Larry Schwartz (AP)
POWER GRABS: Operations Director Howard Glaser (left) is feuding with Chief of Staff Larry Schwartz (right). (
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Two top aides to Gov. Cuomo have gone to war over turf and power, at times refusing to talk to each other and fighting for credit for several of the governor’s major initiatives, sources have told The Post.
The battle between Larry Schwartz, the governor’s secretary and chief- of-staff, and state Operations Director Howard Glaser has also spilled over into second-tier staff, with many top deputies and commissioners feeling they have to choose sides.
“It’s two armed camps on the second floor; you’re either with Larry or you’re with Howard,’’ said a well-placed source, referring to the location of the governor’s office suite at the Capitol.
The war, well known to legislative leaders and senior legislative staff, is adding to the already existing difficulties Cuomo faces in winning approval of major legislative initiatives — such as casino gambling, expanded abortion rights, tax-free zones and publicly financed campaigns — with just two weeks remaining in the Legislature’s regular session, insiders said.
“As the governor’s people try to lobby for his bills, you can sense the tensions between those two,’’ said a senior legislative aide.
One flash point in the battle is the role of Fran Reiter, an abrasive former deputy mayor under Republican Rudy Giuliani and a one-time Liberal Party leader.
Reiter was hired as Glaser’s top deputy — but now she’s part of Schwartz’s camp, two sources said.
“It’s because Larry is as much a bully as she is,’’ said an administration insider.
“Fran is very difficult to take, and that seems to endear her to Larry,’’ added another source.
Others close to Schwartz described Glaser as “arrogant and imperious,” with an overt hostility to important business leaders Cuomo claims he’s trying to court.
Schwartz is a gruff longtime Democratic operative who was also chief- of-staff to Gov. David Paterson and before that held top administrative posts in Suffolk and Westchester counties.
Glaser, a Harvard Law graduate, served as a top aide to federal Housing Secretary Cuomo in the late 1990s and worked for Gov. Mario Cuomo years before that.
The Post disclosed last week that Glaser’s wife, Karen Hinton, who professes overtly anti-business attitudes on her Twitter profile, was recently hired by a major lobbying firm that seeks to influence Cuomo’s actions.
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Add the names of Leecia Eve, a one-time lieutenant-governor hopeful and former aide to then-Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, and Jeremy Creelan, a public-ethics expert, to the growing list of departures from senior Cuomo administration ranks.
Eve, daughter of onetime Assembly Deputy Speaker Arthur Eve of Buffalo, was one of Cuomo’s first appointments on taking office as senior vice president and counsel at the Empire State Development Corp.
She is expected to resign shortly for a job with telecommunications giant Verizon, administration insiders said.
Creelan, Cuomo’s special counsel for public integrity who was partly responsible for creating the ill-starred Joint Commissioner on Public Ethics, will likely return to his previous position at New York University Law School’s Brennan Center, it was learned.
Last week, it was revealed that James Malatras, the brains behind some of Cuomo’s reform proposals during his first year in office, would be leaving to become a top aide to state SUNY Chancellor Nancy Zimpher, and that top Cuomo health-care adviser James Introne would be leaving as well.
When The Post disclosed last month that a number of key Cuomo aides were planning to depart the administration, the governor insisted that wasn’t the case.