Dem hit for Percoco tie
Tried to get gov aide’s wife a job
A Democratic candidate for state Senate is paying a political price for living in the same neighborhood as Joe Percoco.
Peter Harckham, who is running against incumbent Republican Sen. Terrence Murphy, made the mistake of trying to help Percoco's wife get a job in 2012 after the crooked couple moved to the affluent Westchester hamlet of South Salem. Percoco was once Gov. Cuomo's closest aide and one of Albany's most influential behind-the-scenes players.
The effort resulted in Harckham being called as a witness in Percoco's bribery trial — and now Murphy is revisiting that testimony in the race for Senate District 40 covering parts of Westchester and the Hudson Valley.
Harckham testified that he wrote Percoco and his wife, Lisa, “welcome to the hood” shortly after he learned they'd moved roughly a mile away.
“I got a call that they had bought a house in South Salem and his wife Lisa was looking for a teaching job closer to their new home, and did I have some connections that I could help introduce them to,” he testified on Feb. 23.
Harckham, a former Westchester County legislator, unsuccessfully tried to get Lisa Percoco a job as a substitute teacher through his connections to two local superintendents.
“Peter Harckham bent over backward to help his political kingpin, who it turns out, was on the take,” Martha Ruiz Jiménez, a spokeswoman for Murphy's campaign said. “He will say and do anything to hide the fact that he was an eyewitness to pervasive corruption and fraud.”
Percoco was sentenced to six years in prison in September for accepting $300,000 in bribes, including a “low-show” job for his wife courtesy of an energy company with business before the state. Evidence showed that Percoco took the bribes around the time he and his wife faced $800,000 in mortgage debt for the home in the leafy Westchester hamlet.
Harckham was not accused by prosecutors of any wrongdoing.
“This latest smear from Murphy is another lie from an increasingly desperate candidate,” Harckham spokesman Lloyd Trufelman said.
“Murphy has been spewing various false Percoco allegations for a while now.”
Last week, the nonpartisan Westchester County Fair Campaign Practices Committee reprimanded Murphy for saying that Harckham landed state jobs working for the Department of Housing and Community Renewal and the team overseeing the development of the new Mario Cuomo Bridge through connections to Percoco.
“Pete has absolutely nothing to hide and has done nothing wrong,” Trubelman said, adding that Harckham is in favor of several ethics measures to clean up Albany, including term limits.
A spokesman for Senate leader John Flanagan said Harckham's ties to Percoco
“are in the same vein as what Dean Skelos was just sentenced for doing.”