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Transcription
Bill Ritter
Now, while we don’t yet know how rank choice voting will alter the race for mayor, the top candidates hope it’s going to put them over the top. We’ll see. Last Wednesday, former governor of New York, David Patterson, threw his support behind Andrew Cuomo for mayor. I talked to him about why he did it. Why did you decide to give your okay and your endorsement to Mr. Cuomo?
David Paterson
Well, along with the former State Party chair, Keith Wright, we were not thinking about endorsing anyone to a certain degree, but right now, with the polls tightening up and the threat of a candidate that would be so activist that it would give the Republicans the Gracie Manchin, we decided to go through the remaining candidates, and the one who obviously has a record of accomplishing a lot and also a person who has been in the business for a long time, Andrew Cuomo, and we decided to endorse him.
Bill Ritter
When Mike Bloomberg decided, the day before you did, to endorse Mr. Cuomo, he said something very interesting. He said, No one’s perfect. Certainly not in politics is everyone perfect. But this is not about perfect people. This is about who’s the best candidate. I wanted to talk to you about that a little bit because this is all very controvers. Never have we had a candidate, group of candidates like this where a couple of them, the big name ones, have had a problem in years past.
David Paterson
Well, that’s true. And the problems are not always self-inflicted. They’re just groups of people don’t like someone, or they make a mistake politically, but they don’t know how to let the public know that it’s their fault, and so they get badgered even more. And that has happened to some of the candidates who are at the top of the list in this situation. We believe that with Andrew Cuomo, of course, he had the problem in 2020. What I think was the case One of the things is that in 2020, around the time that his problems came up after the investigation, the report issued by the attorney general, Tish James, it just fed a growing movement, the #MeToo movement, which was actually a good thing. In other words, that finally, these issues where men act improperly toward women or use their positions to get the women to do things they don’t want to do or make promises to women that if they cooperate, they’ll get something more. All this was center stage. Andrew Cuomo had a choice, and the choice he made was to get out of the race to satisfy those who were asking him to leave and wait for another time.
David Paterson
So now it’s five years later. He was never indicted. He was never even investigated anymore than by that commission. So my view of that is, how long does he have to carry the cross? How long do we have to keep people with talent out of government when they haven’t even been accused or committed any actual crime?
Bill Ritter
Last question. If Mr. Cuomo is the next mayor How’s it going to work with one governor, Hoko? That could be very interesting.
David Paterson
Won’t that be a shock? She was his lieutenant governor. Now, she’s the governor, and he’s the mayor, so she has more institutional power than he does. I don’t exactly know how that’s going to work out, but I happen to like both of them enough, and I can’t wait to sit back and watch.
Bill Ritter
And we thank former New York Governor Patterson for his about what’s going on there. Just ahead, former New York.