Ever since an e-mail from a Chris Christie aide ordering lanes closures on the George Washington Bridge became public, New Jersey’s governor has faced a nonstop barrage of press criticism, legislative hearings and public protest.
Fair enough. But how different things are this side of the Hudson.
This week, The New York Times laid out in comprehensive detail the e-mails, statements and behind-the-scenes battles backing up allegations that Gov. Cuomo had intervened whenever the heat from the Moreland Commission he’d set up to investigate Albany’s corruption started looking at some individual or group close to him.
Cuomo’s response has been very different from Christie’s. Within days of the first Bridgegate stories, Christie fired or forced out top aides and appointees. He held a televised press conference that didn’t end until he’d answered every last question.
Cuomo has fired no one — especially not Larry Schwartz, the staffer who’s emerged as the key fixer ordering Moreland staff away from probes of Cuomo backers.
And in contrast to Christie, who doesn’t appear to have known what his staffers were doing, Cuomo asserts it was his right to tell the commission what it could and couldn’t do.
In short, Cuomo seems to have decided to brazen it out. Here, he enjoys an advantage Christie does not: Albany’s corrupt Legislature. Because the Legislature is itself implicated in the investigations, Cuomo knows he doesn’t have to fear embarrassing hearings.
The only hope of finding out what really went down is a press as relentless in its demands of Cuomo as it was of Christie.
And maybe a US attorney who won’t stop digging until he learns what Gov. Cuomo was so determined to keep hidden.