Podcast: The five scandals – which should we worry about?

Tuesday’s Siena Research Institute Poll found that 97 percent of New Yorkers think it is important for the governor and Legislature to enact new laws addressing corruption. In my experience as a political journalist, I am pretty sure nothing has ever polled that high. But, having covered state politics for more than a decade, I also know that some politicians would call that a soft 97 percent. Sure, everyone thinks government sucks, but the voters in MY district are not going to blame ME when this falls apart at the end of session or when we agree on a half-assed bill that doesn’t really change things.

One thing is clear. The swirling scandals have eroded people’s trust in government. But, then again, we are used to this in New York. We have lived through an unprecedented decade of political corruption. So we really shouldn’t be surprised that we find ourselves in our current state.

For ease of argument, we narrowed down all the recent twists and turns into five basic scandal groups – four related to New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and one involving Gov. Andrew Cuomo. Here they are:

• Cuomo and the Buffalo Billion.

• De Blasio’s state Senate Democratic fundraising.

• De Blasio’s mayoral funding and ties to NYCLASS.

• De Blasio and Rivington House.

• FBI probe of the NYPD and Department of Correction.

I think we can all agree that the optics for the mayor and the governor are terrible. That was obvious even before the Siena poll. But are de Blasio and Cuomo really in any legal trouble? Or just their staffers and people close to them? In our latest podcast, we put that question to Jeff Smith, a former Missouri state Senator who served time in federal prison for lying to the FBI about coordination between his campaign and outside groups – the only person we can find that has ever gone to prison for the practice of coordination. Which is remarkable, considering that political insiders all do it! In private, they all admit that it doesn’t take a genius to coordinate campaigns with outside groups without getting caught. There is basically a universal sublanguage for this stuff. Not at the secret handshake level, but close.

Smith, a professor of politics and advocacy at the New School’s Milano School of International Affairs, Management and Urban Policy and author of the book “Mr. Smith goes to Prison,” thinks the recent criminal referral from the state Board of Elections’ enforcement officer Risa Sugarman alleging coordination between de Blasio and 2014 state Senate campaigns could present legal troubles for the mayor, even though he has not been accused of a crime yet.

“Never does anyone put in writing that coordination is going on, which is the smoking gun that appears to be present in the de Blasio situation,” Smith said, referring to reports that the campaign treasurer for Democratic candidate Cecilia Tkaczyk sent an email asking about a $60,000 check that eventually came from a New York-based union.

“That smoking gun leaves a couple people vulnerable. And once they are vulnerable the feds go to them – and Preet Bharara doesn’t go home at night and brag about bringing down the treasurer for some upstate Senate candidate, he wants the biggest fish he can get. And that is how this stuff works. They start low and go higher, and higher, and higher,” Smith said.

The 20-minute conversation also touches on the other scandals surrounding de Blasio and Cuomo. We also pose the question of why the two longtime political operatives and notorious micromanagers would have made what appear to be such sloppy mistakes.

“When you are an operative by nature, and then you get to be the guy, but you are still thinking that you can do maneuvers and you can be a little slicker than everybody else, I think they both kind of have that,” Smith said. “I think that nearly led to serious problems for Cuomo, may still lead to some real problems for Joe Percoco, his aide, and has definitely got Bill de Blasio back on his heels.”

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