by Andrew Cuomo
I know my strengths and weaknesses. I want to get things done and be judged by results and by making a positive difference, and I can be obsessive in that pursuit. I have disdain for the shallowness and duplicity of political theater and no longer want to hold my tongue. I do not suffer fools gladly, gracefully, or patiently. I am an overprotective parent, and it frustrates and embarrasses my daughters. My natural instinct is to be aggressive, and it doesn’t always serve me well. I am a controlling personality. At one time I opposed that characterization because it has a negative implication. But you show me a person who is not controlling, and I’ll show you a person who is probably not highly successful.
I don’t have what you call a balanced life either. I work all the time. Enjoyment for me is when I’m with my daughters or my family, and in the summer I spend time on the water with my brother and friends, but usually I just work. Being governor is a job that is never really done. If I’m not working, I always feel a tinge of guilt. The wheels in my mind never stop turning, so at night I think about the things I need to do the next day or go through the events of the day that just ended. I inherited this proclivity from my father, who was an even worse workaholic. When someone would suggest to my father that he take a vacation, he loved to say, “Why should I unwind? I will just have to wind myself up again.” Then he would laugh. But living with a workaholic can be really boring.
I am a progressive Democrat, as that term used to be defined. I am frustrated by the incompetence of the government and distrustful of the motivations and ability of many politicians. I was raised at a kitchen table where my father talked about improving society in the teachings of Matthew 25 and tikkun olam: building community dedicated to doing justice and improving life for all. I deeply believe government is the best vehicle to advance that mission and that government service done well is an art form. But I also believe government service is a dying art, and too many seek office who do not possess the skills or knowledge necessary to actually make change or are motivated by personal rather than public advancement.
I spent eight years in Washington, and I have no desire to go back. There have been rumors during this crisis and before that I was interested in running for president. That is a natural suspicion: After all, Grover Cleveland and both presidents Roosevelt, FDR and Theodore, were governors of New York. My father, Mario Cuomo, talked about running for president, although he never did. But I have been definitive in my support of Joe Biden for president, and he is also a personal friend. But facts never get in the way of a good rumor.
I’ve worked with presidents, cabinet secretaries, governors, and world leaders, attended many meetings in the Oval Office, worked to pass many bills through Congress, was confirmed twice by the U.S. Senate. I fought for and alongside underserved communities, reduced discrimination against the LGBTQ community, sued the KKK, increased federal aid to Indian reservations, rebuilt public housing across the country, designed a new model to help the homeless, served during national emergencies and disasters, as HUD secretary, worked in every state in the nation, and represented this nation in countries around the globe.
As governor for the past ten years, I’ve worked with Democrats and Republicans. I reformed the bureaucracy of government. I reduced taxes, passed nation-leading progressive legislation—from gun control to marriage equality, and from codifying a woman’s right to choose to instituting the highest minimum wage at the time, free college tuition, and the nation’s most aggressive environmental program. My administration has completed more major infrastructure projects than any other in modern history. I have an advantage in my position: I have nothing left to prove to anyone and find the plain truth liberating.
This is my second life. I lived and died a political death before my eventual rebirth. I ran for governor in 2002 and lost. Before that, my father had lost his reelection in 1994 after three terms as governor. My father and I spent many evenings sitting on the couch, watching a ball game, drinking a bottle of wine, and replaying the “game tapes” of our government careers, reviewing what we did right, what we did wrong. The advantage of retrospection is priceless, as well as painful. Over time, the petty day-to-day political pressures become irrelevant, and only the lasting contributions remain.
Our shared conclusion was that if we could somehow replay the game, we would play it much differently. My father and I agreed we would be bolder, take more risks, make more change, and make more progress by proving to the people that government can be effective and can actually make a positive difference. We lamented the time wasted catering to this official or that official. The lost opportunities of an overly cautious legislature. The frustration of a bureaucracy that didn’t move fast enough to produce real results for people. If we could do it over again, we would get even more done, and those accomplishments would then build more support for government.
After all those nights on the couch, in 2006 I was reborn when I won the election for attorney general of New York. Dead politicians don’t usually come back to life. I had a second chance, and I would do it right this time. As I called my father onto the stage that election night and held his hand high, I pledged that I would do it right for myself and for my father.
The political pundits get to write the eulogy once you are out of office, and my father’s political eulogy was essentially that he gave great speeches but his government didn’t produce major successes. In my father’s case, the Albany reporter he respected the least wound up writing his actual eulogy for The New York Times. There is no justice. It was unfair as well as unkind. It was also untrue. But welcome to politics in New York. My father was interested in the articulation of government principles, but not to the exclusion of government implementation. I am committed to highlight both. I want a government that talks the talk and walks the walk. A government of principle that can also produce and improve people’s day-to-day lives.
I intend to serve as governor of New York as long as the people will have me. My daughters are grown, their education is paid for, and I can pay for their three weddings. After I’m done as governor, I want to help my children in any way I can, and also buy a boat and go fishing. But for now, I have 19.5 million people counting on me. That is my priority. At the beginning of this crisis, I thought of FDR’s words: “Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the assessment that something else is more important than fear.” There might be no good outcome, but I knew I could not live with myself if I stayed in the foxhole. The right thing to do in the coming battle was to step up and give it my all. There could be no ambivalence. Total commitment is always the first step.
Most Americans go to sleep at night thinking that the government is keeping this nation safe—that, God forbid, if a terrible disaster emerged, some authority with men and women in uniforms and equipment would show up to save the day. Sometimes that is not enough. I have been through hurricanes, floods, fires, and earthquakes. I know how fragile our social foundation really is. I have seen people panic and trample one another. I have seen civilization degrade when the instinct of self-survival takes over.
An airborne virus was one of the nightmare scenarios envisioned as a terrorist plot. It is easy to create chaos and overwhelm society with fear when people are afraid to breathe the air. There would be no good news with this virus and no good outcome. Schools and businesses would be closed. The economy would suffer. People would die. Nothing we could do would be enough. There was no possibility for victory, and even FDR and Churchill had at least the possibility of a successful outcome.
I knew this country was in trouble when COVID hit. It was divided and vulnerable, making it weak. A serious threat was inevitable, and when it came, we did not have the capacity to handle it. The only way to defeat the virus is for a united societal response where we all agree to protect one another. But the coronavirus is attacking us at an unprecedented time of partisanship and internal discord. Political, racial, economic, and geographic divisions
are at all-time highs. The nation is more divided than at any time since the Civil War. The unity this nation has shown in the past when it was under attack, such as in World War II, is nowhere to be seen. When we are united, we are undefeatable. When we are divided, we are vulnerable.
Our ability to respond together as a society is dependent on the strength and the capacity of our government. Government is nothing more than the vehicle for collective action. Washington, Lincoln, FDR, JFK—these were great men made for the moment, or the moments made these men great. At this moment in time, this nation is led by neither a great government nor a great leader.
Still, there is reason for hope. In this crisis we see evidence that the virus can be defeated. New York State, a microcosm of the nation, has shown a path forward. We have seen government mobilize to handle the crisis. We have seen Americans come together in a sense of unity to do the impossible. We have seen how the virus is confronted and defeated. New York didn’t do everything right, but there are lessons we can learn that will lead to victory.
MARCH 1 | 1 NEW CASE | 0 HOSPITALIZED | 0 DEATHS
“It was a matter of when, not if.”
IT WASN’T LONG AFTER THAT evening call from Melissa that my office issued a statement reassuring New Yorkers that it was always a matter of when COVID would arrive in our state, not if, and now that it was here, we were managing the situation.
While New Yorkers are a diverse international community, they can still be a parochial bunch. There is an attitude that it’s not real until it happens in New York, and until we had our first COVID case, our population was still fairly dismissive of the threat. Even with the announcement of the first case, New Yorkers had largely not yet reached a point of high anxiety. But I had.
We had no idea how bad the situation would become. For weeks, the federal authorities had told us to look to Asia and the West Coast of the United States, where the infections first surfaced, but what we would soon find out was that the coronavirus had come from the other direction and that travelers from Europe to and through New York had brought the invisible hitchhiker with them weeks if not months earlier, and it was already circulating among thousands who had not yet manifested the illness. In a retrospective interview given on June 26, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of infectious diseases at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), acknowledged that the first wave of cases that hit New York was from Europe. “Everybody was looking at China and it came from Europe,” Fauci said.
MARCH 2 | 0 NEW CASES | 0 HOSPITALIZED | 0 DEATHS
“It is deep breath time.”
I FLEW DOWN TO NEW YORK City to hold what would be the first daily press conference, or “briefings” as they would become known, about the arrival of the coronavirus. I had done them often as governor, usually at the state capitol in Albany, the main location for my operation. The capitol is a beautiful building first erected in the late nineteenth century and finished when Teddy Roosevelt was governor in 1899. At the time it was one of the most expensive public works projects in the nation. The press conferences are held in the official governor’s office, called the Red Room, a magnificent space with wood paneling, red leather, and gold-embossed wall coverings, and they are always simulcast on the internet for anyone who cares to watch. However, before this year, not that many people were interested in the day-to-day operations of state government.
With me on the dais on March 2 were Dr. Zucker and Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York City. While I was not the mayor’s number one fan, a fact that was well known to the public, I made the trip to the city specifically to sit with him to show a unified front to New Yorkers. An informed, consistent message was important, so by doing this event with the mayor, I could make sure we were stating the same facts.
One of New York City’s blessings is that it has some of the best medical institutions on the planet. Joining me were the top executives from Mount Sinai Health System, NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, and NYU Langone Medical Center and the heads of the Greater New York Hospital Association and the Healthcare Association of New York State. I had met with them prior to the briefing because I wanted to make sure that we were coordinated in doing research and sharing the best information on a timely basis.
My plan for this briefing and all the ones to follow was simple: We would provide unbiased factual evidence explaining the virus and its progress. A single day’s briefing means little, but constant reinforcement and updated factual data could present a story that the public could follow. Besides, matters of life and death tend to get people’s attention. The main challenge for me was to communicate this data to the public in a way that would establish my credibility for providing timely information with transparency while also instilling confidence. My daughter Mariah said to me late the previous night, her voice clearly filled with anxiety, “Don’t tell me to relax; tell me why I should be relaxed.” She was right; it was an important distinction that I would remember going forward. I understood that people were anxious. The message I delivered was that this was “deep breath time.” “Deep breath time” meant that I understood their emotions and I was not discounting them. But we could not act on emotion. We would act on facts.
This first briefing was the opening salvo in an ongoing discussion. In many ways I was reintroducing myself to the people of the state. Yes, they knew me, but today everything was different. We were going to a new and different place. Today, I was not just the governor; I was the governor in a historic crisis. If people didn’t believe in government yesterday, they desperately wanted to believe in government today. Today, government mattered.
Initially, I had no expectation when we started that these briefings would be anything out of the ordinary. I was wrong. Within a matter of days, this mundane government procedure during pre-COVID times became something of a phenomenon, what became characterized as required viewing first for New Yorkers and then for the entire nation.
* * *
—
NEW YORK HAS a much larger government than most states, with more depth and more resources. Fortunately, when the virus arrived, we already had—in my opinion—the best team of professionals that has been assembled in modern political history. My team is a group of top-shelf individuals who could excel in any position in the corporate sector making millions; instead, they are public servants. And we knew one another like a basketball team that has played together for many years, how each person moved on the court and who should get the ball for the game-winning shot. My job as the leader of this team has always been to help them find the confidence to demand more from themselves and from the systems around them. Often, when people, especially bureaucrats, are faced with a problem, their first response is to list the reasons why something can’t be done. My team does not accept no for an answer; they get to yes. So when COVID hit, I was confident that my people would face this challenge with everything they had and then some.
I was also confident in my relationship with the hospitals. I was confident in my relationship with the state legislature. I was confident in my relationship with local executives. Westchester County executive George Latimer, Nassau County executive Laura Curran, and Suffolk County executive Steve Bellone were in the hot seat handling their counties, but they are pros and we worked together well. Likewise, Buffalo mayor Byron Brown, Syracuse mayor Ben Walsh, and Rochester mayor Lovely Warren were capable of handling the situation well. I was confident in myself to the extent that I had every experience one could have to be prepared. I was knowledgeable, even enough to know one could never be truly prepared. I was confident that we could do as good a job as could be done in the circumstances, but I was never comfortable with what the outcome might be.
The arrival of COVID also put New York State in direct engagement with the federal government in a new way. I had already been talking to them about COVID issues such as bringing testing capability to our state, but now the urgency went up tenfold, as did my relevance to the White House and their
relevance to me.
Before this, I had probably been the most outspoken governor against Trump’s policies. We fought on immigration policy, environmental policy, you name it. We had a number of nasty exchanges. I was enraged when he imposed the cap on state and local taxes (SALT) in his 2017 tax package. That policy increased the income tax on New Yorkers $14 billion. When we codified a woman’s right to choose with the Reproductive Health Act in early 2019 in case Republicans did anything to overturn Roe v. Wade at the Supreme Court level, Trump attacked New York in his State of the Union address, ridiculously claiming that lawmakers in New York had “cheered” for a law that he said allowed “a baby to be ripped from the mother’s womb moments from birth.” He had also lobbed a series of tweets at me in early February, complaining, “Very hard to work with New York—So stupid. All they do is sue me all the time!” and “New York must stop all of its unnecessary lawsuits & harrassment, start cleaning itself up, and lowering taxes.”
I found his constant pandering to the Far Right alternately disingenuous and repugnant, but today was a different day, and New York needed the federal government. As a former cabinet secretary, I knew what it could do, and I knew we needed its assistance. My personal feelings and politics were irrelevant. I would do my best to make the relationship work.