In February, before the first COVID case came to New York, I had already been tied up in my latest fight with the president, a very public, very ugly battle with the administration over the Trusted Traveler Program. Otherwise known as Global Entry, the program allowed high-volume travelers the convenience of skipping long lines at customs. As part of his election-year strategy focusing on deportation and immigration, Trump had his Department of Homeland Security (DHS) ban New York State residents from participating in the program. It was a blatant act of retaliation for a state law I had signed the previous year allowing undocumented immigrants to receive driver’s licenses while shielding applicants’ information from immigration enforcement agencies. While public health shouldn’t be a political issue, with the Trump administration everything was political.
In retrospect, how ironic was it that the White House, which was initially so controlling, would soon run from the entire situation? In any event, I was already frustrated with their inability to make simple timely decisions about testing procedures and protocols. It was around this time that President Trump announced that Vice President Pence would head the White House Coronavirus Task Force. The Pence appointment was criticized not only because Trump made it but also because Vice President Pence, the former governor of Indiana, had been very slow to address or acknowledge the HIV crisis. Another criticism was that his appointment would politicize the task force when it would be better left to health professionals and substantive cabinet secretaries. On this I disagreed. I was a former cabinet secretary and have great respect for the position. They are weighty offices, no doubt. Confirmed by the U.S. Senate, they carry lifetime titles and are in the line of succession for the presidency. As Housing and Urban Development (HUD) secretary, I was thirteenth in the line of succession. If there were twelve simultaneous heart attacks, I would’ve been president of the United States. However, the COVID effort was going to be administration-wide and the vice president was in a much better position to command control over the entirety of the federal government. I publicly supported the president’s appointment of Pence. I thought it was a positive sign that the president was putting his senior official in charge. I was wrong. I would be wrong many times throughout the crisis.
We were in a new moment in politics and government. There was no delay in communication. Everything was instantaneous. There were no letters or emissaries sent. I would do several media events per day. My words would immediately reach the White House, which would often immediately respond. Social media changed intergovernmental dialogue. I was direct to camera supporting Pence, and the White House would see it immediately. The White House was obviously appreciative of my position on Pence.
The last week of February, the vice president and I spoke, and we discussed the testing logjam. As a former governor, he understood the situation. He was also clearly navigating his federal authority for the first time. The vice president has no specific portfolio and no direct authority over an agency head. Of course, he has a great title, but stubborn agency heads could always pose a problem because they have ultimate constitutional legal authority. We needed Pence to intervene with the FDA to expedite the approval for New York to run our own COVID test. To my pleasant surprise he did, and the FDA approved New York’s testing in its own laboratory.
As it turned out, that moment would change history. With the FDA approval, we could finally test for COVID in New York State, instead of shipping specimens to Atlanta one at a time. New York State had cut out the middleman, just in time for the call I was about to receive that Sunday night confirming what in my gut I already knew: Coronavirus had reached New York.
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SO MUCH WAS unknown. In some ways I was not prepared for the moment, because no one could truly be prepared for the moment. In other ways, I have spent my whole life preparing for it.
I have a healthy cynicism about people in general and an unhealthy cynicism about politics and government in particular. But understanding people’s experiences, motivations, and biases is always the starting point for me in judging what they have to say. So let me explain mine.
I’m sixty-two years old, and life has taken me up and down and all around. I grew up in New York City as an outer-borough, middle-class guy. I paid my way through school with every odd job imaginable: landscaper, night-shift security guard, mechanic, ice cream scooper, tow truck driver, and construction worker. I have been a campaign manager, started a nonprofit to help the homeless, served as an assistant DA, practiced law privately, worked in real estate finance, was a federal cabinet secretary, state attorney general, and now governor. I’ve loved and lost. I’ve lived through an embarrassing and very public divorce splashed across the front pages of the tabloids. I suffered the pain of feeling I failed my children. I was publicly humiliated by losing campaigns and was declared a political dead man. I suffered through my father’s crushing political downfall and shared his grief and recriminations afterward.
I know my strengths and weaknesses. I want to get things done and be judged by results and by making a positive difference, and I can be obsessive in that pursuit. I have disdain for the shallowness and duplicity of political theater and no longer want to hold my tongue. I do not suffer fools gladly, gracefully, or patiently. I
