Columnist’s view
Chris Churchill talks about when words contradict actions.
Nearly four years ago, Melissa Derosa gave a speech that, in light of recent sexual harassment allegations against Gov. Andrew Cuomo, is worth revisiting. It was largely about sexism and misogyny. Derosa, for those who don’t know, is secretary to the governor, which means she’s perhaps the most powerful person in the administration not named Cuomo. Derosa, 38, is also an Albany Academy graduate who went to school, for whatever it’s worth, with U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik.
During her speech at Berkeley College in Manhattan, Derosa talked some about her impressive career and climb up the professional ladder. But the most powerful part of the speech was about the indignities, large and small, that are perpetrated on women by powerful men.
“Despite recent revelations about Harvey Weinstein, it isn’t new,” Derosa told her audience back in 2017. “Sexism and misogyny exist in obvious and latent forms. And it isn’t something women read or talk about in the abstract. We live it and we know it when it happens, and all too often we don’t say anything.”
Derosa told her audience a story about a time when she was listening in on a conference call and heard a man — a progressive political leader, she said — make a crack about how he’d like to take her up to his hotel room.
“This kind of behavior has been normalized for decades, with the anomaly being those who call it out,” Derosa said. “And too often they don’t speak out because they are afraid of what happens if they do — just ask Anita Hill.”
What Derosa was saying, of course, is that women who muster up the courage to make claims against powerful men often face attempts to damage their reputations, which is undeniably true.
It happened to Lindsey Boylan.
Last December, Boylan used Twitter to accuse Cuomo of sexual harassment. It happened “for years,” the former deputy secretary for economic development wrote. “Many saw it, and watched.”
Team Cuomo responded by releasing unflattering details from her personnel file and by launching what The New York Times described as a full-on attack on her credibility and The New Yorker called “a smear campaign.” As subsequent allegations have emerged, the effort looks increasingly like an attempt to keep other women from coming forward.
But let’s return to Derosa’s speech.
“The victims of Harvey Weinstein, and all of the
Harvey Weinsteins before him,” she said, “will be for naught if we don’t use this moment as a societal course correction. We must acknowledge and address that this behavior is not limited to one man, or one profession, or one political party. That’s why it’s so important that women speak up and speak out.”
It is impossible to disagree with any of that, nor with Derosa’s subsequent declaration that sexual harassment must not “be swept under the rug anymore.”
But what happened when another Cuomo accuser, Charlotte Bennett, spoke up by reporting harassment to superiors?
She was transferred to a job elsewhere in the Capitol and, according to Bennett and her attorney, nothing was done. If that’s not sweeping harassment under the rug, what is?
As of this writing, at least eight women have come forward with harassment allegations against Cuomo, and one accuses of him of groping her in the governor’s mansion. Many more former employees have come forward in published reports that describe the administration’s work environment as thoroughly toxic, abusive and dysfunctional.
Derosa’s name comes up often in those reports, as it has during various stages of the nursing home scandal. That isn’t especially surprising, given her prominence in the administration and her reputation as the governor’s enforcer.
But what of sexual harassment? How could anybody square Derosa’s rhetoric with the allegations and how the administration has responded?
Officials within the Cuomo administration insist its actions, including the handling of Bennett’s complaint, will look better when an investigation overseen by Attorney General Letitia James is complete and “the facts” are known. They also stress that Derosa deserves immense credit for spearheading initiatives with special importance to women, including the $15 minimum wage, paid family leave, and expanded in-vitro fertilization coverage.
“Melissa is the same person behind the scenes as she is on camera — tough, hardworking, brilliant, meticulously prepared, and always fighting to improve New Yorkers’ lives,” Cuomo spokesman
Rich Azzopardi said when asked for comment about the 2017 speech. “This is obviously a hard-charging environment that’s not for everyone, but I’m not going to stand by and let her be maligned.”
I have no wish to malign Derosa, nor would I ever downplay the sexism she encountered on her way up the ladder. I’ll also note that the governor sets the tone in the administration and is the one responsible for its faults and failures. If the sexual harassment allegations against Cuomo are accurate — and I have no reason to think they’re not — he deserves the fall.
But if the James investigation does implicate the governor, it may also raise questions about how much others in the administration knew, and it could render one line from Derosa’s 2017 speech particularly dubious.
“I am grateful,” she said then, “to work in an administration that so highly values its female employees.”
““This is obviously a hard-charging environment that’s not for everyone, but I’m not going to stand by and let her be maligned.”
Cuomo spokesman Rich Azzopardi