http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/26/nyregion/for-cuomo-and-christie-parallel-paths-to-the-top-and-trouble-when-they-got-there.html 2016-09-26 03:37:45 For Cuomo and Christie, Parallel Paths to the Top, and Trouble When They Got There The governors of New York and New Jersey were once praised for rooting out corruption. Now, both have seen former close aides accused of misdeeds. === It might be hard to remember now, with one governor embroiled in a corruption scandal for the last three years and his counterpart across the Hudson River plunging headlong into another, but The wars they waged against corrupt politicians, as the attorney general of New York (Mr. Cuomo) and the United States attorney for New Jersey (Mr. Christie), won them bipartisan kudos and, eventually, smooth ascents to their states’ highest offices. After the ethical morasses that swamped figures such as former Gov. Those were the days. Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat, spent Thursday reeling at Over in New Jersey, Mr. Christie, a Republican, is up a very unpleasant creek of his own. A former top aide and a former political ally are on trial over their roles in the 2013 scandal that elevated a traffic jam on access lanes leading to the George Washington Bridge into an immortal symbol of political payback. Having helped puncture Mr. Christie’s presidential hopes earlier this year, the lane-closing episode later went on to help sink his bid to join the Donald J. Trump ticket. The trial, which began last Monday, has been no kinder to the governor: Prosecutors waited exactly zero days before asserting, during opening statements, that Neither governor is accused of breaking the law. But for two men who once prided themselves on managing spick-and-span administrations, claiming to have been blind to alleged acts of petty revenge and bribery at the highest levels of state government seems bad enough. As they campaigned for the governor’s office, each promised to cut through what they called partisan nonsense, bureaucratic inertia and dodgy dealing to get real results for residents in their states. Each had the trophy case to back it up. As state attorney general, Mr. Cuomo took aim at the other two statewide elected officials, both fellow Democrats: Mr. Spitzer, whose administration’s misuse of state troopers to target a political rival Mr. Cuomo helped uncover, and Mr. Hevesi, who went to prison after a Cuomo investigation found that he had accepted personal benefits in exchange for approving a state pension fund investment. In New Jersey, where Mr. Christie was appointed a United States attorney by President George W. Bush in 2002, the young prosecutor quickly dispelled questions about his readiness for the job by pursuing corruption charges against dozens of local officials and leading high-profile inquiries that implicated several more. They were sane. Smart. Clean. Capable. Determined. And smug. “I am putting each and every one of you on notice,” “ But as the fallout from each scandal has made clear, the professionalism and integrity of their offices were compromised almost from the start by aides and advisers who seemed far more interested in their own endgames — whether political, financial or both — than in serving a state. In both cases, they were empowered by Mr. Christie and Mr. Cuomo themselves. Each man had cultivated a small group of trusted advisers who, driven by unshakable tribal loyalty and a hunger to see their bosses taste the White House one day, enforced the governor’s will, punished his enemies and rewarded his friends. For Mr. Christie, they included Bridget Anne Kelly and Bill Baroni, the two former officials currently on trial, and Bill Stepien, his former top lieutenant, an old friend and political operative who left ears ringing across New Jersey on the governor’s behalf. They met for strategy sessions around Mr. Christie’s kitchen table in Mendham and mingled at N.F.L. games. They worked together to single out local officials who supported the governor’s 2013 re-election bid for perks and to mete out revenge to those who did not — including Mayor Mark Sokolich of Fort Lee, N.J., a Democrat who, having declined to endorse the governor, got a catastrophic traffic jam in return, prosecutors say. Their equivalents in Albany were a group of stalwarts who had marched at Mr. Cuomo’s side, in some cases as far back as the administration of Mr. Cuomo’s father, former Gov. Mario M. Cuomo, who became governor in 1983. The men, and they were all men, even had a “term of endearment” for one another, according to the federal criminal complaint released on Thursday: “Herb.” (It remains unclear why.) Chief among them was Joseph Percoco, who had started working for the elder Mr. Cuomo when he was 19. So high was his place in the family firmament that during Mr. Cuomo’s eulogy for his father in January 2015, he called Mr. Percoco “my father’s third son, who I sometimes think he loved the most.” It was Mr. Percoco who, everyone in New York’s political establishment understood, woke Mr. Cuomo up in the morning, dispensed threats for him during the day and put him to bed at night. It was also Mr. Percoco, working with another “Herb” and former Cuomo aide, Todd R. Howe, who shook down a developer and an energy company for at least $315,000 in bribes in exchange for putting his considerable power at their service, prosecutors say. There was the legal opinion that Mr. Percoco got reversed. The energy policy decisions, made by state experts, that he overrode. The $5,700 raise, the criminal complaint says, that he berated human-resources staff at the governor’s office into approving for the son of an executive who had paid him off. And there was the fact, apparent from the complaint, that no one in state government questioned his authority to do so. These days, there is no avoiding the central question: How could the governors not have known? Mr. Christie has said that while he took ultimate responsibility for the lane closings, it was impossible for him to keep tabs on 65,000 state employees. He was “disturbed,” he said, by Mr. Stepien’s behavior, while Ms. Kelly was “stupid” and “a liar.” Mr. Cuomo, too, has been moved to muse on personal betrayal. “The central plank of my administration has always been about public integrity and zero tolerance for any waste, fraud or abuse. If anything, I hold a friend to a higher standard,” he said in Buffalo on Friday. “It’s the first time since we lost my father that I didn’t miss him being here yesterday, because it would’ve broken his heart.”