The Dean 2004 vet explains why she’s running for NY governor -- and how the left can take over the Democratic Party
JOAN WALSH
It’s official: The New York Times says we’re having “a Teachout moment,” by which the paper’s editorial board means it’s time for Gov. Andrew Cuomo to stop trying to knock progressive challenger Zephyr Teachout off the ballot and to debate her instead. It’s a play on “teachable moment,” and it makes you wonder what’s intended to be taught.
Does the paper believe Cuomo should be taught a political lesson in the wake of the Moreland Commission scandal, after a scorching Times report revealed he’s being investigated for meddling in and protecting allies from the anti-corruption probe? Or does the Times think that Cuomo should learn that he can afford to play nice, for a moment, and give state voters an opportunity to examine his four years in office, alongside a barely known rival with an odd name who declares that he’s been “a failure as a Democrat”?
Teachout’s run is as much a challenge to the fatalistic, anti-electoral politics left as to Cuomo. The Fordham Law professor says progressives shouldn’t merely complain about the corporate takeover of the Democratic Party; they should fight for its soul. Since working as Internet communications director for Gov. Howard Dean’s 2004 presidential run, she’s been an evangelist to a broad range of insurgencies, from the early Tea Party (very different than it is today) through Occupy Wall Street to North Carolina’s Moral Mondays, on the lookout for new populist energy that can be channeled into a challenge to corporate power – and to the Democratic Party’s Cuomo wing.
Teachout herself comes from the party’s Cuomo wing – as in Mario Cuomo, the governor’s father. A believer in FDR liberalism, she says, she loved Mario Cuomo, but thinks his son is the symbol of a party that lost its way. An electoral politics novice, as a candidate anyway, she famously challenged Cuomo for the Working Families Party nomination in May, a sign that the progressive party, independent from but usually allied with Democrats, was fed up with a governor who was great on social issues like gun control and gay marriage but bad on economic ones. Cuomo has blocked tax hikes for the rich, cut the estate tax and enacted other tax cuts and exemptions for both businesses and individuals. Until recently, he opposed letting cities raise the local minimum wage.
But a last-minute deal between the governor and the left-wing party, brokered by Mayor Bill de Blasio, wound up with Cuomo supporting a roster of WFP demands, including a plan to force “independent” state Senate Democrats to stop caucusing with Republicans and rejoin their party, public financing of elections and a plan to increase the state minimum wage while also letting cities hike theirs by 30 percent. The last-minute deal meant Teachout lost the WFP nomination – and decided to challenge Cuomo anyway in the Democratic primary.
Then came the Times’ blockbuster report on Cuomo’s meddling with the Moreland Commission, which he appointed to investigate state government corruption, then disbanded halfway through its planned 18-month term. A three-month Times investigation “found that the governor’s office deeply compromised the panel’s work, objecting whenever the commission focused on groups with ties to Mr. Cuomo or on issues that might reflect poorly on him.”
Cuomo’s response to earlier charges that he’d interfered with the commission investigation had been to say, “It’s my commission. My subpoena power, my Moreland Commission. I can appoint it, I can disband it. I appoint you, I can un-appoint you tomorrow … So, interference? It’s my commission. I can’t ‘interfere’ with it, because it is mine. It is controlled by me.” He more or less stuck with that defense in his belated reaction to the Times story. That satisfied neither the Times nor Cuomo’s progressive critics.
Last Wednesday Lawrence Lessig sent out a massive fundraising appeal for Teachout’s campaign, the only non-congressional race that his Mayday PAC, established to get money out of politics, will endorse in. Lessig calls Teachout “ the most important anti-corruption candidate in any race in America today.” On Cuomo’s Moreland defense, Lessig is slashing.
That was Nixon’s argument when he told the Watergate special prosecutor to withdraw his demand for the tapes that eventually brought down his administration. It was wrong then. It is wrong now. It shows a stunning blindness to the role of a leader — certainly a self-proclaimed leader of the anti-corruption cause.
Still, Teachout and her lieutenant governor running mate Tim Wu, the Columbia law and former Federal Trade Commission official who gave us the term “net neutrality,” remain long shots in the September primary. Although former boss Howard Dean appeared at a fundraiser with Teachout last Tuesday night, he declined to officially endorse her. (The Dean-inspired group Democracy for New York City is still considering the question.) Teachout says she wasn’t disappointed.
“We’re not running an endorsement-focused campaign,” she tells me, although she happily announces she was just endorsed by comedian-activist Lizz Winstead. “We got the Lady Parts Justice endorsement, I feel really good about that!” Her strategy is to focus on high-information voters who vote in New York’s low-turnout Democratic primaries. Although recent polls find Cuomo barely touched by the Moreland scandal, she sees hope in a Siena survey that found more than half of voters believe the governor makes decisions on what’s best for him politically, not what’s best for New Yorkers. “This has the potential to be the upset of the century,” she insists, pointing to stunning losses by Virginia Rep. Eric Cantor and Hawaii Gov. Neil Abercrombie, who were likewise accused of putting political ambition before serving their constituents.
In our conversation in her tiny midtown Manhattan office last week, Teachout was alternately feisty, funny, wonky — and clearly planning to run for something else if her long-shot bid for governor fails. Our conversation has been edited and condensed.
(cont'd)
JOAN WALSH
It’s official: The New York Times says we’re having “a Teachout moment,” by which the paper’s editorial board means it’s time for Gov. Andrew Cuomo to stop trying to knock progressive challenger Zephyr Teachout off the ballot and to debate her instead. It’s a play on “teachable moment,” and it makes you wonder what’s intended to be taught.
Does the paper believe Cuomo should be taught a political lesson in the wake of the Moreland Commission scandal, after a scorching Times report revealed he’s being investigated for meddling in and protecting allies from the anti-corruption probe? Or does the Times think that Cuomo should learn that he can afford to play nice, for a moment, and give state voters an opportunity to examine his four years in office, alongside a barely known rival with an odd name who declares that he’s been “a failure as a Democrat”?
Teachout’s run is as much a challenge to the fatalistic, anti-electoral politics left as to Cuomo. The Fordham Law professor says progressives shouldn’t merely complain about the corporate takeover of the Democratic Party; they should fight for its soul. Since working as Internet communications director for Gov. Howard Dean’s 2004 presidential run, she’s been an evangelist to a broad range of insurgencies, from the early Tea Party (very different than it is today) through Occupy Wall Street to North Carolina’s Moral Mondays, on the lookout for new populist energy that can be channeled into a challenge to corporate power – and to the Democratic Party’s Cuomo wing.
Teachout herself comes from the party’s Cuomo wing – as in Mario Cuomo, the governor’s father. A believer in FDR liberalism, she says, she loved Mario Cuomo, but thinks his son is the symbol of a party that lost its way. An electoral politics novice, as a candidate anyway, she famously challenged Cuomo for the Working Families Party nomination in May, a sign that the progressive party, independent from but usually allied with Democrats, was fed up with a governor who was great on social issues like gun control and gay marriage but bad on economic ones. Cuomo has blocked tax hikes for the rich, cut the estate tax and enacted other tax cuts and exemptions for both businesses and individuals. Until recently, he opposed letting cities raise the local minimum wage.
But a last-minute deal between the governor and the left-wing party, brokered by Mayor Bill de Blasio, wound up with Cuomo supporting a roster of WFP demands, including a plan to force “independent” state Senate Democrats to stop caucusing with Republicans and rejoin their party, public financing of elections and a plan to increase the state minimum wage while also letting cities hike theirs by 30 percent. The last-minute deal meant Teachout lost the WFP nomination – and decided to challenge Cuomo anyway in the Democratic primary.
Then came the Times’ blockbuster report on Cuomo’s meddling with the Moreland Commission, which he appointed to investigate state government corruption, then disbanded halfway through its planned 18-month term. A three-month Times investigation “found that the governor’s office deeply compromised the panel’s work, objecting whenever the commission focused on groups with ties to Mr. Cuomo or on issues that might reflect poorly on him.”
Cuomo’s response to earlier charges that he’d interfered with the commission investigation had been to say, “It’s my commission. My subpoena power, my Moreland Commission. I can appoint it, I can disband it. I appoint you, I can un-appoint you tomorrow … So, interference? It’s my commission. I can’t ‘interfere’ with it, because it is mine. It is controlled by me.” He more or less stuck with that defense in his belated reaction to the Times story. That satisfied neither the Times nor Cuomo’s progressive critics.
Last Wednesday Lawrence Lessig sent out a massive fundraising appeal for Teachout’s campaign, the only non-congressional race that his Mayday PAC, established to get money out of politics, will endorse in. Lessig calls Teachout “ the most important anti-corruption candidate in any race in America today.” On Cuomo’s Moreland defense, Lessig is slashing.
That was Nixon’s argument when he told the Watergate special prosecutor to withdraw his demand for the tapes that eventually brought down his administration. It was wrong then. It is wrong now. It shows a stunning blindness to the role of a leader — certainly a self-proclaimed leader of the anti-corruption cause.
Still, Teachout and her lieutenant governor running mate Tim Wu, the Columbia law and former Federal Trade Commission official who gave us the term “net neutrality,” remain long shots in the September primary. Although former boss Howard Dean appeared at a fundraiser with Teachout last Tuesday night, he declined to officially endorse her. (The Dean-inspired group Democracy for New York City is still considering the question.) Teachout says she wasn’t disappointed.
“We’re not running an endorsement-focused campaign,” she tells me, although she happily announces she was just endorsed by comedian-activist Lizz Winstead. “We got the Lady Parts Justice endorsement, I feel really good about that!” Her strategy is to focus on high-information voters who vote in New York’s low-turnout Democratic primaries. Although recent polls find Cuomo barely touched by the Moreland scandal, she sees hope in a Siena survey that found more than half of voters believe the governor makes decisions on what’s best for him politically, not what’s best for New Yorkers. “This has the potential to be the upset of the century,” she insists, pointing to stunning losses by Virginia Rep. Eric Cantor and Hawaii Gov. Neil Abercrombie, who were likewise accused of putting political ambition before serving their constituents.
In our conversation in her tiny midtown Manhattan office last week, Teachout was alternately feisty, funny, wonky — and clearly planning to run for something else if her long-shot bid for governor fails. Our conversation has been edited and condensed.
(cont'd)
