Some say — maybe with the best intentions — that major-league Long Island attorney William J. Cunningham III will become Albany’s “No” man, in a capital city full of “Yes” men.
Insiders expect that as Gov. Paterson’s senior adviser, Cunningham will seek to keep the top man out of trouble by bluntly warning him of bad ideas when he hears them. With his precise duties in the $170,000 post still vague, those familiar are using labels like “sounding board,” “minister with many portfolios” and “confidant.” He won’t be in direct charge of any agencies.
He's had strong links to such famous Democratic family names as Paterson, Clinton, Suozzi --and Ickes (as in Harold, photo above).
Cunningham, of Bay Shore, is a longtime friend of Basil Paterson, the governor’s father. The two worked together until 2002 at the Long Island law firm of Meyer, Suozzi, English and Klein, where Nassau County Executive Thomas Suozzi’s father, Joseph Suozzi, is a prominent partner and where Basil Paterson represents major unions on contract issues.
That's the firm officials said on Friday will ask the state's ethics commission for a ruling on its voluntary procedures presumed to keep the elder lawyer out of conflicts with his suddenly-powerful son in Albany, leaving a number of questions open.
“I’ve known the governor for about 15 years,” Cunningham said Thursday. “I got to know David through his dad. I’d say one of the things David and I have as a common bond is we both love his parents Basil and Portia... Our paths would cross frequently enough that on Inauguration Day he took me aside and asked to speak with me. I met with him the following week...”
Cunningham, 56, knows the look of a political crisis. After serving as campaign treasurer in Hillary Clinton’s first Senate run, for example, he was thrust into the limelight in a controversy over two men he’d been representing who were granted criminal pardons by the exiting President Bill Clinton. They’d been referred by his Clinton adviser and law associate Harold Ickes, (himself the namesake son of a prominent FDR secretary) who is these days the Hillary Clinton point man on superdelegates in the bruising national Democratic primary.
Nassau and Suffolk Democrats know Cunningham for other reasons. After his first election in 2001, Thomas Suozzi plucked Cunningham — a former assistant U.S. attorney — from the Meyer, Suozzi firm and made him his chief deputy....
Dan Janison
As it happened, Paterson’s appointment of Cunningham was announced Monday — just hours after Suozzi fervently squelched printed rumors that he planned to run a primary to replace Paterson in 2010.
Suozzi on Wednesday called Cunningham “an enormously talented person dedicated to public service” and that “this is great for David Paterson, this is great for Long Island, this is great for New York state” -- and for himself, for the regional understanding it adds in the governor’s office, someone he can contact.
Five years ago, with Suozzi’s backing, Cunningham was crushed in a bitter Democratic primary for county executive in Suffolk, where he lived, then as now, with his wife Terry, a school librarian at St. Peter’s School in Bay Shore, and where they raised two daughters.
That prompted a Democratic border skirmish between the eventual winner, Steve Levy, and Suffolk Democratic chair Richard Shaffer on one side and Suozzi and Cunningham on the other.
But on Thursday, Levy said, “I congratulate him. Bill and I have had a fine working relationship for several years. He’s been nothing but a gentleman since our election of 2003.” Shaffer added: “This is a very smart move, and good for Long Island... Bygones were bygones a long time ago.”
NOTE: This is not the same man as William T. Cunningham, who worked for Governors Carey and Cuomo and the late Senator Moynihan, and now is a consultant at Dan Klores Associates in New York City. He's also not the radio deejay Bill Cunningham who knocked Barack Obama to boost John McCain for president. While we're at it, he's also not the former NBA player.