the other part of it was just how much the office was engineered around sort of protecting the governor, retaliating against his accusers. These are people who are supposed to be kind of doing the people's work. And it seemed like they were mostly there to protect boss.

I want to come back to state trooper number one as she was identified in the report because I think reading those sections of the report really helps you understand that this is not a story of politics so much as a story of sexual harassment. Again, you mentioned some of the allegations. Just running down the list here, these are some of the partial list of the things she said Andrew Cuomo did, running his hands along her body, asking to kiss her, inviting her upstairs at the governor's mansion, asking why she didn't wear a dress on duty. quoting here from the report asking her to help him find a girlfriend and describing his criteria for a girlfriend as someone who can handle pain. The woman, according to the report, feared retaliation and believed her career success hinged on whether the governor liked her. So one thing Cuomo said today was, look, I didn't think I was crossing the line.

He said, quote, I didn't realize the extent to which the line has been redrawn, meaning that standards of behavior of change. There's no way you can read those. allegations one after another and think that in any universe at any time that would not have constituted sexual harassment it's really stunning i mean i cannot imagine why you would ever talk to an underling uh four decades younger than you two decades four years younger than you four months younger than you about her sex life which is what andrew quomo was doing uh with a very young woman who was working as an assistant for him. Now, like, you could argue as the Cuomo people did,

well, look, that's kind of creepy, but does it really rise to the level of impeachment? Fine. But like, I mean, what are you doing? Why are you having this conversation with this person under any circumstances? What did you make about the way Cuomo resigned today, sending out his lawyer to essentially say, oh, this is a media frenzy and challenging some of the allegations in the report, and then coming on essentially and resigning anyway. Stunned. I mean, stunning. And it sort of speaks to Andrew Cuomo,

how he's always kind of strategizing and trying to be one step ahead of his opponents. And I don't know quite what the one step ahead would be in this instance. But yeah, I mean, it was really kind of shocking. His attorney comes out, rebuts the allegations point by point. And it's not a press conference. It's just sort of streamed online. He comes out then in a sort of separate lives.

extreme and reiterates many of the things that she said and accuses it all being political, you know, saying he's learned his lesson, that this is not fair. What are the, what about the motivations of his accusers? And then, you know, kind of quickly pivots and says, for the good of the state, this is going to be too expensive and too divisive. And so, you know, I'm going to step down. And the message he's trying to say this, I didn't do it, but I'm stepping down anyway. That is what he is trying. That was what he was saying today. Exactly. And it's a little bit, I thought it's a little bit like I'm leaving, but I'm not going anywhere, was my read on it. I'm leaving, but I'm innocent of this. And I care too much about the state for, you know, the state to be dragged through these whole proceedings. But it was really quite, quite stunning. I mean, I think that if you were sort of, you can't be forgiven if you were listening for just sort of ceasing to be. attention because so much of it just seemed kind of repetitive to what we heard before, and because he had been so defiant in the face of calls from his step down up until now.

You were reporting inside Cuomo World after the report came out a week ago. What was the initial feeling like inside the governor's mansion with his aides about what their next steps were and what was going to happen? I mean, I think they were determined to fight. I think they were determined to sort of have this go on for as long as they, could as long as they had life in them. I think they were very aware that there was a very, very limited chance that he could survive this, that public opinion was just moving too quickly against them, that the lawmakers were moving too quickly against them. But that said,

I think there was also a feeling that this was just not fair, that he hadn't, you know, maybe he was crude. Maybe he had come on the people in a way that was crude, but he hadn't done anything like Donald Trump was accused of. It's not anything like Bill Clinton has admitted to. He didn't sort of, if he touched somebody, it wasn't, you know, I mean, this is actually not probably accurate, but it wasn't in a kind of too aggressive of a way. And that all of this was just blown up and that they just kind of couldn't get a hearing and they were determined to get their side of the story told, which is kind of what they did today in a way. That was the argument they were making to reporters behind the scenes over the last week.

Yeah, exactly. In his long shot, his long shot political strategy was to essentially try to push back this impeachment proceeding in the New York State Assembly as long as he could. That was the idea that if I just push this back that somehow, you know, I will be able to. able to, he and his team would be able to muddle the accusations or something like that. And eventually he could get close enough to next year's election that there would be some kind of push to punt until then. That's, that's what it was. Yeah. I mean, when you put it that way, Brian, yes, it doesn't seem very like a very good strategy. But, you know, having said that, I mean, I think it was like by time, by time.

And, and, you know, who knows kind of what happens in the future, try to sort of see if you can work individual legislators into staving off impeachment. And, you know, one other thing you heard AIDS say was, you know, it's not as if anybody here in Albany, well, somebody does. But a lot of people in Albany have kind of checkered pasts around this stuff, especially those who've been there for a long time. And do they really want all that to be aired too? So there's a little bit of like a threat that if you want to come after me,

you know, you can expect us to kind of air some of your dirty laundry as well. We always hear about this cadre of loyalists around Andrew Cuomo. Did you have any sense that they were shaken at all, that their faith in him, or let's us say their commitment to defend him was shaken by the report that they read? I think that nobody could explain away the trooper, the story of the trooper. I mean, I think that a lot of them thought, you know, some of these women's accusations were unfair, that these interactions were ambiguous, that, you know, that they had a story to tell. But I think that trooper really shook a lot of them to their core, really surprised a lot of them, frankly. And, you know, like, it's a really tough place to work, I think.

Andrew Cuomo sort of inner circle. And people kind of fall in it, fall out of it and then get back into it and fall out of it again with some regularity. And I think in the end there, you know, I think people wanted to sort of see it through to the end. But everyone was very aware the fact that the end was coming up pretty soon. Did you have a sense of how Joe Biden calling on Andrew Cuomo to resign? Andrew Cuomo, a Democratic Party guy, if there ever was one, how that landed in Albany? Honestly, I don't think it landed much at all. I think Andrew Cuomo was going to do what he was going to do.

And the sort of state assembly, these local lawmakers kind of mattered a lot more to Andrew Cuomo than Joe Biden. Think back in March, I mean, 98%, 99% of the Democratic establishment called a for him to resign then. Both senators from New York, Chuck Schumer and Kristen Gillibrand called him to resign. You know, almost every member of the congressional delegation called him to resign. Elect leaders up and down the state called him to resign.

A didn't care at all for any of that. And so then you added the few that were remaining, Joe Biden, a couple more members of Congress, the head of the state Democratic Party. And he still didn't move. I mean, I think Andrew Cuomo was gonna do what was best for Andrew Cuomo, what what Andrew Cuomo wanted to do this whole time. And Joe Biden, state Democrats, national Democrats, be damned.

And it seems like a key figure was Carl Heistee. Am I saying his name right, Speaker of the New York State Assembly? Hastie, yeah. Hastie. Yeah, Carl, yeah, hasty. I mean, that was, he was sort of mattered more than Joe Biden because that was where the impeachment is going to begin. The state Senate here in New York, the upper chamber, they were already. anti-Como. I mean, it was hard to find state senators who supported him. The assembly is a much

bigger body. I think there was a lot more sort of touch and go there. And I think Cuomo thought that if he could just at least keep a majority, all the Republicans obviously were against him and wanted him to be impeached, but you could keep a majority of the Democrats from joining them that maybe he would have a shot there. You know, they didn't want to do an impeachment with Republican votes kind of thing. And in the end, you know, Carl Hasty pretty much never went quite as far as some other politicians in the state, but, you know, also communicated that Andrew Cuomo's time is up. Who were his Democratic allies that were left at this point?

Andrew Cuomo's? Yeah. Going back even to March, right? Because Schumer and Gillibrand were out in March. So did he have Democratic allies? at all in New York State? By the end, no one was really publicly coming out in favor of Andrew Cuomo.

I mean, you had a few people who were sort of saying, well, we need to see the evidence. If I'm in the assembly or if I'm in the state senate, I'm going to be wearing his impeachment. But I, you know,

so I can't say one thing or the other. But I don't think you met anyone who was going to defend him. I mean, for a while, members of the black community, the Hispanic community, communities of color here in New York, who really did rally to his side back when these allegations first sort of were aired, you know, the beginning of the year. By the end, though, yeah, I mean, you know, you wanted to be friends with Andrew Cuomo, you know, get a dog kind of thing. So like now it's just over a

year ago he was being hailed as a coronavirus hero. He gets paid millions of dollars to write this self-aggrandizing book. Now that you can see the full arc, or I guess most of the arc, unless he comes back and runs for something again, how do you look at this last year in the life of Andrew Cuomo? Wow, that's a great question. I mean, because he was riding high for so long. And was, I think, for a lot of people, you know, a really calming presence at minimum during the height of the coronavirus crisis where, you know, no one quite knew what was coming. Hospitals were full. The president of the United States was saying all sorts of crazy stuff every day from

the White House briefing room. And he was Andrew Cuomo kind of calmly telling the facts, hear what was coming, here's what we know, here's what's happening next, here's what we need to do. And, you know, and I think it's sort of tempting to kind of make this all into one story in a way, but I'm really, I'm really not sure that it is. I mean, this is about, you know, Andrew Cuomo's behavior that extends back from before this started, that extends back in some, by some, you know, instances and some allegations decades before. So I don't think it, it really began with all of that. I mean, I think they sort of went on parallel tracks and then

eventually collided. What do we know about lieutenant governor, Kathy, Hockel, who was about to become the next governor of New York? We don't know much. She has been, she's a two-term, let me put it this way. I mean, we know as much about her, as Andrew Cuomo seems to know about her, and we don't know much. She's a one, was a one-term member of Congress from Western New York, sort of Buffalo area, been a two-term lieutenant governor. In that book you mentioned, and she's not mentioned one time. When Cuomo thanked his aides at the end of his resignation speech today, he never even mentioned her.

They have not spoken since February. They're not close, in other words. Cuomo kind of censor to, you know, to kind of go out, travel around the state, talk to sort of small groups of voters, small media markets, little radio stations here and there. And, you know, I think she's a moderate Democrat. from a kind of, you know, forgotten corner of the state in a lot of ways, who was, by some account, it's going to be dropped from the ticket when he ran for re-election to his third term in 2018.

But now she's in charge. She has signaled that she wants to run for re-election on her own next year. And we'll just have to see how she does. Also was my eyes open to this tweet from Ben Smith at New York Times. He says, really incredible news for Eric Adams. of course, just won the Democratic primary for mayor of New York. The new governor will need his support in two years, putting a New York mayor for the first time in years in a position to extract things from a governor. What do you think about the new relationship between New York's mayor and New York's governor?

Yeah, I think Ben's exactly right. I mean, and I think it's, it is really fascinating because the way it works here in New York is that, you know, the city is a ward of the state. So even though New York City mayor is in some ways the sort of second most prominent political job in America, there's not really a lot you can really do without permission from the state. And mayors from the beginning of time of New York have really been frustrated by having their agenda stymied by the state. Most famously, that happened with our current mayor, Bill de Blasio and our still current governor, Andrew Cuomo, Cuomo seemed to delight in trashing all of DeBlazio's initiatives. And I think what Ben was getting at there is that now there's this new dynamic. We have this really powerful and popular in some ways new mayor coming in, Eric Adams. And a lot of what the mayor needs to do is kind of move their agenda through the state. And it would be hard for Hockel to kind of deny Eric Adams as he tries to get his agenda past the state. You see multiple candidates being in that Democratic primary, potentially running against Kathy Hokel?

Well, that's a great question. So I think the person who everyone is looking at right now is Letitia James, the Attorney General, who of course, she helped bring Andrew Cuomo down over the last week or so with the publication of that report. She was Andrew Cuomo's hand-picked Attorney General, ran on her own, but won with his support. And were she to jump in the race, I think she would give Hockel a very hard time. She would be the first. black female governor in any state. She would have a lot of support in New York City where most Democratic primary voters live. She would expect to do very well with unions, who she's very popular with, very well with communities of color. So she, I think, is who most people are looking at to challenge Hockel and has a very good chance of beating her. Should James not run for one reason or another, I think then it's a little bit, who knows, then you could have any number of candidates jumping in. Bill de Blasio may run, a number of state lawmakers, members of Congress, folks like that. Bill de Blasio running for governor. I saw a poll today, and it was like in minus 30 and would

be interested in supporting, not interested in supporting, but I guess strange things have happened. It seems unlikely. Like Bill de Blasio running for president. Exactly. You stole the words out of my mouth. I mean, it's not, it's not less likely than that somehow. This is ostensibly a media podcast. And my co-host, David Schuemaker and I have been talking a lot about Chris Cuomo's role in the Andrew Cuomo scandal. Chris Cuomo, of course, prime time host on CNN. What did you make of all of that? We heard a little bit of it. We saw some emails, or at least one email in Letitia James's report. What do you think of Chris Cuomo's role in this whole scandal? You know, I mean, look, I mean, obviously, like,

like blood is thicker than water, as we know, right? And brothers are close and it's hard to turn your back on your family. I mean, what happened there is so it just seems like so beyond inappropriate that to have the host of a cable network news show delivering advice and counseling a politician. And I don't know what's going to happen with that, but that's a real problem. I mean, it's sort of similar to Sean Hannity, right? You know, giving advice to Donald Trump and all the other Fox News hosts. Except, of course, that CNN pride themselves on playing it straight.

And, you know, they would have Andrew Cuomo on, Chris Cuomo show at the height of the pandemic. And they did this, like, kind of fun brother act, right? Call mom, no, you call mom. Mom loves me best. No, mom loves me best kind of thing. And it was kind of, like, funny and charming. but but like how that was allowed to happen just seems it's mystifying i mean i just can't even i can't get my head around it you have a new piece for new york magazine coming out soon about all this

i do i mean sort of looking at the next step especially the sort of tish james kathy hokel dynamic and i'm sure there'll be many many more pieces to come there always is in new york david there's always there's always something getting everyone's attention even people like me who don't live in new york it just seems to be our national sport along with uh football is New York politics. Sorry about that. You could read David Friedlander in New York Magazine. I am Brian Curtis production magic by Erica Zervantes.

We are back soon with more lukewarm takes about the media.