April 29, 2010 - The New York Times
By Danny Hakim
Jennifer Cunningham is one of this city’s most prominent lobbyists, best known for her advocacy on behalf of 1199/S.E.I.U. United Healthcare Workers East, arguably Albany’s most powerful special interest.
At the same time, Ms. Cunningham is among the closest political advisers to the man who many Democrats hope will be the next New York governor: Andrew M. Cuomo.
Mr. Cuomo’s promise to clean up the ethical swamp in Albany has helped him rejuvenate his political career, and will undoubtedly be a theme in his campaign for governor.
But the role of Ms. Cunningham, who has advised Mr. Cuomo on major decisions like when to enter the race and whom to hire for his campaign staff, is likely to draw new scrutiny as he nears an official announcement of his candidacy next month, and it reflects the often symbiotic relationships between politicians and lobbyists in Albany.
Mr. Cuomo’s aides and Ms. Cunningham say she keeps her lobbying strictly separate from her advising of Mr. Cuomo, for which she receives no pay. She never lobbied the attorney general’s office after Mr. Cuomo was elected, they said, and never discusses the business of the office with him. Mr. Cuomo has pledged not to hire lobbyists once his formal campaign begins.
“Jennifer Cunningham and Attorney General Cuomo have been friends for more than 20 years,” said Phil Singer, a consultant for Mr. Cuomo’s campaign. “She has never been paid by Andrew’s campaign, nor has she ever lobbied him or his office on any matter whatsoever.”
In her own statement, Ms. Cunningham said: “I will not have any role in Andrew Cuomo’s 2010 campaign. Andrew and I are old friends, and, from time to time, I offer my advice and ideas for him on an informal, personal basis.”
After inquiries from The New York Times, Mr. Cuomo’s aides said they would review Ms. Cunningham’s role and determine whether any of her advice to him should be recorded as an in-kind contribution to his campaign — a noncash contribution that has a monetary value. The next campaign filing is in July.
“The law is crystal clear that people have a right to volunteer on campaigns and that such volunteerism is not a campaign contribution of any sort,” Mr. Singer said, but he added, “We will, as always, err on the side of disclosure in our filing.”
Blair Horner, the legislative director of the New York Public Interest Research Group and a former Cuomo staff member, said he believed Ms. Cunningham’s work did constitute an in-kind contribution. “Since it is campaign activity, and since she is a prominent political consultant,” Mr. Horner said, “we certainly would argue that more disclosure is better and in fact that information should be disclosed.”
Ms. Cunningham, 48, a graduate of Wesleyan University and New York University Law School, first met Mr. Cuomo in 1983, when he was working for his father, Gov. Mario M. Cuomo, and she was an intern for District Council 37, the largest municipal union in New York City. Since then, she has worked as a deputy counsel to the Assembly speaker, Sheldon Silver, and as S.E.I.U. 1199’s political director, before joining a lobbying firm and taking on a variety of clients.
Her tough tactics are the stuff of legend in Albany; when the administration of Gov. George E. Pataki considered hospital cuts that 1199 opposed, she was known to give Pataki officials a preview of the attack advertisements the union planned to run against the administration, a strategy meant to unnerve the governor.
“She could be a little belligerent,” said Bradford J. Race Jr., a former top aide in the Pataki administration.
“There were threats any time we would try to doing anything to Medicaid, and sometimes I’d have to throw them out of the office,” Mr. Race said, but added that she was “pleasant enough most of the time.”
After Gov. Eliot Spitzer proposed hospital cuts in 2007, she helped develop a $12 million barrage of aggressive advertisements; her consulting firm, Knickerbocker SKD, boasts on its Web site that the campaign was “the first factor” in Mr. Spitzer’s “deep decline in popularity.”
Many other elected officials praised her. Assemblyman Carl E. Heastie, the chairman of the Bronx Democratic Party, said, “I have nothing but fabulous things to say about her.”
In 2006, Ms. Cunningham took a leave from her post as 1199’s political director to work without pay on Mr. Cuomo’s campaign for attorney general. She worked side by side with Mario Cuomo to reintroduce his son to New York political circles after his disastrous 2002 bid for governor. Ms. Cunningham took on many duties, including building Mr. Cuomo’s political operation on the ground, blocking other candidates from getting on the convention ballot and winning a coveted endorsement from Eliot Spitzer’s campaign.
“Jennifer knows a lot of people in politics today that I didn’t work with,” Mario Cuomo said at the time. “So I have my people, she has her people, and we are trying to be helpful.”
After Andrew Cuomo was elected attorney general, Ms. Cunningham advised him on how to guide his agenda through the Legislature, including his sweeping government consolidation proposal.
At least one of Mr. Cuomo’s major investigations dovetailed with 1199’s interests. That inquiry, “Operation Home Alone,” cracked down on home health care aides who were not properly licensed, along with the agencies that employed them and the schools that provided them with bogus certifications.
While similar prosecutions began during Mr. Spitzer’s tenure as attorney general, they were accelerated by Mr. Cuomo’s office, and he backed legislation to force all home health care aides to be entered into a state registry, a potentially powerful organizing tool for the union.
The union has cheered Operation Home Alone; 1199’s president, George Gresham, has praised it, and the union was among the groups that sent a letter to state officials urging them to pass the measure. On a Web site that 1199 opened, homecarecrisis.org, Home Alone is cited for cracking down on disreputable service providers.
Mr. Cuomo’s office said 1199 had no role in the effort.
“Any suggestion or implication that Operation Home Alone or the home health registry legislation, which passed unanimously, were motivated by 1199 is simply absurd,” said Richard Bamberger, who is Mr. Cuomo’s communications director.
For the last year, as Mr. Cuomo has planned his campaign for governor, Ms. Cunningham has been a key adviser. She has helped shape the theme and messages of the state Democratic convention and took a leading role in the Cuomo camp’s deliberations last month about moving the convention to Westchester County from Manhattan.
She has also worked the phones on Mr. Cuomo’s behalf, talking to a variety of party and elected officials, drawing on a Rolodex that extends to the White House; President Obama’s political director, Patrick Gaspard, was her successor as 1199’s political strategist. She also participates and sometimes presides over periodic conference calls and meetings with a circle of Cuomo advisers.
“Right now, her role as an adviser is probably more of an internal one rather than an external one,” Speaker Silver said.
“She has a legislative background, a union background,” he added. “She can put all of the things together for Andrew in terms of being able to coordinate issues and people.”
Since 2007, when she left 1199, Ms. Cunningham has worked for Cordo & Company, a relatively new lobbying firm that earned $1.5 million in fees last year, according to an analysis by the New York Public Interest Research Group. She is also a partner at Knickerbocker SKD, a political consulting firm whose clients have included Caroline Kennedy and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg.
She still represents 1199, and her other clients include a trade group of private colleges and the Visiting Nurse Service of New York. Cordo & Company also represents the Beer Wholesalers Association and the Aqueduct Entertainment Group, a controversial gambling consortium at the center of state and federal investigations into the awarding of a casino gambling contract at the Aqueduct racetrack in Queens.
By next year, she could have close ties to two top state officials; her former husband, State Senator Eric T. Schneiderman, a Manhattan Democrat, is a leading contender to succeed Mr. Cuomo as attorney general, and has already been endorsed by 1199. Ms. Cunningham and Mr. Schneiderman remain friendly.
While Ms. Cunningham will have no formal role in Mr. Cuomo’s campaign for governor, she will not disappear.
“I am sure they will continue to talk as friends about politics and other topics on occasion,” said Mr. Singer, the Cuomo campaign consultant, “as they have for the last 20 years.”
By Danny Hakim
Jennifer Cunningham is one of this city’s most prominent lobbyists, best known for her advocacy on behalf of 1199/S.E.I.U. United Healthcare Workers East, arguably Albany’s most powerful special interest.
At the same time, Ms. Cunningham is among the closest political advisers to the man who many Democrats hope will be the next New York governor: Andrew M. Cuomo.
Mr. Cuomo’s promise to clean up the ethical swamp in Albany has helped him rejuvenate his political career, and will undoubtedly be a theme in his campaign for governor.
But the role of Ms. Cunningham, who has advised Mr. Cuomo on major decisions like when to enter the race and whom to hire for his campaign staff, is likely to draw new scrutiny as he nears an official announcement of his candidacy next month, and it reflects the often symbiotic relationships between politicians and lobbyists in Albany.
Mr. Cuomo’s aides and Ms. Cunningham say she keeps her lobbying strictly separate from her advising of Mr. Cuomo, for which she receives no pay. She never lobbied the attorney general’s office after Mr. Cuomo was elected, they said, and never discusses the business of the office with him. Mr. Cuomo has pledged not to hire lobbyists once his formal campaign begins.
“Jennifer Cunningham and Attorney General Cuomo have been friends for more than 20 years,” said Phil Singer, a consultant for Mr. Cuomo’s campaign. “She has never been paid by Andrew’s campaign, nor has she ever lobbied him or his office on any matter whatsoever.”
In her own statement, Ms. Cunningham said: “I will not have any role in Andrew Cuomo’s 2010 campaign. Andrew and I are old friends, and, from time to time, I offer my advice and ideas for him on an informal, personal basis.”
After inquiries from The New York Times, Mr. Cuomo’s aides said they would review Ms. Cunningham’s role and determine whether any of her advice to him should be recorded as an in-kind contribution to his campaign — a noncash contribution that has a monetary value. The next campaign filing is in July.
“The law is crystal clear that people have a right to volunteer on campaigns and that such volunteerism is not a campaign contribution of any sort,” Mr. Singer said, but he added, “We will, as always, err on the side of disclosure in our filing.”
Blair Horner, the legislative director of the New York Public Interest Research Group and a former Cuomo staff member, said he believed Ms. Cunningham’s work did constitute an in-kind contribution. “Since it is campaign activity, and since she is a prominent political consultant,” Mr. Horner said, “we certainly would argue that more disclosure is better and in fact that information should be disclosed.”
Ms. Cunningham, 48, a graduate of Wesleyan University and New York University Law School, first met Mr. Cuomo in 1983, when he was working for his father, Gov. Mario M. Cuomo, and she was an intern for District Council 37, the largest municipal union in New York City. Since then, she has worked as a deputy counsel to the Assembly speaker, Sheldon Silver, and as S.E.I.U. 1199’s political director, before joining a lobbying firm and taking on a variety of clients.
Her tough tactics are the stuff of legend in Albany; when the administration of Gov. George E. Pataki considered hospital cuts that 1199 opposed, she was known to give Pataki officials a preview of the attack advertisements the union planned to run against the administration, a strategy meant to unnerve the governor.
“She could be a little belligerent,” said Bradford J. Race Jr., a former top aide in the Pataki administration.
“There were threats any time we would try to doing anything to Medicaid, and sometimes I’d have to throw them out of the office,” Mr. Race said, but added that she was “pleasant enough most of the time.”
After Gov. Eliot Spitzer proposed hospital cuts in 2007, she helped develop a $12 million barrage of aggressive advertisements; her consulting firm, Knickerbocker SKD, boasts on its Web site that the campaign was “the first factor” in Mr. Spitzer’s “deep decline in popularity.”
Many other elected officials praised her. Assemblyman Carl E. Heastie, the chairman of the Bronx Democratic Party, said, “I have nothing but fabulous things to say about her.”
In 2006, Ms. Cunningham took a leave from her post as 1199’s political director to work without pay on Mr. Cuomo’s campaign for attorney general. She worked side by side with Mario Cuomo to reintroduce his son to New York political circles after his disastrous 2002 bid for governor. Ms. Cunningham took on many duties, including building Mr. Cuomo’s political operation on the ground, blocking other candidates from getting on the convention ballot and winning a coveted endorsement from Eliot Spitzer’s campaign.
“Jennifer knows a lot of people in politics today that I didn’t work with,” Mario Cuomo said at the time. “So I have my people, she has her people, and we are trying to be helpful.”
After Andrew Cuomo was elected attorney general, Ms. Cunningham advised him on how to guide his agenda through the Legislature, including his sweeping government consolidation proposal.
At least one of Mr. Cuomo’s major investigations dovetailed with 1199’s interests. That inquiry, “Operation Home Alone,” cracked down on home health care aides who were not properly licensed, along with the agencies that employed them and the schools that provided them with bogus certifications.
While similar prosecutions began during Mr. Spitzer’s tenure as attorney general, they were accelerated by Mr. Cuomo’s office, and he backed legislation to force all home health care aides to be entered into a state registry, a potentially powerful organizing tool for the union.
The union has cheered Operation Home Alone; 1199’s president, George Gresham, has praised it, and the union was among the groups that sent a letter to state officials urging them to pass the measure. On a Web site that 1199 opened, homecarecrisis.org, Home Alone is cited for cracking down on disreputable service providers.
Mr. Cuomo’s office said 1199 had no role in the effort.
“Any suggestion or implication that Operation Home Alone or the home health registry legislation, which passed unanimously, were motivated by 1199 is simply absurd,” said Richard Bamberger, who is Mr. Cuomo’s communications director.
For the last year, as Mr. Cuomo has planned his campaign for governor, Ms. Cunningham has been a key adviser. She has helped shape the theme and messages of the state Democratic convention and took a leading role in the Cuomo camp’s deliberations last month about moving the convention to Westchester County from Manhattan.
She has also worked the phones on Mr. Cuomo’s behalf, talking to a variety of party and elected officials, drawing on a Rolodex that extends to the White House; President Obama’s political director, Patrick Gaspard, was her successor as 1199’s political strategist. She also participates and sometimes presides over periodic conference calls and meetings with a circle of Cuomo advisers.
“Right now, her role as an adviser is probably more of an internal one rather than an external one,” Speaker Silver said.
“She has a legislative background, a union background,” he added. “She can put all of the things together for Andrew in terms of being able to coordinate issues and people.”
Since 2007, when she left 1199, Ms. Cunningham has worked for Cordo & Company, a relatively new lobbying firm that earned $1.5 million in fees last year, according to an analysis by the New York Public Interest Research Group. She is also a partner at Knickerbocker SKD, a political consulting firm whose clients have included Caroline Kennedy and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg.
She still represents 1199, and her other clients include a trade group of private colleges and the Visiting Nurse Service of New York. Cordo & Company also represents the Beer Wholesalers Association and the Aqueduct Entertainment Group, a controversial gambling consortium at the center of state and federal investigations into the awarding of a casino gambling contract at the Aqueduct racetrack in Queens.
By next year, she could have close ties to two top state officials; her former husband, State Senator Eric T. Schneiderman, a Manhattan Democrat, is a leading contender to succeed Mr. Cuomo as attorney general, and has already been endorsed by 1199. Ms. Cunningham and Mr. Schneiderman remain friendly.
While Ms. Cunningham will have no formal role in Mr. Cuomo’s campaign for governor, she will not disappear.
“I am sure they will continue to talk as friends about politics and other topics on occasion,” said Mr. Singer, the Cuomo campaign consultant, “as they have for the last 20 years.”