Governor Cuomo probably would not be able to pull the nails of Attorney General Letitia James in public – even New York’s crazy politics has limits – but he would definitely like to try. The governor is a terribly vindictive fellow.
Political boss or anonymous government worker, it doesn’t matter – cross Cuomo or get in your way and ride for bad weather.
On Thursday, James tore the scab from an inflamed wound of the Cuomo administration, exposing with concrete data the lethal number charged for coronavirus in New York nursing homes last year. In doing so, she destroyed the governor’s efforts to cover up a surprising example of maladministration.
History suggests that Cuomo will take revenge on this betrayal – or burst a vein when he tries.
And in addition to the considerable merits of James’ report, it is a betrayal. The AG would still be the public defender of New York City if it weren’t for Cuomo’s definitive assistance in the 2018 elections that elevated her to her current post.
So how much sharper than a snake’s tooth is it to have an ungrateful child and all that jazz?
Once installed, James proved to be as stingy and partisan as his patron – polishing his progressive credibility by endlessly intimidating former President Donald Trump, suing the National Rifle Association and so on.
Thus, it is with some irony, but not surprisingly, that his damning report at the nursing home follows in form and function the devastating attack by then-attorney general Andrew Cuomo against the then governor. Eliot Spitzer in 2007. It would take a contractor scandal to finally get Spitzer out of office, but his slip started with the evil news from Cuomo.
Spitzer, a former attorney general who was no stranger to insulting reprisals, went to war with the state Senate immediately after becoming governor – improperly, if not illegally, impelling the State Police against then-majority leader Joseph Bruno for allegedly bad use of aircraft status.
Or Cuomo accused in a 53-page report – a lightning-fast examination of the blue that an unsuspecting Spitzer politically hatchet.
Sort of like what Tish James did with his patron on Thursday. She was obviously paying attention to the wider landscape during her accession from the New York City Council to head of the New York state legal department.
Spitzer’s real sin, of course, was to occupy a position that Cuomo legitimately considered his own. It remains to be seen whether James has similar ambitions – but who’s to say she doesn’t? And certainly the governor cannot complain if that is so – is the turnaround a fair game? (Or maybe the monster killing Dr. Frankenstein?)
Revenge, of course, is another matter. No negligence is stingy to escape Cuomo’s attention.
Last month, there was the case of Lindsey Boylan, a former government official who accused the governor of sexual harassment and, shortly after, discovered that his personal state file had been “obtained” by the Associated Press.
Leaving aside the merits of Boylan’s accusations – she is running for the Manhattan district presidency and presumably needs name recognition – news organizations don’t “get” such records. They deliver them.
Boylan’s experience parallels that of Mike Fayette, a former civil engineer forced to quit his public job in 2012 for speaking without permission to a small Adirondack newspaper. State Operations Director Howard Glaser went on the radio to read Fayette’s personal file!
Again, big or small – no one is beyond Cuomo’s penetrating gaze.
Especially Bill de Blasio.
Bitter governor-mayor rivalries are traditional – Nelson Rockefeller vs. John Lindsay was epic – but the torment Cuomo struck in de Blasio borders on the pathological. Make it sadistic.
It is true that the bumbling, foolish and monumentally lazy mayor brought Cuomo’s hellish fire upon himself; even so, from the 1st, if the mayor said “up”, the governor barked “down!”
Since the pandemic, if de Blasio said “open”, Cuomo said “closed” and vice versa. The outrageously chaotic launch of the coronavirus vaccine in New York is a product of this childhood dispute, but there is hardly a single aspect of the city-state relationship – housing, education, public transport and so on – that has not suffered either.
It’s hard to imagine James trying to deny Cuomo a fourth term next year or, more precisely, hoping to avoid retaliation for Thursday’s report. She knows the record as well as anyone.
But whatever her plans were, she simply gave the governor a full ration of her own policy, and good for her. If anyone deserved it, it’s Andrew Cuomo.
Twitter: @ rlmac2