Election seasons are supposed to provide an opportunity for sitting officials to explain their records, and for challengers to question them. And when a top official is facing intense scrutiny based on recent revelations -- as New York Governor Andrew Cuomo is in the aftermath of reports regarding his administration's handling of a corruption inquiry -- the need for election season accountability is that much greater.
So it only makes sense that Cuomo should debate his Democratic primary challenger, Fordham University Law School professor Zephyr Teachout.
No matter how hard Cuomo and his allies may try to defuse the issue, it's going to stick with him through this election year. And the governor will only make things worse for himself if he is seen as avoiding public forums for addressing the issues that have arisen.
That's one of the reasons Cuomo should accept Teachout's proposal for at least three debates before the September 9 Democratic primary.
Teachout lacks Cuomo's name identification and campaign treasury. But she is a uniquely credible challenger in this race, and for this debate. As the first national director of the Sunlight Foundation, which has been in the forefront of advocacy for increased transparency and accountability government and politics, she's an actual expert on corruption issues -- and on how to address them. She has written widely on, spoken about and debated issues of money in politics at the local, state and national levels for years. And she has earned national acclaim as a lawyer, an academic and an author on numerous books, including the upcoming Corruption in America, which will be published this fall by Harvard University Press.
And Teachout has made a uniquely credible case for why debates are needed.
"The Cuomo administration's handling of the Moreland Commission distills what plagues our democracy: a special class of insiders in Albany, connected through financial and political clout, have immunized themselves from the law," she says. "Governor Cuomo has taken this corruption and elevated it to new levels."
The governor would, undoubtedly, disagree with that assessment, as he would with Teachout's argument that "[t]he corruption in our Government is threatening the very basis of our democracy. Albany is working for big money, instead of the people of the state."
But when a credible challenger, with background and expertise on a central issue, makes such a charge, that is precisely the point at which an incumbent officeholder should be expected to respond.
What makes Teachout's invitation even more worthy of a response is the fact that she makes it not as a partisan who has always been at odds with Cuomo but as someone who once backed the governor. "I supported Andrew Cuomo in 2010 because I believed he would follow through on his promises to clean up Albany. In his campaign booklet of 2010, Andrew Cuomo said that State government was plagued by scandal," says Teachout. "I believed him when he said, 'In many cases the dysfunction has metastasized into corruption that would make Boss Tweed blush.' I believed him when he said we must restore honor and integrity to Government."
Now, argues the challenger, Cuomo has become an example of what he said he would address. "Shutting down your own anti-corruption commission when it gets too close to power," explains Teachout, " is something that would make Boss Tweed blush."
Incumbents and front-runners don't like to debate primary challengers.
