Gov goes Uptown for ‘shot in the arm’
Like many a struggling politician before him, Andrew Cuomo made his way to Harlem this week, seeking salvation by a dip in the warm pool of Black culture, deftly heated and stirred by civil rights leaders and clergymen who make a living selling the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen.
Gov. Cuomo is facing down calls for his resignation, as well as inquiries by the state attorney general and the Assembly into allegations of sexual harassment and/or inappropriate touching by at least seven different women. He has vowed not to resign, instead creating staged events at which he can appear to be governing as usual.
To watch Cuomo at Mount Neboh Baptist Church was to see a master politician furiously working all the angles.
Cuomo bantered with Marc Morial, the president of the National Urban League who is a former mayor of New Orleans, about the correct way to pronounce “Nawlins.” Cuomo joked: “Now I have a Southern accent — South Queens, that’s what that is.”
He called NAACP President Hazel Dukes his “second mother.” She, in turn, pulled out a black-and-white photo of herself with Cuomo’s father, Gov. Mario Cuomo.
“I’m sitting next to his daddy, giving his daddy direction,” Dukes said, describing the picture. “So, I want to thank my son for his leadership. Somebody called me and said, ‘I didn’t know you had a white son.’ I said, ‘he ain’t white.’ I always like when you call me your second mom. I’m proud of all your leadership on COVID and all the great things you’ve done for our state.”
It doesn’t get better for a white politician, down on his fortunes, to have the leader of the NAACP say “he ain’t white.” In a Baptist church. In Harlem.
Cuomo announced that it happened to be Dukes’ birthday, and led the ministers in a round of “Happy Birthday.” But more than the singing was a little off-key.
What had been billed as the opening of a new COVID vaccination center morphed into a ribbon-cutting, as Cuomo and Assemblywoman Inez Dickens abruptly announced the state intends to provide nearly half the funding for the creation of a new, $242 million-dollar complex in Harlem that will include a Civil Rights museum, 170 units of housing and a new national headquarters for the National Urban League.
I would love to give you more details about the project, but the event at Mount Neboh was closed to the press, with the sole video feed broadcast and controlled by Cuomo’s office. The announcement, sources tell me, came as a surprise to Morial, the president of the Urban League.
Normally, the creation of a quarter-billion-dollar project would be packed to the rafters with every politician north of 96th St., and it’s safe to assume Cuomo invited all of them. But nobody showed up except Assemblywoman Dickens.
The official announcement from the governor’s office includes nice words of support for the project from Harlem’s state senator, Brian Benjamin, and Congressman Adriano Espaillat. But both have called for Cuomo to resign.
Cuomo is clearly hoping to influence, or perhaps neutralize, the power of the state’s leading Black politicians, who hold his fate in their hands.
Attorney General Letitia James is officially investigating the sexual harassment charges against Cuomo. Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins has called for Cuomo to resign, and Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie has launched a formal investigation as the first step to the possible impeachment of Cuomo.
So the governor, deprived of help from three Black leaders who wield formal state power, must settle for help from those who wield potent symbolic power.
It’s been done before. Back in 2001, ex-President Bill Clinton caught flack by planning to locate his foundation’s offices in expensive midtown digs above Carnegie Hall. It would have cost taxpayers an eye popping $800,000 a year — considerably more than every other living ex-president.
Clinton abruptly announced he would be locating his offices in Harlem for one-fourth the cost. The ministers and politicians gave him a hero’s welcome. End of controversy.
According to one wise political old-timer, Albany is a place where one should carefully position as many mattresses as possible outside the Capitol, to help with a soft landing if you need to jump out the window in an emergency. The needed cushions, in this metaphor, are friendships.
For many in government, Cuomo’s tenure has been a decade-long reign of terror, in which top state aides — and occasionally the governor himself — have gleefully bullied, badgered, cussed out and threatened people, some of whom got chased out of public service altogether.
He can smile, joke and strategically deploy state resources, but make no mistake about it: Gov. Cuomo, facing defenestration, finds himself short on friends these days.