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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. What comes now after Governor Cuomo announced his resignation? Other governors who have resigned have left office immediately. Cuomo gave himself two weeks' notice. How does he use the time?

How does the incoming governor, Kathy Hochul, get up to speed and manage the state through the Delta variant and other challenges while introducing herself politically, if she intends to run for a full term next year against other prominent Democrats? What does it mean for the state that it will have New York's first woman governor?

Should the state legislature continue the impeachment process despite Cuomo's resignation? What would constitute justice for the 11 women and accountability for Cuomo's other scandal questions, including how much he undercounted nursing home deaths to help with his image and his book sales? What is the combined Cuomo legacy now? Someone named Cuomo has been governor of New York for 22 of the last 40 years.

Our first guest is the number two ranking State Senator Michael Gianaris of Queens, the top deputy to a majority leader, Andrea Stewart-Cousins. Senator Gianaris, thanks for coming on today. Welcome back to WNYC.

Senator Gianaris: Good morning, Brian. Thanks for having me.

Brian Lehrer: Is this a good day for New York, a sad day for New York? How did you wake up feeling this morning?

Senator Gianaris: I want to say both. It's a sad day that we have to go through this and be the subject of national news for the wrong reasons, but it's a good thing that the governor resigned and we can begin the process of moving on from this chapter. I think he should have resigned back in the spring where many of us called for it, but at least we're spared the next couple of months of Andrew Cuomo trying to cling to power while the accountability vehicles continue to roll forward.

Brian Lehrer: How much do you buy Governor Cuomo's line that he just didn't realize the generational change that had taken place on where the line is regarding touching and intimate or suggestive conversations in the workplace?

Senator Gianaris: Well, I watched his speech as so many people did yesterday. What occurred to me is that he has still not come to terms with what this is about and what he did wrong. He was part attacking the attorney general and her investigation. He was part attacking some of the accusers, and then he was apologizing to one or two of them. He seemed all over the place. It sounded more like he was flailing to explain himself than he truly has absorbed to what has happened.

Brian Lehrer: The governor appointed the attorney general to do the investigation as the fair person to do it but now says the attorney general's report shows bias against him and put every detail in the worst light against him, rather than present it with nuance. Do you buy that claim at all?

Senator Gianaris: No, I certainly don't and he should know better. When he was attorney general, he investigated not one but two governors himself. I think he's just of the view that anything that reflects negatively upon himself is somehow biased, but that's not at all the case. By the way, if he wanted to make his case, there's a process for that. It's called impeachment.

He could have gone through it, had his lawyers present his case, come to trial in the Senate and make the arguments and they would have been available for all the public to see. I think by most accounts other than his, the attorney general's investigation was very thorough, very well-documented and its conclusions are justified.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, we'll take your calls throughout the show today on your thoughts about the resignation of Governor Cuomo and what should come next on any of the fronts that I laid out at the introduction or anything else you'd like to say or ask our various guests beginning with the number two New York State Senator, Michael Gianaris, from queens. 646-435-7280. 646-435-7280 or tweet your comment or your question @BrianLehrer.

I want to get specific about one of the findings of the attorney general, which was that Cuomo couldn't recall under oath taking the mandatory annual sexual harassment training except for one year, 2019, and that for that year, it was one of his aides, not Cuomo himself who signed the page that said he completed it.

As you may remember, accuser and former Cuomo aide, Charlotte Bennett, had said back in the winter that she heard the governor's aide joking in 2019 about taking the training for Cuomo with the quote, "I can't believe I'm doing this for you." Did that show a willful blindness to contemporary standards of behavior?

Senator Gianaris: It showed the great hypocrisy. For someone who signed a number of new sexual harassment laws that we championed in the legislature frankly to then not even undergo his own training, it does show that he believed the rules did not apply to him. I think that's what you see in a lot of these harassment situations is there are people who believe they're entitled to act any way they wish, touch anyone they wish and that somehow they are immune to consequences.

When I said it was a good day, it was a good day in the sense that we showed in New York that that's not the case. If you do something you shouldn't be doing, you're going to get called to account for it. I do want to take a moment to just say that this would not have happened if these women did not step forward and tell their stories, and that's the courage to do that.

I'm sure they're speaking for dozens more who did not come forward. That's typically how it works in these situations. We are here because a number of women stepped forward and had the courage to tell the tale of what they experienced, and fortunately, the consequences were what they should have been so far.

Brian Lehrer: One more along these lines, Lindsey Boylan's claim that on an airplane trip, the governor joked to her let's play strip poker. Cuomo denied that when it first came out in the winter but in the attorney general's report, Boylan's supervisor, who was also on the flight, testified to hearing it. I guess I'm just wondering in what world does a 60-something governor not know at this point in history that it's not okay to joke let's play strip poker to a much younger woman government official?

Senator Gianaris: You're asking the right questions, Brian. I think that's part of why the Attorney General's investigators found the accusers to be credible and the governor's responses to be not credible because you're seeing time and again his initial response, "Oh, no, I did take the sexual harassment training," or, "I never said that," has been discounted by the facts and the evidence. The attorney general's report is very sound, it was very thorough, and that is why we're where we are today.

Brian Lehrer: Would you acknowledge that there seemed to be a strange bedfellows coalition of the most progressive Democrats plus all the Republicans who were ready to use whatever they could get to bring Andrew Cuomo down? That might include you.

Senator Gianaris: Yes, we were all in the same side in the Senate, I think we were up to 59 out of the 63 members calling for his resignation. It wasn't even just progressive and Republicans. It was everybody, everybody in between. Of course, we have supermajorities in both houses so we didn't really need the mass of the Republicans as part of this effort. This was not a partisan issue in any way, shape, or form. This was an issue of maleficence and [unintelligible 00:07:59].

Brian Lehrer: I'm not asking about the justification for pressuring him to resign in this case. I'm asking if there was a strange bedfellows coalition sitting in waiting for something to pressuring Andrew Cuomo out of office on a left-right coalition.

Senator Gianaris: I don't know, and I don't mean to be disrespectful to my colleagues in any way, but the Republican members are deep in the minority in both houses. It's not as if there were meetings of the progressives and the Republicans to strategize on what to achieve. I think they don't like the governor, by the way, they don't like us either. They'd rather be in the majority where they were for a number of years.

This was just something we were looking at as individuals and then trying to do the right thing for the state.

Brian Lehrer: Well, some of my callers say the democratic party shoots itself in the foot. I'm talking about the Democrats, loyal Democrats who call in and say the democratic party shoots itself in the foot compared to the Republican party. They always stand behind their scandalized electeds to protect their party's power. The Democrats too often are willing to bring down their own to the advantage of Republicans. What do you think of that critique?

Senator Gianaris: Well, first of all, if someone is doing something wrong, if someone is violating the law, if someone is acting unethically, we have an obligation on behalf of good government to do the right thing and act. Where I would take issue with that is the very last part of that sentence, which is to the benefit of Republicans. Republicans would have a much easier time running against a scandal-ridden Andrew Cuomo than they will whoever's our nominee next year.

I actually think we've done the right thing by the Democratic party. You're not going to see Republican gains. In fact, you're going to have removed a pretty significant weapon from the Republican arsenal by taking a scandal-ridden governor off the table.

Brian Lehrer: Let's take a phone call. Elliot in Manhattanville, you're on WNYC with the number two New York State Senator, Senator Gianaris, Michael Gianaris of Queens. Hi, Elliot. Elliot in Manhattanville, do we have you? Elliot once. Elliot twice. All right. Well, I'm going to ask a version of what it looked to me like Elliott was going to ask. Which is, what's your understanding of what happens for these two weeks while Cuomo is still in office? What's his role in decision-making as you see it? For people who are suspicious of the two-week lead time, do you see any mischief or politically self-serving things that you wonder if the government will do that might not be in the interest of the people of New York?

Michael Gianaris: What I'm hopeful is going on is that the two-week period will be used to create a smooth transition to the incoming governor Kathy Hochul. What I'm suspicious about is exactly what you asked about, is all sorts of-- The governor will still be the governor with all the powers of the office for 14 or 13 more days now. We're not in legislative session, so it's not as if there's any mischief that can occur in that regard, but the governor has executive powers.

We should all be very closely monitoring his executive orders, any pardons he issues, and scrutinizing them in great detail, but there's not a lot we could do about it. He could have stayed around these two weeks and then resigned suddenly then. Our mechanism for removing him was impeachment that was going to take longer than a two-week period, regardless. All we can do now is just keep a close eye on things.

Brian Lehrer: Is there anything specific that you're concerned he might do?

Michael Gianaris: I don't have any reason to think there's anything specific that's going to happen, but when someone asks for 14 days, and no one knows exactly why, it's worth keeping a very close eye on things in the meantime.

Brian Lehrer: Noelle, in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Are you there, Noelle?

Noelle: Yes. Hi. I just wanted to say that you were mentioning the other problematic things that Cuomo has had with respect to not only sexual harassment, but also the nursing home numbers, but I feel that everyone is forgetting the commission, which I can't remember the name of it, that he disbanded, that was looking into corruption, that then he disbanded when spotlight started to go on him and his inner circle.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, the Moreland Commission. Do you think, Senator, that these are [unintelligible 00:12:36] piece?

Michael Gianaris: Well, it's certainly of a piece in the sense of the governor's behavior and the way he believes the rules don't apply to him. We said that earlier in the interview, but he set up a commission to investigate corruption and once it started investigating his corruption, he disbanded it because he apparently thought he was immune from that scrutiny.

Anything specific as it relates to that episode, Preet Bharara, who was the US attorney at the time, pretty extensively looked at and concluded that he didn't think they could bring any charges based on what he did there, but it certainly was an unseemly episode.

Brian Lehrer: Claire in Astoria, you're on WNYC. Claire from Senator Gianaris' district as I read the map. Hi, Claire.

Claire: Yes. Hi, longtime first time, thank you for the coverage. I wanted to call in to point out that, to my ear, to my knowledge, listening yesterday, he did not directly apologize to anyone and using his daughters to say your dad apologize that he learned. When did he do that? As a young woman, I'm in my 30s, who's seen so much of this behavior from men, it's like, "I don't buy it for a second."

This was the only political move he had left, and our standards need to be higher and there's so many of us that think like, "We see this for what it is." I just really hope that we as Democrats with a large coalition don't take the bait of like, "Oh, we're fighting each other or whatever." No, we're holding people accountable and that's what we want in the long run.

Brian Lehrer: Claire, thank you. How much do you agree, Senator, that he didn't really apologize to anyone and this was the only political move he had left?

Michael Gianaris: I agree wholeheartedly with what Claire just said. We should point out. I believe he did apologize directly to the state trooper which was the new allegation, but there were 10 other women in that report to whom he did not issue direct apology and, in fact, in the same speech, and in his lawyer's remarks a half-hour earlier, was tearing into many of them and calling them liars, essentially.

I agree with Claire that the speech did not show the contrition necessary, did not show that he got it, that he really understood what he had done wrong.

Brian Lehrer: We'll get into his legacy in office with another guest later this hour, but for you briefly and I know you have to go in a minute. How good or great or bad a governor do you think Andrew Cuomo has been overall?

Michael Gianaris: Well, I look at it from my own lens, and I know that in the State Senate, he's spent much of the last decade keeping his own party out of power. It was the open secret of Albany that he preferred a Republican Senate. He took steps to keep them there and we had to fight through that to ultimately achieve our majority.

When you hear him talking about we're the progressive capital of the nation, that's only true because we achieved a supermajority in the State Senate, despite his wishes, and were able to pass some of the most productive and progressive legislative achievements the state has ever seen. I don't think we could separate his style from his accomplishments, and his style was awful, and it was brutal.

I think that that is not the way to govern, is not respectful of the separation of powers, of the separate branches of government, and he ruled with a clenched fist. I'm hopeful that Kathy Hochul comes in with more of an open hand and we could collaborate and be more cooperative in government.

Brian Lehrer: Then real quick, since you have to go, kind of lightning round style. Do you want the impeachment process to continue even without Cuomo in office, and what's one thing that you would tell Kathy Hochul, who's from upstate, about Queens?

Michael Gianaris: I think the assembly should continue and conclude its investigation at a minimum, whether they just issue a report with their findings or take an article of impeachment, the vote is up to them. As for Queens, everybody knows we're diverse, everybody knows we speak over 100 languages, [unintelligible 00:16:36] home to the Mets in the airports, but a lot of people don't know that we have a great musical tradition at Queens.

Tony Bennett's from my own Astoria. We've got Run-DMC from Southeast Queens, Salt-N-Pepa, Nas, there's so many great musical talents that have come out of Queens. I don't think people appreciate that enough, Brain?

Brian Lehrer: You had to mention the Mets and get all us Queen's kids depressed. Thank you very much.

Michael Gianaris: I was at the [inaudible 00:17:02] . Unfortunately, it got canceled.

Brian Lehrer: That's the good news when you attend to rain out and have to go home. State Senator Michael Gianaris, the number two senator behind Andrea Stewart-Cousins. Thank you very much for your time today.

Michael Gianaris: Thanks, Brian.

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