Dad to the rescue.
Former Gov. Mario Cuomo is speaking out for the first time to defend his son, Gov. Andrew Cuomo, over criticism that the governor meddled with a state anti-corruption commission.
“Andrew is as honest a politician as we have seen in New York,” the former governor said in a telephone interview Monday with the Daily News.
“He’s a highly intelligent and devoted politician. Whatever other difficulties people might find, I don’t find ’em. I don’t see them. I know how important being honest is, and that’s what he is, first class. He’s absolutely as straight as they come and as bright as they come, it seems to me. That’s enough for me.”
The former governor, who seldom comments publicly about his son, added: “I wish I were as good a man as my son is.”
Andrew Cuomo is facing the biggest crisis of his 3 1/2 years as governor over accusations that he interfered with the Moreland Commission, which he formed last summer to attack corruption in Albany.
He promised that the commission would be independent and could even investigate his own administration.
But The News has reported in a series of stories since last September how top aides to Andrew Cuomo, particularly Secretary to the Governor Larry Schwartz, blocked the panel from issuing subpoenas on entities with ties to the governor.
The issue heated up last week when The New York Times detailed the allegations, and expanded on them, in a 7,000-word story.
Andrew Cuomo killed the commission in late March after the Legislature agreed to a package of ethics reforms.
Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara has taken over the commission’s unfinished investigations and is looking into Cuomo’s handling of the commission. Andrew Cuomo has said that because he created the commission, and it reported to him, it was never truly independent.
The allegations do not appear to faze Mario Cuomo, 82, who himself formed a commission in the mid-1980s to investigate Albany’s culture of corruption.
“It will always be clear that he has been one of the most honest politicians we have ever had,” the three-term former governor said. “I think that’s important. The honesty, the straightforwardness. Newspapers have opinions, but when you look very closely, he is just about as straight as they come. And brighter than most.”
While political observers often say Mario Cuomo had a moral stature and political acumen that his son Andrew lacks, Mario Cuomo said he doesn’t see it that way.
“The truth of Andrew is honesty and effectiveness — honesty and effectiveness,” he said.
