Welcome to the Capital Connection, a weekly program questioning New York State leaders
on a variety of issues.
Your host is Dr. Alan Shartock, political scientist and professor emeritus at the University
at Albany.
Distributions for the Capital Connection is made possible with the help of New York
State United Teachers, representing professionals in education and healthcare, online at nysut.org.
Once the Capital Connection, hi, I'm Alan Shartock.
Joining in this week is columnist and Albany Bureau Chief for the New York Daily News,
Ken Loveitt, who is regarded by most of us as the best of the best.
Welcome back, Ken.
It's good to be here.
So Ken, let me start by asking you about the first thing we think about with the Bill
de Blasio, winning the Mayorality in New York, coming in with a very progressive rhetoric.
We have a governor who has made his bones in a different way by saying, you know, we're
paying too much in taxes and the rest of it.
What do you expect to see happening here?
It's going to be interesting.
It's going to be interesting to see whether Bill de Blasio pulls Andrew Cuomo to the left.
If Cuomo pulls de Blasio to the middle, or if they somehow can work out agreements
with each other, you know, up until now the governor has had a real problem, an uneasy
relationship with the progressive wing of the party.
However, there wasn't really anyone pushing him.
You had groups and individual pockets, but now you have a very powerful position, the
Mayor of the City of New York, who's more well known than the governor outside of New
York, who will be advocating for these policies.
It kind of gives a little freedom to the legislative Democrats, a lot of whom support this stuff,
the Assembly Democrats, the Senate Democrats, and there's going to be pressure on Cuomo
to follow suit.
We're going to see what happens.
I was talking to a newspaper guy the other day, as we all know, newspapers are having
a fairly tough time of it advertising and some of the advertisers are going in other directions.
But I heard something that I was questioning, and that was that the governor's people
have made it plain to advocacy groups.
We don't want to see ads expounding your needs in newspapers and the theory being the
law of anticipated reaction, meaning if you do that, you may find yourself in big trouble.
What do you think of it?
Well, I mean, this is something that they've really done successfully is muted the opposition
the first three years.
If you look at what they did first, they raised $17 million.
They personally didn't put this committee to save New York of business groups, you know,
coalition of this.
This is a Cuomo.
Right.
Right.
And they raised $17 million to promote the governor's agenda.
That forced a lot of the advocacy groups and even the unions to stand down on their traditional
lobbying efforts on the radio and in the newspapers.
This past year, CSNY, the committee to save New York, really was an active, but what the
governor did was he had the state party raise about $7 million, most of which was used
to run ads promoting its agenda.
So this is something he has done very effectively.
He's seen what happened when the advocates rail against previous governors from Pataki
to Patterson and Spitzer and he's muted the opposition.
So I'm not surprised to hear that.
Well, I hate to ask you an opinion because you worked for newspaper and you're a reporter
the rest, but isn't this sort of dangerous?
You know, at some point, the governors, people aren't going to be afraid to fight back.
Right now they have been.
You know, we've seen this with a lot of governors that are very powerful until people feel
they're either vulnerable or their numbers aren't as high as they used to be.
And you're getting a sense that people are beginning to get to that point, especially
the legislature over this Moral and Commission.
The cooperation and collaborative relationship that he's had with both parties since taking
office is really strained right now.
I really want to go there.
So let's go there.
So let's go there.
You have a Morlin Act, you know, and there are a bit different people who have different
takes on this.
This is a historical institution that governors can use to do investigations.
With the cooperation to some degree of Erich Neiderman, the governor has said, okay, we're
going to go look at the way in which money is delivered to political institutions, including
the legislature.
This is tough.
And there are those people who believe that he really meant it, that Cuomo really
meant it.
There is some people who say, yeah, you know, he set up the other thing before.
He doesn't really, really mean it.
He just wants people to believe he means it.
Maybe you could parse all of that for us.
I think that the governor wanted to straddle on what I think the governor really wanted
to do.
His whole big thing was Albany was cleaned up.
For a while there, he was running around saying, you know, we've had a couple of budgets
in a row on time.
We haven't had any corruption problems.
Everything's great.
And we passed ethics reform in 2011.
Then this spring, we had a spade of lawmakers arrests again that we hadn't seen really since
2010.
So the governor saw that it was starting to affect his poll numbers, you know, polls were
showing that people think he should be doing more.
So he kept threatening.
I'll do this more on commission unless I get an ethics reform package.
The legislature was supposed to be in that package.
The package had several components.
There was an anti-bribery component.
So it was a component to give state and local prosecutors more power to go after corruption
and set it just the feds.
It would have created an independent panel to investigate within the board of elections.
Although it's a panel that the governor would have appointed the head of.
There was some other measures as well, including campaign finance reform, including public financing
of campaign, something the Senate Democrats are dead set against.
So the legislature said, no, we're not going to do that package.
They didn't.
So we formed the Moral and Commission.
But I find what's interesting was I think it was done in a lot of ways more to force the
legislature's hand.
I don't think he wanted to go to war with the legislature.
He had threatened to do it.
He had been threatening this thing for three years and finally, you know, was either or
get off the pot.
So he did it.
But there were a couple of stories that I had written about how his people got involved
to try and withhold subpoenas.
And the stuff that got the most play in those stories that people picked up on was that
they pushed to withhold subpoenas from going out to entities tied to the governor.
But what was interesting was, let me get this straight.
This is the Moral and Act people, which he had in the panel.
There's some very strong DAs and others on it.
All of a sudden you write, can love it.
And we were all raised our eyebrows because it turned out that these guys on the Moral
and Act Commission were being told, don't embarrass me.
Don't subpoena the Democratic Party and don't subpoena this or that.
And that's very dangerous.
And to be fair, the one thing I did not report was that they ordered the withholding of the
Democratic Party subpoena.
One was withheld so one can draw their own conclusions.
But they did withhold to redney the real state board of New York.
They withheld subpoenas to other entities with ties to the governor.
But one thing that didn't get as much play within those stories was that he also or he,
his administration, his top aides also ordered that subpoenas to the legislative ethics commission
and to J. Cope, which is the state ethics commission.
Some people call it J. J. Joe.
Right.
It was early and it turned out to be not apparently effective.
But there were subpoenas approved and drawn up that were going to go to those agencies seeking
information on prior complaints against lawmakers.
That would have brought them to war.
The governor's people said, don't send those out.
And I thought that was interesting.
The other one was after the legislature got letters looking for information on their
outside income.
And they said, we're not going to give you that information to this panel.
A bunch of the commissioners said, well, let's subpoena the info.
And originally the governor's people said, hold off for a couple of weeks.
We want to try to negotiate a deal.
So from what I hear, the governor wanted to basically have it both ways.
He wanted to look tough, bang the legislature publicly, say, I'm doing something about corruption.
But on the inside, tell them, come on, guys, let's get a deal.
I'm holding these guys at bay.
They want to do this.
I've told them not to do it.
So he's trying to have it both ways in that regard, according to people I've talked to.
I can't love it.
I want to go to one of my favorite avenues of inquiry.
In my mind, anyway, there is no question that the Republicans are in power in the New
York State Senate because Andrew Cuomo has helped them to be there.
My case rests on the fact that he said he was going to put a stop to a portion of it
by the legislature in which they drew their own districts.
Then he backed down from vetoing the bill.
He said he would do.
And then, of course, up come these people who are Democrats making secret deals with the
... and then not so secret with the Republicans and keeping them in power.
So I would make the argument that the Republicans are in power in the New York State Senate because
Cuomo helped them get there.
I would also argue that this is not a rocket science proposition.
He didn't like the people who were running the New York State Senate, the leadership.
He thought that there was potential that there were a bunch of crooks.
So see what you can do with that.
I agree.
I don't think he trusted the Senate Democrats to be able to deliver negotiations.
I think he saw what happened when they were in power.
Now granted, you know, the Senate Dems will argue it was a different group in terms of leadership.
But certainly the governor was wary of going through that.
He wanted to show the government his functioning.
So yeah, I think it doesn't hurt him.
I also think that, you know, for a governor who's looking at possibly running in 2016, for
the president, it doesn't hurt his narrative nationally or in New York to say, look at
all the stuff we've accomplished.
And unlike Washington, we were able to do it in a bipartisan manner.
And that's one of his big themes that we get things done here in New York in a bipartisan
manner while Washington is gridlocked.
And then, yeah.
Well, that's an interesting take on it.
He is, of course, a financially conservative guy in terms of tactics.
Progressive who's broke he choked during the campaign?
Right.
And therefore he's afraid in addition to the corruption issue in the Senate,
whether among the Democrats, I suspect he's afraid that they'll spend the state at a house in home.
If the Democrats get into office and they'll be able to spend a lot of money in conjunction with the assembly Democrats.
Well, look, he's been pushing to limit state spending to 2%.
You know, no more than 2% increases.
And he's been successful at that.
He wanted to push through and he did a property tax cap, which would have been more difficult.
Although the Senate Dems will say they've supported it in the past.
So, you know, he did have a financially more conservative agenda as first couple of years that he felt more comfortable getting through the Republicans.
And meanwhile, he'd argue he was able to get a bunch of progressive stuff through,
including the legalization of same-sex marriage and including his gun law.
I hate to ask you this question because it involves your sort of noodling us around in your own mind.
But do you think if Andrew Kuala had to do over again,
he would have done the very strict on law that he did right after the new-town shootings?
You know, I think he might have. He might have done it differently.
But I think he considers it and he'll tell, you know, he's told people both publicly and privately that he considers that among the biggest achievements of his administration.
Now, whether it's effective, whether it's working because several major components,
either haven't gone into effect or we don't know how much it's being enforced.
I don't know, but he really wanted to do something.
He wanted to come out again. It works in New York where, you know, there's a poll show.
Gun control is very popular.
And also he wanted to do it on an national narrative.
I'm sure that if he does run for president, he was able to get quote-unquote sensible gun reform through a bipartisan legislature.
But he has an upstate strategy. We all know it.
He goes to spend half his life in Buffalo, or it seems like it, and upstate New York.
And after he did the gun control, he took a real hit.
I think he took a hit both upstate and, you know, I think he liberated in a lot of ways unintentionally on his part, the Senate Republicans.
Because with redistricting out of the way from last year, he lost that hammer to hang over their head.
And then once he, they agreed to put the gun bill on the floor and allow it to move.
And I think what, seven or six, however many voted for it, Republicans, once that happened, there was such a backlash from the base that you've now allowed game average,
you've now allowed gun control. What's the difference between you and the Democrats?
I think you started to see many of the Republicans in the Senate start acting like Republicans.
Don't forget later in the session, this past session, they blocked a lot of his more liberal ideas.
They blocked, you know, the decriminalization of marijuana.
They blocked the women's agenda that would have included a strengthening of the abortion laws.
So they started acting more like Republicans because they were afraid of being primaryed and challenged from the right.
So that's so interesting. But I have another theory on this.
There are now more Democrats than Republicans, right?
In the Senate, except four of them have made common cause with the Republicans.
Really five, so five.
So one who sits with them.
Yeah, oh, that's right. So five.
So if those five were sitting with the Democrats or four of them were sitting with the Democrats, they would be running the Senate.
The Dems would. Yes.
So therefore, I've always thought I've written a number of columns on this.
And I know that the Cuomo people aren't happy with me.
And I've been informed of this again and again because I think that the governor could bring in Jeff Klein,
who's the leader of those four Democrats, take out his ruler and say,
I'm going to primary you guys because you're not really Democrats because you've made common cause with the Republicans.
And you better get over with the other guys.
I'm told, no, Jeff Klein hates them.
The regular Democrats, the regular Democrats hate Jeff Klein.
We hear this over and over again.
But I think Andrew Cuomo has a big stick, which he refuses to use.
I would not underestimate the depths of an hostility between the Senate Democrats and the four breakaway members of this.
I mean, they really do not like each other.
And the question is, you know, why would Jeff Klein go back to be a rank and file?
No, I don't think he would.
Would he go back to become a leader?
Perhaps, but would they want him back as a leader?
They don't like him. They don't trust him.
So, you know, the governor has a role to play and he has actually,
it's been out there that he's had discussions about possibly primary and Klein and Savino,
another IDC member from Staten Island.
So they're getting the word out that they're unhappy.
But it's not as easy either.
The way that the IDC and the Republicans drew the roles that last year for the two-year cycle,
or this year, is that you would need 37 votes to change it.
And the Democrats don't have 37 votes to change it.
So even if the IDC wanted to go back, I'm sure there's ways to do it,
or you just flout the long-letter the Republicans to and see if a judge would want intervene.
But it's not as easy as it sounds.
And the governor still needs the Republicans for certain things.
Well, I've always thought the governor needs the Republican,
just like Papa Cuomo needed the Republicans.
They can be the bad guys.
Yeah.
And he can say, well, I can't do this because the Republicans won't let me.
I think that's a page out of Mario's playbook.
Let me ask you something else.
Let's go to the fracking issue.
We don't hear much about it right now.
No, you don't.
The governor seemed to be going home for it in the beginning.
But I think he put a finger up into the air,
so which way the wind was blowing and said, I really can't do this.
I think he was taken by surprise at the emotion of the issue
from the environmental community.
I don't think he expected the blowback that it was the issue was getting.
They've done a very good job of getting out there.
And then he looked at the polls as he's want to do.
And saw that really the state has been split.
And more recently, there's been more people who oppose fracking than who support it.
Not by a great number, but still.
And I think it was one of the few times we've seen him freeze with fear in a lot of ways,
where he said, I don't know what to do.
So what's he doing?
He's stalling.
He's running out the clock, so to speak, with a study and a study and a study
in the health department that a never ending study.
And nobody expects it's going to get done until at least after or a decision will be made
until at least after next year's election.
And meanwhile, no decision is a victory for the anti-frakers.
Ken Levit, you made a reference before to the possibility of Andrew Cuomo running for president.
And I'm quite sure that it is in the back of his mind, but who knows that we can't get inside his head.
But let's assume Hillary decides not to run.
And Andrew decides he's going to run and all the rest of it.
Does he still have to walk into a democratic convention and explain to them
why he kept the Republicans in power in the New York State Senate among other things?
I think that's an issue he would have to talk about.
I think some of the issues on taxes, although we expect it, you know, he's going to
push a tax cut that's coming here.
If he blocks the Blaseos plan to raise taxes in the city, then that's an issue.
Very rich.
Yeah, don't forget.
Andrew Cuomo might, it's very much in a way like Rudy Giuliani in the Republican side.
Andrew Cuomo, you could argue, would make a very good general election candidate.
But can you get to the general election given that it's a much more progressive wing of the party
that comes out during the primaries?
And as I've said, both the state and national progressives really eye him weirdly at best.
They don't trust him.
And it would be very hard.
He's angered the unions, you know, the public employee unions.
That's a major factor in a democratic primary.
So a lot of your constituency that you need to get through a primary probably wouldn't be
there for him.
So is it pie in the sky?
You know, I talk to people from other states and they say, I say, what about Andrew Cuomo
for governor?
And they say, well, we don't really know about him.
It's funny.
You people in New York really know about him, but I don't think they know about him.
No, you know, I was in Charlotte last year for the National Democratic Convention.
And one of the stories I did is I ran out and I spoke to a bunch of delegates, other key
states, Iowa, New Hampshire, and some others.
And they really didn't know.
They recognized the Cuomo name.
They remembered Mario, some of them, some didn't even know who Mario was.
And some new Cuomo, yeah, he's the New York governor, but they knew nothing about him.
And more surprisingly, they hadn't received any calls.
They hadn't, you know, nobody was working them at the convention, whereas others like
O'Malley and we're working it.
And I think he was banking on, you know, he was at 70% at the time that he didn't have
to make a move so early.
But they may have heard him.
Kelly Silver, the speaker of the New York State Assembly, he's been vilified in the press,
your paper, the New York Post also times, every time everybody.
And yet, there he stands.
There he stands.
He's still here, like Elton John, he's still standing.
You know, every so often something comes up and you hear, oh, they're talking about getting
rid of him, but it's hard to get rid of a sitting speaker as Michael Bragman found
out a decade ago.
His term is an up, you know, he gets elected to a two year term.
So really, for anyone to mobilize the support, they would have to do very quietly and that's
hard to do.
And then they would have to get so many members of the Assembly Democratic Conference to
say to the speaker, look, you did a lot of good things for us, but it's time for you to
go and, you know, and more or less pressure them to resign.
Everything I've heard right now, that's not the case and we're not there yet.
So do you expect that?
I mean, I don't smell any of it.
I think one of two things happens.
One is he serves out next year.
He's there for the legislative session and then he announces he's not running for reelection
and he goes out on his own term.
And that's possible, very quite possible.
Or two, he wants the record, which means he has to run one more time next year.
Wins serves out two more years of speaker and then retires.
Or three, which I think is more possible than one or two.
He stays forever.
No, you see, I would argue.
I think he's got one more, and most I think he's got one more term in him.
And I think that's what he's telling us members or at least signaling to his members.
Have you heard that?
Not specifically rumblings and things like that, but I don't think, you know, Shoua Silver
is a master negotiator and he's the same way with his conference.
He holds things close to his chest and I don't think he would ever say it that way.
But you know, those are some of the rumblings he picked up around the halls.
I need something, we only have two minutes, but the amendment to the Constitution, we
should have allowed judges to stay on till they're 80 years old, failed.
There's no secret that Cuomo was not helping it pass.
No, he was not.
He gets the name, the whole court assuming he wins another term.
Is there resentment from the judiciary?
Yeah, I think there is.
They really, really wanted that.
Certainly, Judge Whitman was very close to Shoua Silver wanted that because he'll have
to retire, I think, in two years.
And three judges on the court are going to have to retire within the next three years
because of that.
And then the other terms would have extended out if this thing passed.
So yeah, I don't think they're happy.
Does that have any ramifications?
I mean, can we see cases coming up when we say take that Cuomo?
Boy, I would like to think not.
You know, you like to think more about the judges being impartial, but certainly people
are human too, but we'll have to say.
Yeah.
The press corps is it getting bored or do you sense that it's an exciting time to be here?
Oh, I don't think it's bored.
I don't buy any stretch.
You know, I think it's interesting because there is a transition now between Cuomo and
his relationship with the legislature.
This moral and things keeping us active.
The mayor.
The new mayor coming in is going to be an interesting dynamic.
And one that we haven't seen before because these two, by all accounts, are close.
They work together at HUD.
You know, Cuomo was his boss.
They have a relationship.
Clinton.
No, but when Cuomo was a HUD secretary, he hired Bill DeBosio as the regional.
But he also worked for Clinton.
No, he did.
But in this case, they've been friends DeBosio and Cuomo since those days, since DeBosio
worked for him at HUD.
And they've been in touch.
They've helped each other's campaigns.
They've been advisors to each other.
They've been sounding boards to each other.
So it's a relationship we're not used to from a governor and mayor, which just institutionally
is always filled with tension.
And the personalities have always led to fight.
So that's going to be something to watch, whether they can maintain this friendship.
They all claim they can and that they'll have disagreements, that they'll try and work
out, but they'll never get personal.
We'll see if that remains the case.
I spoke with Chester Gillibrand, who's a master politician this weekend.
I only have a second to tell you this.
And you know, I remember when she was sitting there, she had been appointed standing there
next to her with Chuck Schumer.
They said, well, Senator Schumer, how can she do this if upstate she was against guns
and she was against basically she wasn't helpful to gaze and the Senator looked and said,
she'll evolve.
And guess what?
She has.
She has evolved.
And I think their relationship is going to revolve and evolve.
Evolve, excuse me.
And I think it's going to be interesting times.
It's never dull anymore at the state capital.
Ken Love it.
We love having you on the show.
Thanks for showing up.
It's terrific.
Our guest has been columnist in Albany Bureau Chief of the New York Daily News.
Ken Love it.
I consider him the best of the best.
Ken, thanks so much for joining us.
Anytime.
The program is distributed with the cooperation of the public radio stations of New York State.
David Castina is the producer of the capital connection, a production of WAMC Northeast
Public Radio in Albany.
Support for the capital connection comes from New York State United Teachers, representing
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Online at nysut.org.
