Any Given Tuesday: A Political Love Story

“Governor. Stop. It’s over,” the voice broke through on the conference call line.

Six months earlier, it would have been inconceivable that anyone, let alone a mere political consultant, would cut off the most high-profile, fearsome, and feared state chief executive in the country.

It was Andrew Cuomo who was talking, after all. He was eleven years into his reign at the top of the Empire State, and just one year removed from becoming a national phenomenon for his masterful, made-for-TV COVID briefings, which offered comfort to people amidst the isolation, confusion, and trauma of a global pandemic.

But on August 3, 2021—whether he was willing to accept it or not—he was a dead man walking. That morning, the Attorney General of New York released a bombshell report that concluded that he’d broken state law by sexually harassing women staffers in his administration.

“What’s over?” Cuomo responded.

“This. All of this. This is over. There is no path forward for you,” the adviser responded.

“It’s over because I touched a woman on the back?” Cuomo shot back incredulously, his voice rising with a pitched tone of panic.

The adviser, someone not prone to hyperbole or challenging the governor unnecessarily, didn’t mince words.

“It was more than touching a woman on the back. Don’t bullshit yourself or us. If I, a man, were accused of doing any of the things you were, I would be out of a job by now.”

Silence.

“So, you’re telling me I don’t fight back? I don’t do a press conference? Why don’t I just resign then?”

Silence.

“Lis,” Cuomo started in his halting, Queens-inflected cadence, “what do you think?”

He was looking for a sympathetic voice, as he often did on calls. He had a knack for finding people who could agree with even his worst instincts. I paused before I answered.

It had taken me seventeen years—and twenty campaigns—to claw my way up the political ladder and go from a lowly field organizer to one of the top communications aides in the Democratic Party. Presidents? Worked for one. Senators and members of Congress? Worked for a few. Governors? Worked for many. Most recently, I’d served as a senior adviser on Pete Buttigieg’s against-all-odds presidential campaign, where he’d defied conventional wisdom, won the Iowa caucuses, and become one of the Democratic Party’s biggest stars. My star had risen as well.

I’d had an on-off professional relationship with Cuomo for the past three years, starting with his 2018 campaign, where I served as spokesperson and ran his debate prep. I reconnected with him at the beginning of COVID’s onslaught on New York in March of 2020, when he’d call me for thoughts on his daily briefings. Now I was a part of his kitchen cabinet—the group of trusted, unofficial advisers—that he was relying on to help him weather the allegations of sexual harassment.

While Cuomo was notoriously tough on staff, he engendered a remarkable amount of loyalty in the people around him. Yes, he could be irrational and impetuous at times, but he matched that with a deep interpersonal warmth—showing up at weddings, bar/bat mitzvahs, and funerals. He always took the time to call staffers dealing with loss and personal hardships. He’d also been a formidable governor—the likes of which New York hadn’t seen in decades. He’d managed to get the unruly state legislature under control and achieve some big things.

The last several months had tested that loyalty, as it became increasingly clear that Cuomo wasn’t being straight with any of us—myself included. He’d led us down a path of defending him against claims of sexual harassment without giving us the full truth. We felt betrayed and misled.

“Governor, I’d like to disagree,” I told him. “But I just don’t see a way out of this.”

In the moment, I meant it as much for him as for me.

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

Prologue

One: First Crush

Two: The It Factor

Three: The Life of the Party

Four: The Banker

Five: The Psychologist

Six: The Machine

Seven: Blurred Lines

Eight: In the Eye of the Storm

Nine: Good on Paper

Ten: The One

Eleven: The Long Shot

Twelve: Good Stuff

Thirteen: The Prince of Darkness

Fourteen: Curtain Call

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Copyright

About the Publisher