Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo fostered an unprofessional environment while he was a Cabinet secretary in the Clinton administration, challenging a press aide’s husband to a pushup contest and threatening to have her fired when she joined Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration, according to a new book.
Karen Hinton, who has accused Cuomo of inappropriate physical contact — an embrace in a hotel room in 2000 when she says he got aroused — writes in her upcoming memoir how her old boss made a series of improper statements and took retaliatory action against those deemed insufficiently loyal during the Clinton years while he was Housing and Urban Development secretary.
Penis Politics, an advance copy of which was obtained by the Washington Examiner, has already prompted pushback from Cuomo’s team. In addition, the former governor has denied accusations of inappropriate behavior by multiple women, including Hinton, as he faces a sex crime case, as well as political fallout that led him to resign the governorship over the summer.
In her book, Hinton says Cuomo “started probing” about her husband, a Marine, repeatedly challenging him to pushup contests.
“Does your husband work out all the time? Can he do push-ups? … How many push-ups can he do?” Cuomo asked Hinton, according to the book.
Cuomo said he could do “a lot of push-ups,” the book adds.
“I’m a basketball player. I played with my father. I still play with him,” Cuomo continued, according to Penis Politics. “Bring [your husband] Pat into my office and we can have a push-up office. I bet I can beat him. What do you think?”
When Hinton told Cuomo, “He won’t compete against you” because “he wouldn’t want to beat a high-ranking government official reporting to his Commander-in-Chief,” Cuomo “bulldoz[ed] over” her, the book says.
“Yeah, bring him into my office. I want to beat a Marine in push-ups,” the HUD secretary said, later adding “I bet he’s scared of me!” when Hinton repeatedly demurred, the book says.
The former Cabinet official’s vanity extended to other aspects of office life, with Cuomo refusing to hire “a highly qualified woman” Hinton recommended because “he found her plain-Jane looks and dress were just ‘not attractive enough’ for him,” Hinton recalls in her book.
Cuomo’s preoccupation with image affected the selection of higher positions within the department, according to the book.
“You’re not qualified to be my Assistant Secretary [for public affairs],” Hinton recalls Cuomo telling her despite her assessment that she “had done a good job as Cuomo’s press secretary.”
“You’ve only worked for a small-town, Black Congressman from Mississippi,” he added in a reference to Hinton’s prior role in the office of former Rep. Mike Espy, according to the book.
Cuomo had “big ambitions” and “wanted a ‘name'” for the position, “someone he could poach from the White House, or a broadcast outlet, someone who was seen as a ‘get’ that burnished Andrew’s own reputation,” Hinton writes.
“It wasn’t really about doing the actual job but what the hire looked like to the Washington world,” she says. “And that irritated me even more because it meant no matter how good I was, I would never be good enough. I had served my purpose for Andrew, and now I could be disposed of.”
The press secretary was eventually nominated for the post, but her candidacy was withdrawn prior to confirmation hearings.
When Hinton left Cuomo’s employ, she joined the administration of New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio. De Blasio himself worked under Cuomo at HUD before becoming a rival to the eventual governor as they battled for power in New York politics.
Hinton says she “still considered Andrew a friend, despite the fights of the past,” and so she intended to notify Cuomo of her intent to join the de Blasio administration, but “the plan went off the rails” when news of her appointment landed in the Wall Street Journal, drawing “irritation” from a “furious” Cuomo.
As headlines increasingly alluded to the unease between Cuomo and de Blasio, Hinton “did tell Bill that he had to be tougher and less equivocal in his public stance,” prompting someone from the Cuomo camp to tell Politico, “There’s a clear belief that Karen helped de Blasio grow a pair.”
But the “grudging respect” stopped when de Blasio’s team refused to walk back the mayor’s assertion that “if someone disagrees with [Cuomo] openly, some kind of revenge or vendetta follows” and Cuomo’s team extended a job offer to Hinton, according to the book.
“Andrew is hurt by you; he’s disappointed. But he loves you. Forget Bill, and come work for the Governor,” top Cuomo aide Joe Percoco told Hinton in what she says was an “utterly ridiculous” proposal, the book claims.
When Hinton turned down “Andrew’s clumsy attempt to buy [her] off with a job,” the governor “decided to get much more personal,” planting stories in major newspapers detailing his former press secretary’s claim that a married then-Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton once slipped her a note with a suggestive hotel room proposition, according to the book.
“My own source confirmed that Andrew had planted the story at the Daily News. A Politico story also had mentioned the Clinton incident briefly, in a sentence or two,” she writes. “The stories served as a ‘two-fer’ for Andrew, derailing me by reducing me to an object of sexual attention who was complaining or perhaps lying about the attention, all while driving a wedge between Bill and Hilary Clinton, who Andrew courted assiduously. Very penis politics.”
When Cuomo and de Blasio had a spat in 2015 over responding to an outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease in New York, Hinton claims she defended the mayor, saying, “People have written about the city’s performance, but what about the state’s performance? … The state commissioner should’ve known about this, and the governor is ultimately responsible for the actions of his health commissioner.”
Cuomo’s “fury was unrestrained” following Hinton’s comments, and he called up de Blasio’s top deputy and fumed, “Karen has to go! And if she doesn’t, I’m going to go out there and say that the Mayor is personally responsible for every Legionnaires’ disease death in the city,” according to Penis Politics.
De Blasio then called Hinton, “steam practically spew[ing] out of [the] phone,” she writes.
“Andrew wants me to fire you,” de Blasio told her, according to the book. “I’m not going to fire you. But keep your f***ing mouth shut about him!”
While Hinton says she acquiesced to the mayor’s request, she refused to walk back her comments and expressed disappointment in a de Blasio aide’s request that she do so.
“Andrew pounced on Bill’s weakness and tortured his longtime friend-turned-enemy at his pleasure,” Hinton writes. “A fine job I had done of bringing the two together again.”
Rich Azzopardi, a spokesman for Cuomo, slammed Hinton’s memoir, saying, “The closer she gets to publication, the more vile and ridiculous her claims get.”
“In 2018, when Ms. Hinton was not consumed with chasing headlines to sell a book, she wrote, ‘I’ve been fortunate to have male bosses, like Andrew Cuomo and Bill de Blasio, who know how to be respectful of women even while being no-nonsense managers,'” he told the Washington Examiner. “We will have no further comment on her transparent attempts to profit off of a blatant rewriting of history.”
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Cuomo, who stepped down from the governorship on Aug. 24, was charged with forcible touching regarding a separate incident that allegedly occurred at the Executive Mansion, which he said “never” happened in testimony released last Wednesday. The former governor is expected to appear in court on Jan. 7.
Penis Politics, published by the Sartoris Literary Group, is set to be released Dec. 1.
