ALBANY — Talk about a thundering, pre-inaugu ral drum roll.
Gov.-elect and current Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has sent a powerful and well-orchestrated “I’m coming” message to dysfunctional Albany with the indictment of Senate Majority Leader Pedro Espada and a string of other dramatic actions that have grabbed the attention of the public.
Last week there was a $500,000 corruption penalty extracted from Patricia Lynch, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver’s longtime go-to lobbyist. Prior to that, ex-state Comptroller Alan Hevesi and longtime Democratic guru Hank Morris pleaded guilty to corruption charges.
Add in Cuomo’s efforts to rally business, good-government groups and private-sector unions to his platform of ethics and financial reforms and you have the reality of a governor-elect carefully preparing for his biggest battle of all: a confrontation with the motley collection of corruption-saturated, tax-and-spend lawmakers who have controlled the Legislature for decades.
Cuomo’s dramatic string of successes — no other recent AG has cracked down so hard on public officials — will give him an enormous head of steam when he demands quick passage next month of the tough ethics law long opposed by Silver and other powerful lawmakers determined to keep the amount and source of their outside incomes secret.
“Anyone who thinks that Andrew hasn’t been carefully planning his actions for what he knows will be the political battle of his life, doesn’t know Andrew,” one Albany insider who has frequent contact with Cuomo said.