The Oneida Daily Dispatch (Oneida, NY)
Few women leaders in NY
ALBANYHillary Clinton >> Presidentialmade history nominee in Philadelphia this week, but in her adopted home state of New York, women candidates are often ignored or shunted aside by a political establishment dominated by men.
New York has never elected a woman governor, comptroller or attorney general. In 1994, attorney general candidate Karen Burstein was ahead in the polls until one month before election day, when a prominent GOP leader said she was unqualified to serve because she was “an admitted lesbian.”
New York also never had a woman serve as U.S. senator until Clinton broke that barrier in 2000, which opened her drive to become the first woman president in the history of the U.S. The job remains one of the few bastions of female political power in New York, and is now held by Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, a former Congress member
from Rensselaer County.
As for the office of New York lieutenant governor, two of the four women who have served there ended up as outcasts after crossing their male bosses.
One of them was Lt. Gov. Betsy McCaughey, who made her name with a stinging critique of then First Lady Hillary Clinton’s health care plan. McCaughey helped George Pataki beat Mario Cuomo in 1994 by giving Republicans a gender advantage in a very close race, then was later dumped for not doing as she was told.
This week McCaughey, now a best-selling author, disputed the view that Clinton was deserving of recognition as a political trailblazer.
“She’s gotten everywhere she is on her husband’s coattails,” McCaughey said in an interview. “There are many women in every field, including politics, who truly have shattered glass ceilings -women in New York politics, women in national politics. I don’t regard Hillary Clinton as someone who has broken a glass ceiling.”
New York has a Women’s Equality Party, but it was created and controlled by Gov. Andrew Cuomo to help his re-election in 2014 after he faced a primary challenge froma woman, Zephyr Teachout. Cuomo refused to debate her and in an event caught on video refused to even acknowledge her presence when she approached him at a Labor Day parade to shake hands.
Women have been elected governor in the neighboring states of Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut and New Jersey. New York is one of 23 states that have never had a woman in charge as governor, but it is the only one with the distinction of having a governor quit after being caught with prostitutes.
New York’s first female lieutenant governor was Mary Anne Krupsak, who served in the Senate and Assembly before being tapped to be Gov. Hugh Carey’s running mate in 1974. He isolated her, gave her little to do and ignored her advice. So she challenged him to a primary in 1978 and lost, ending her career and launching the career of Mario Cuomo, her replacement.
Of the remaining lieutenant governors, McCaughey’s replacement Mary Donohue later got a court patronage appointment. Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul remains on the job, though shewas largely out of the spotlight as history was made in Philadelphia this week, traveling there only when Gov. Andrew Cuomo was in New York state.
In the Legislature, only a quarter of the 213 members are women.
The Senate has a female minority leader, Senator Andrea Stewart- Cousins (DYonkers), but she has seen her goal of becoming ma- jority leader blocked by the refusal of a handful of Democratic male legislators (and one woman) to back her as leader.
She said this week that she welcomes breaking “glass ceilings” nationally and in New York state and held out hope of becoming majority leader later this year.
“We could certainly in New York wake up not only with a first female president that comes from New York but with ... the first female majority leader in the state of New York,” Stewart-Cousins said on WCNY’s “Capitol Pressroom” radio show.
“Quite frankly for the progressive state thatwe are and the progressive country that we are trying to be on many levels, I think it is certainly about time,” she added.
Yet in the Assembly, not even a scandal involving former Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver’s coverup of sexual harassment of female staffers was enough to get a woman in the top spot when he was arrested on corruption charges and forced out as leader.
“Women make up over 50 percent of New York state’s population and the reality is that we actually do get issues brought to our attention that aren’t necessarily brought to the attention of our male counterparts,” Assemblywoman Donna Lupardo (D-Binghamton) said earlier this year at a Womens’ History Month event at the Capitol. “So there is another perspective oftentimes … Anytime we can include a wide variety of voices we get a better end product.”
The Legislature has never elected a woman as a conference leader. The closest anyone has come is Senator Catharine Young (R-Olean), the chair of the Senate Finance Committee, one of the most powerful posts in the Legislature.