Eric Schneiderman made the right call in announcing he’d quit as state attorney general late Monday: The New Yorker article that dropped hours earlier guaranteed…
Eric Schneiderman made the right call in announcing he’d quit as state attorney general late Monday: The New Yorker article that dropped hours earlier guaranteed he’d be pushed if he didn’t jump.
The allegations against Schneiderman were consistent, credible and grotesque. He claimed in his “I give up” statement that they were “unrelated to my professional conduct or the operations of the office,” but that would never have flown.
We can thank the #MeToo movement (which Schneiderman had publicly praised) for inspiring his victims to speak out. And, had he tried to stay on, a credibly accused serial beater and emotional abuser of women was never going to survive his next election. If necessary, New Yorkers would have gladly crossed party lines to defeat him.
Indeed, Gov. Cuomo was fast out of the box with a statement calling on him to step down. The rest of the state establishment — actually, all decent-thinking people — would have been close behind.
It’s effectively up to Speaker Carl Heastie and his Assembly Democrats to pick an interim AG, who might also be the party’s nominee this fall — although the primary field is likely to get crowded fast: Among other things, Schneiderman’s successsor will control millions of dollars sitting in various settlement and civil-forfeiture accounts. More, the job’s a stepping-stone to the governor’s mansion.
But it’s worth pausing here to note that Schneiderman’s fall follows the implosions of Eliot Spitzer and Anthony Weiner in increasingly sordid sex scandals — even as each had spent his career moralizing, often condemning the very conduct that brought him down. (And even oh-so-observant Sheldon Silver turned out to be having an affair with one of his members.)
Every politician has at least a touch of the hypocrite, but something about New York politics seems to attract sociopaths. The infamous Empire State “culture of corruption” is even sicker than we’d thought.
