The author and the offer

It may be hard to recall at the moment, but one praiseworthy facet of Gov. Cuomo’s daily briefings on COVID in March, April and May 2020 was his rare performance of humility. Unlike the now-former occupant of the White House, Cuomo routinely admitted back then that the virus was a huge, scary problem — one he couldn’t immediately or personally solve.

Which is one reason why it seemed such a strange act of hubris when he announced in summer 2020, after the first COVID wave had crested in New York, that he’d be writing a book about lessons he learned from managing the pandemic. “Where’d he find the time?” we wondered then. We should have added, “Isn’t writing a book a bit premature, since scientists like Drs. Fauci and Birx are saying we’re not near the end of the pandemic’s devastation?”

Last summer, we didn’t yet know how large an advance the governor was getting to pen the book, but we objected to the fact that he was taking any lump sum at all upfront. Elected officials ought not pocket outside income from private interests, and while the writing of books is a frequent exception for people in perches of power, large payments from big companies complicate matters.

Far better for someone on the public payroll to skip the advance and be paid a share of book sales.

Besides, book advances are supposed to give authors money to live on while they write; Cuomo earns $225,000 a year and lives in a state-subsidized mansion.

Our objections in principle are magnified now that we’ve learned more about his deal: Cuomo reportedly got offered more than $4 million for his tome, and was negotiating the sum even as his staff was stonewalling the release of the full facts about COVID nursing home deaths.

And though his spokesman calls the book an “outside project,” Cuomo got help from staffers on said project — all volunteer labor, he says, donated on their free time. Right.