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.
This is the Capital Connection, hi, I'm Alan Shartock.
Joining us this week is colonists and Albany Bureau Chief and WAMC favorite from the New
York Daily News can love it.
Welcome back, Ken.
Good to be here.
So there's a lot going on.
Let's start at the very top with the president of the United States.
President is in New York State, traveling around Pennsylvania, going to some of the places
which, well, you could think could be a fracking site.
What do you make of it?
It's going to be interesting.
That's one thing everyone's going to look at.
The president is obviously on board with fracking.
He made it a point in his state of the union and Andrew Cuomo was obviously uncomfortable
with the issue to say the least.
Have I burned?
He got burned.
Everyone thought it was going to happen real quickly when he took office and now he's
still studying the issue, still studying the environmental impacts he says.
He got asked about it earlier this week.
He was asked about the president's comments.
He goes, well, I agree that energy wise and economically it makes sense.
It is a valuable thing.
However, we have to weigh that with the environmental issues and we don't know what those are at
this point.
Well, refresh my memory, Ken Loveitt, in the very beginning.
He certainly sounded like an advocate.
Yeah, he certainly did.
I think most people thought it was going to happen even as a pilot project, but you know,
he talked about the upstate economy.
It was something I think he really planned on doing.
I don't think he anticipated the depth of opposition from the environmental side, from
the progressive side of the party as well.
Or that it would just catch on as the issue.
Yeah, it's incredible.
I mean, you know, celebrities from Yoko Ono, Mark Ruffalo, the actor, just everyday people.
I mean, I remember the day of his state of the state address in January, walking down
to the Empire Plaza.
And I had never seen so many protesters lined up, you know, on a state of the state day,
lined up along the concourse protesting for acting.
They got hundreds of thousands of comments over the years, you know, on this.
It's huge.
You raised an interesting point, which is the upstate strategy.
I mean, it's clear that Andrew Cuomo, Knows' father didn't do that well, upstate, suffered
a tremendous reversal on his poll numbers after he came out courageously, I thought, on
the gun control issue.
And that was been inching his way back and is spending a lot of time upstate.
Absolutely.
I think he was surprised at the level of opposition to the gun law.
I think they knew that people would be, he kept saying, oh, it's a minority.
It's a small minority, you know, 70% favor this bill.
But it is a vocal, vocal minority, particularly upstate.
It's a huge issue.
So it could be sort of like guns were for upstate as fracking was to the liberals.
Exactly.
And I think this really hurt him in the polls as numbers really went down and continued
to go down.
And now we're seeing, you know, he's up there for fishing derbies and for racing and
white water and white water.
He invites the reporters to do you invite you into being a canoe?
I was invited.
I did not go.
How come?
How do other things to do that weekend?
Okay.
But the upstate strategy seems to be working.
Well, as numbers are starting to stabilize and go up, I mean, the truth is, unless the
Republicans can find a dynamite candidate to even have a chance, which so far we have
not seen a self-financing.
Right.
And we have a governor who's got $28 million.
He's still relatively popular.
I mean, I don't think he, he's obviously concerned, but I don't think they're afraid they're
going to lose next year.
But I think they want to build up a huge victory in hopes of if he does decide to run
for president in 2016 that he can go in on a landslide victory here in New York.
Okay.
So now you've said it and I'm going to follow up on it.
2016, he told me that if Hillary runs, he can't run.
He didn't say was going to run, but he said, because I said, I know everything you do
on his 100 runs for president.
He said, no, if Hillary runs and she's going to run, I can't run.
So where does that leave him?
Well, look, I've argued, you know, since he's taken office, he's obviously interested
in being president, whether he has made the decision to do it, even before Hillary
became an option again, as big as it is now.
I think everything he has done as governor has had a dual purpose.
Does it work in New York?
Will it work nationally?
And I think everything is looked through that prism.
So if he does decide to run, he has a record, he has a narrative he can portray, you know,
hey, I had a split legislature.
I was able to get things done like gun control.
We were able to rein the budget and you know, conservative issues, liberal issues, progressive
issues, all that.
If Hillary runs, I don't think there's a chance he can run.
I mean, she would trounce him in his own state, the poll show.
I don't even know if Biden runs that he's a shoe in.
Right.
You know, look, he hasn't done much in terms of national work and, you know, others are
and I know we're a couple of years out still, but, you know, I was at the convention and
Charlotte, the Democratic National Convention.
And I talked to a lot of delegates from other states and key states like, you know, Iowa
and the ham.
They didn't know who he was.
He was father.
They kind of sort of heard of Andrew Cuomo, but I was surprised because I just thought
he would be more popular among the rank and file delegates.
You know, these are people into politics, but there wasn't a real recognition of him.
He's pretty New York, isn't he?
He is very New York.
And he's not as retail politics as he doesn't do it as well as his father did.
His father would wait into crowds.
He's not as comfortable doing that.
And the relationship with the legislature, we're in hiatus right now.
Is anything changing can love it?
In other words, as they take some time off, things got a little contagious there at the
end.
You think some time off is helping?
I think it could actually hurt because during this time off, he put together this Mormon
commission to look into public corruption and the legislature is not happy with that.
They feel it's not only he's overstepping his boundaries, something the governor says
he is not doing, but they feel that it's really an attack on them and they view it their
way.
It's interesting to see how they react when they come back to the things he's pushing.
Now from the very beginning, it was clear that Andrew Cuomo started to pick on, I thought,
the controller of the state of New York town, Den Appelix.
He's been in the studio many times who I like very much and who I think has been working
very hard as a controller.
But Cuomo doesn't seem to want to give it up.
And let me just preface it one more thing and say that his job, Den Appelix, is to go
and audit the state government agencies.
And I don't think Andrew likes that.
So now Cuomo comes back with this top one of his top guys and they do a legislative
mandated audit of the controllers office and there's help to pay.
There is.
This tension goes back actually to when Andrew Cuomo was Attorney General and Tom Den Appelix
had just become controller.
As Attorney General, Cuomo was looking into the pension fund scandal, the pay-to-pay
scandal that was under Alan Hevesy.
But he never cut Den Appelix.
He felt that Den Appelix wasn't quick enough to enact changes.
He also felt competitive because there was a little while when there was a tit for tat,
Cuomo would say, I want to do accident.
Den Appelix would enact it on his own without waiting.
And so he wasn't happy about that.
And yet to create it.
So there was a lot of tension there.
He didn't endorse him for controller.
Yeah, that was the ongoing investigation.
Now it's simmered and it's sometimes.
Some of the wags were saying Ken Lovett that Mario Cuomo had trouble with Aldeal Bello
and that Andrew Cuomo has trouble here with Tom Den Appelix and that these are very
bright politicians who want to balance their tickets ethnically in every other way.
And that might have been one of the reasons for this.
I don't.
I just think the reputation of Andrew Cuomo, as he doesn't play well in the sandbox with
other people.
Well, but he's got to have a reason for that.
But he, you know, he's had tensions with the attorney general's office, although that's
a little bit on the decline right now with this moral and commission.
But there's been tension there.
Feeling was that he set up this unit, this Department of Financial Services to act as
a shadow attorney general's office.
And now they're reaching into the controller's office and promising more, you know, more
audits.
Look, if the audits are good, then it's worthwhile.
Den Appelix office was very upset with this audit, saying they didn't have a chance to
respond.
Most audits, you see the response of the agency.
Sure.
They didn't have a chance.
They said that it was misleading and they didn't use the word reckless, but that's what
they really come up with.
Much they said his computers were old.
And he said, well, we've got an order for new computers.
Right.
And they didn't mention that really.
And they also said that the pension fund was at risk.
And Den Appelix, they immediately denies that that this is a, they said it would be
the equivalent of going into a human resources department at a Wall Street firm finding
problems and then saying that there's fraud.
You know, it's not the same thing.
I don't know what problems they really found.
I mean, the newspaper reports, including your own of the audits, didn't show me that
they had come up with any smoking gun.
Well, no, it's not smoking.
Now what they said was they're using a system that's from the 1950s and a software that's
written in 1950s code and a computer system that dates back a couple of decades and they're
saying that it would be easy in this day and age to hack it.
And so Den Appelix argument was, well, okay, but we've already put in orders and we're
already in the process of changing over.
They felt it was an unfair audit.
Can I guess I want to ask you what the outcome is?
Obviously, Tom Den Appelix was a favorite of Sheldon Silver.
That's how he got elected by the legislature when hevacy went to jail.
And now he wins again.
He proves himself to be popular despite the fact that the governor is clearly not supporting
him.
Why can't Andrew just leave him alone?
He's doing a good job.
Some people raise the question of whether or not this is in response.
There's been some sharp critical audits of late of the health department and the Medicaid
spending.
He was critical of some of the stuff with the budget.
So in other words, Cuomo is mad at him because he's doing his job.
I love that's what some people say.
I won't go in the mind of what the governor why this is.
They say they're just doing their job and that they are required to audit the auditors.
But you're a columnist.
And you can give your opinion.
And so I guess I got to ask you whether it seems like this is beyond what is expected
of him.
For example, you just said that he's supposed to do this audit of the controlist office.
Yes.
And I remember the language it said up to once every five years or something.
But they're promising more in coming months.
And look, I mean, obviously, DiNapoli's heading into an election year next year.
So they're concerned about that.
Will there be a primary?
Would the governor tacitly or behind the scenes back someone to primary, Tom DiNapoli?
We're going to find that out in the next couple of months.
Any names been mentioned?
Well, one had been Elliot Spitzer.
But obviously he's busy right now.
Noor is Andrew Cuomo going to support Elliot Spitzer.
Oh, people he would support.
You know, one I heard was Ben Lonsky, the guy who was doing the audit.
Who's doing the audit?
I'm not sure I would agree with that, but that's what someone told me the other day.
You know, one of the things I've been reading in the papers lately, the New York Times and
other places, is that New York politics are getting to be pretty clannish.
There was an interesting article about how the Orthodox Jews vote as a bloc.
You're a keen political analyst.
Are we going in that direction where the various religious groups and others get together
in order to make electoral change and the rest of that?
I mean, I think that's been around forever.
I mean, you've had more of the Hacetic sex, but you know, usually they come out for a candidate
and that community comes out and forced for that candidate.
So I don't think that's really new to the situation.
Obviously, you've always had a strong presence in the African-American communities, you know,
using the Latino communities becoming a little more empowered.
You know, whether they all vote in mass, I don't know, but it's certainly segregation of the voters
has always been there.
And that's one of the reasons, I guess, that each campaign has a Jewish desk and an Italian
desk in order to mobilize votes, speaking of which, it is fascinating to me that up until
all three newspapers, including yours, went after Elliot Spitzer, who was running for control
or the African-American community, we haven't seen a poll since.
It was wildly in favor of Spitzer.
What do you think that was?
Well, I mean, according to some of those who have been quoted, it's, you know, that they
feel that they rally around someone who's under a lot of fire.
They feel that this wasn't a...
In other words, they can associate with being badly treated.
Yes.
And especially by the media in their eyes.
And certainly a lot of people, not just the African-American community, but I think I've
been hearing this since he resigned.
You know, look at it and say, oh, prostitution isn't that big a deal.
You know, that he went to a hooker.
They're more willing to forgive that.
And look, you know, I think there's some definite support for him because he appointed,
or he picked David Patterson as his Utenna governor, which is interesting in itself in that
Patterson is now sort of going with the crowd sort of and, and yeah, well, but he campaigned
for the Spitzer opponent.
Yeah, he campaigned for him, but if you watched it, it was real interesting because while
campaigning, he was also defending Spitzer.
I mean, he's close with Spitzer, but I think a lot of people in the African-American community
recognize that Elliot Spitzer, you know, not only selected David Patterson, who was the
first Black Utenna governor, but he also ended up becoming the first Black governor.
So, you know, there may be some remnants of that as well.
Yeah.
Talk to me about Silver himself, the speaker.
Everybody's gone after Silver, you know, every kind of thing that they can, including
a recent story about how many miles he was racking up and using for himself when he travels.
Is there a point at which if he keeps getting elected, somebody has to step in because that's
the way the system works?
I mean, Willie, we've seen investigations by the feds.
We've seen the rest.
I mean, it seems a little unseemly to me.
Unseemly.
I see me in that if people elect somebody, look, I don't like the way the legislature behaves.
I have never made any secret about that.
But what looks to me is like they're out to get silver, and that's the way of cutting
into the legislative for rocket.
But he also has a constituency of two, basically his district and the legislature.
He's, you know, the public at large doesn't elect him speaker.
And I think you're going to see next year if Sheldon Silver becomes a major issue in
a lot of the races, either upstate or in the, or in the marginal suburban districts, you're
going to see a lot of Democrats under pressure from editorial boards and Republicans saying,
do you support silver?
Would you vote for him for another term of speaker?
And you know, that is probably going to be, you know, if he's going to be ousted, that's
going to be the way it happens.
And there's going to be enough people feeling pressure among the rank and file that they
say it's time to go.
But of course, the reason they love him is because he takes the heat for them.
Well, that's exactly right.
And there's no heir apparent.
There's no clear heir apparent, which is an issue.
You know, no one has come forward.
No one is working it right now.
So it depends.
Look, this way to scandal with William Rapfolgoel down in the city who's a close friend of the
speakers, his wife works for the speakers, his chief of staff.
You know, some people think that could be it, but everyone thought Lopez could be it
or Mike and Kellner could be it.
And you know, he keeps going 20 years later.
And you don't hear much about those guys even Vito Lopez, knee, grow peas, you know,
they're gone.
It's not as if they're here and the end, the guy's running for city council in New York
and it still doesn't have legs.
Yeah, no.
And I just think, look, the speaker knows how to play the game.
And you know, one of the things he's very good at is taking the swings and arrows.
Boys, he ever.
And, you know, I mean, will it ever come to a time where he either feels, well, this is
it.
You know, I'm sure at some point, you know, a lot of people feel he wants to set the record.
He's only a couple years away, you know, as long as serving speaker, we'll see.
Yeah.
So now you mentioned the Moryland Act commission.
For those who are listening right now, the Moryland Act, the governor has the right to set
up these commissions that can do investigatory work.
Do we others use that?
And they can really they have subpoena power.
They've all been indebted ties by the attorney general so that they have power to look at
the legislature.
Is there any leaks coming out of there?
Are they doing anything?
Well, they've issued subpoenas.
No matter fact, they've issued subpoenas to five developers who won tax breaks in a housing
bill.
There was a bill that was expanding rent protections for loft tenants down in the city.
It also extended a program for condo, a tax abatement program for condo and co-op owners.
And within this massive bill, they slipped in a tax break for five developers of these
major projects that are, you know, where rich people are going to live.
And it gave them tax credits on those properties.
It turns out that the commission has subpoenaed those five developers.
And one of the things I've been reporting on the last couple of weeks is that governor
Cuomo, who signed the bill.
The housing bill with tax breaks received hundreds of thousands of dollars from those developers
shortly before he signed the bill and even a little bit after when he signed the bill.
And they'll argue, well, you know, he's received from these people before, which is true.
But one thing when I looked at the records was these donations were far and above anything
these developers ever gave the governor as attorney general or governor until this bill
was in play.
And then all of a sudden, you know, 100,000 by one developer a couple days before he signed
the bill.
And then the president of that development company three weeks after he signed the bill
gave another 100,000 to the state party account that Cuomo was using to run ads promoting
his agenda.
And then a second developer gave $75,000 to Cuomo before he signed the bill.
So something's very interesting.
Ken Lovard, I'm so glad you're here because I keep learning things.
But something else is very interesting.
You have now the question as to whether or not contributors to not for profits should
be named.
And Jacob, what you called before the legislative, the no, the everybody at this commission
gave a pass to the folks who were pro choice.
They're now that has raised conservative hackles and said, okay, everybody, if you make
us disclose our lists of contributors, we're going to lose money.
So you can't pick and choose this way is the argument.
What's likely to come out of this?
Well, it's a good question.
The only one they've granted so far is to narrow the pro choice group.
They have then said, we're going to hold off and study the issue on all the other requests.
They've got to study and fracking.
Yes.
They've got years of other studies.
But others are saying, well, while you're studying, you should rest in the narrow because
why should everyone else have to play by the role of not narrow?
We should just make clear to our listeners that that's only for those who are in the business
of lobbying.
Yes.
And they have to show their donors who gave it at least $5,000.
Well, we're talking to Ken Loveett, who I love having with us here.
The question now is that after Labor Day, things really heat up, particularly in the election
of the New York City mayor.
Your newspaper endorsed Chris Quinn, the speaker of the city council.
But interestingly, it's a real horse race, isn't it?
Yeah.
Bill DeBlasio surprised a lot of people, the last Quinnipiac poll I think was last week.
He's sort of the liberal in the race.
He is.
Yes.
He's the progressive Ken.
He showed up and Olvesson, he was the front runner.
He had 30%.
Now, what happens is if no one gets 40% in the primary, which is September 10th, which is
likely to happen, which is likely to happen.
Then they have a runoff of the top two.
And will they be pleased?
Well, it's either going to be Quinn DeBlasio and Bill Thompson.
So it's going to be two of those three.
Yeah.
Thompson, I want to say it's going to be DeBlasio and Quinn, but Thompson always seems to do
better at the polls than he does in the polls.
What is that?
Why is that?
We saw that four years ago with Bloomberg.
Everyone said, oh, Bloomberg is going to wash up in a cakewalk and then all of a sudden,
he only lost Thompson, only lost by a couple of points.
He just, for whatever reason, he doesn't poll well, but he does better at the polls.
But they be under asking black voters.
It could be, or it could be people just don't really tell what they're going to do.
Or it's hard on a primary.
You don't know who's going to show up.
You don't know who's going to come out.
It's not a huge turnout.
So it's really hard to nail that.
Yeah.
And there are a whole bunch of strategic decisions that have been made here.
We'll see what New Yorkers are themselves made of because, for example, the whole question
whether a lesbian, when you go into the polling booth, creates an antipathy among some voters,
and can only hope not, but it's always possible.
I think in New York City, that's less of an issue, certainly, but it's going to be interesting.
And then we'll see how the Republicans run.
We're not even talking about them, but you got Joe Loda, you got a custom entirely.
It's going to be an interesting fall.
It's always great to have our friends.
Can love it, who does such a good job as the best columnist in New York State politics.
And we thank you, Ken, for spending all of this time with us.
As I said before, we always learn something.
So again, thank you for being here.
It's always fun.
Thank you.
The Capitol connection is distributed with the cooperation of the public radio stations
of New York State.
David Castina is the producer of the Capitol connection, a production of WAMC Northeast
Public Radio and Albany.
Support for the Capitol connection comes from New York State United Teachers, representing
professionals in education and healthcare.
And live at nysut.org.
And Miss Casa, the New York State Coalition Against Sexual Assault, working to support
men in their decision to end sexual violence with the My Strength is not for hurting campaign.
Online at nyscasa.org.
CC BY-NC-SA 4.0