In disagreement, there can still be respect, and even gratitude.
And so it is that as a New Yorker – as a conservative, Republican, rural New Yorker – I have respect and gratitude for the groundswell among Democratic state legislators against the tyranny and misconduct of Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
Their willingness to literally speak truth to power reinforces the belief that integrity knows no party label, and that the system – our American system of checks and balances – works and protects us.
Such reminders seem rare and precious in our day.
The background is this: For more than a decade, New York has had one of the most authoritarian governors in the state’s or nation’s history. He has built an organization of political power that reaches from the state capital to the county office building and city hall. Loyalty and deference have been demanded, and he has vindictively dealt with officials and communities which have not complied.
In that context, the long ago observation of a baron to a bishop held true: “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.”
And Andrew Cuomo, the most powerful of New Yorkers, turns out likely to be a very bad man.
In his conduct with female employees of the state, and in his dealings with the people and the legislature of the state.
And so it is that a federal criminal investigation is looking at Andrew Cuomo’s handling of covid in nursing homes; the state attorney general has commissioned an investigation of his alleged sexual harassment, coercion and possibly assault in the workplace; and the legislature is angered that he lied to it about the number of covid deaths among nursing home residents.
And now, the speaker of the Assembly has charged his Judicial Committee to begin an investigation into the writing of articles of impeachment against the governor.
That’s where the courage comes in, and the respect and gratitude.
Yesterday, a letter emerged, under the signatures of nearly 60 Democrat state legislators, calling for Andrew Cuomo’s immediate resignation, and laying out the rationale for such a call. That number has since grown to some 65 Democrats, a list that began a week or 10 days ago with a few bold statements and aggregations of Democrat legislators, often very new Democrat legislators.
They seem to have been the spark.
Democrats did very well in Senate and Assembly races last November, and that produced a fair number of new legislators. New legislators who were entering a state government and a state party that is intensely hierarchical, and configured so as to be focused almost exclusively on advancing the will and expanding the power of one man – Andrew Cuomo. For the last decade, successful political careers in New York have been built on access to and approval from Andrew Cuomo.
And, when the new legislators swore in in January, conventional wisdom was that the best path to the top for them was to immediately curry favor with the governor, and to in no wise cross him or draw his ire.
That was the safe route.
But, in the face of mounting concerns about the governor, many chose not to take it.
Instead, they chose to respect their own elections and offices, even if nobody else did. They had not had belief in the separation of powers and the concept of co-equal branches of government beaten out of them by the spoils system. They took themselves and their oaths of office seriously.
And so it is that, against a governor who is a lot more stick than carrot, they dared to speak up and speak out, to point out that the emperor had no clothes, that the fact he was powerful didn’t make him above the law.
They did this, whether they realized it or not, at great peril for themselves and their constituents. Andrew Cuomo has a history of squashing the political careers of his critics, and punishing their supporters by withholding state largess from their cities and districts.
That’s how he plays.
And that fact, acted out again and again year after year, was intensely dispiriting. It left many of us – it left me – uncertain of how things could ever get better. “When the wicked rule,” the Bible is often paraphrased, “the people mourn,” and the dark cloud of a temperamental tyrant seemed fated to hang in the New York sky as long as Andrew Cuomo chose to stay in power.
Republicans were powerless to make a change, and Democrats didn’t seem inclined to replace the order of their political world.
But that has seemingly changed. And Democrat state legislators are raising their voices and signing their names, and calling for a new day and a new governor. Democrat state legislators are standing up to fight for right, for obedience to law and common decency at the highest levels of state government.
And, as a conservative, Republican, rural New Yorker, I am grateful.
We’re not going to agree on issues, but we can stand together on principles.
And I am grateful to, and have respect for, the Democratic New York state legislators who have taken the lead in demonstration of that American fact.