Karen Hinton.Photo: Sartoris Literary Group
“I had seen the flirting, and I know what had happened to me, but I never thought that, at his age … He knew better. He knew not to do what he was doing,” Hinton tells PEOPLE. “Yet he did it anyway.”
Hinton’s complicated relationship with Cuomo is just a few chapters in her new memoir,Penis Politics, which is first and foremost a nuanced coming-of-age story, revealing a woman beset with her own personal challenges. In an interview, Hinton discussed her book and how she feels her journey is tied to the culture of harassment that women continue to face, decades after her own entry into politics.
Bennett, the other Cuomo aide, firstcame forwardin an interview published withThe New York Timesin February 2021 as part of a wave of women whose stories ultimately ended Cuomo’s once-lauded career. Bennett alleged that he had harassed her the year before while she was serving as an executive assistant and health policy adviser in the governor’s administration.
“I understood that the governor wanted to sleep with me, and felt horribly uncomfortable and scared,” Bennett said then.
An independent investigationconcluded Cuomo had harassedmultiple women, leading to his resignation last year. He has maintained he “never inappropriately touched anybody” or intentionally committed wrongdoing but apologized for what he insisted was inadvertent behavior. He has not been charged with a crime.
Hinton, a rural-Mississippi native, has had her own problematic experiences with powerful men — Cuomo included. She moved to Washington, D.C., in the late 1980s and built a career in the halls of power as an aide first to Cuomo and later for future New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio.
The former spokeswoman had planned to detail some of her experiences in the testosterone-fueled political arena in the early drafts ofPenis Politics.But when a growing list of women came forward with harassment allegations against Cuomo beginning in December 2020 she decided to revisit her book. Hinton wanted to provide her own testimony about Cuomo’s inappropriate behavior toward herself and other women decades before, she says. (Cuomo’s team has repeatedly challenged Hinton’s account and did so again for this piece. They have dismissed her as a “known antagonist.")
“I hope readers will take the truths from my past and that will help strengthen their own truths, from both past and the present,” she says.
Sartoris Literary Group
Penis Politicshas its share of headline-grabbing details, some of whichstirred up the tabloidsahead of the memoir’s release in December. Hinton recalls Cuomo’s bullying tactics toward his staff, his unwanted sexual advance to her in 2000 and then-PresidentBill Clinton’s invitation to his hotel room when she was just 26 years old that left her “humiliated.”
ButPenis Politicsis more than just a titillating title and a list of humiliations endured and overcome. Hinton also remembers growing up in rural Mississippi, where she witnessed racial injustice, and shares how she went from journalism to politics in order to better fight for social causes that continue to matter deeply to her. A through-line in Hinton’s book is how the culture of sexual harassment and gender politics that has been plaguing her throughout her life remains a problem for women to this day.
She learned early on to “speak up, not shut up,” she says. Now she’s found a new source of inspiration watching young women like Bennett come forward.
“I told my story,” she says. “I want other women to tell their own stories.”
Writing as a Form of ‘Healing’
In the years since, she has worked hard to regain her speech, mobility and memory, though her recovery is ongoing. Her husband, Howard Glaser, another former aide to Cuomo, said her first fully-formed sentence was “Get me the f— out of here.” (She has retained her long-term memory but still has difficulty with short-term memory.)
In recent years, her husband encouraged her to revisit her past to help her regain her writing ability and, later, to publish the account of her years in politics.
Watching her friend’s early trauma “shaped my life immensely,” Hinton says of the sexual assault, which went unreported. “I never realized it, though, until the accident [on the treadmill years later]. I almost died, and it brought back memories that I had either forgotten or never really grasped the understanding of.”
Hinton recovering from surgery after her accident.Courtesy Karen Hinton
“I felt like I had failed her because we never talked about what happened. We never told anybody what happened. It was a secret that she demanded we keep,” says Hinton. “And I felt then, and I feel now, that I let her down.”
From then on, Hinton says, “I pushed myself to do things that would normally frighten me and scare me, but I took them on anyway.”
Power Play on Capitol Hill
When Hinton arrived in D.C. in the ’80s, she’d already had some experience dealing with the imbalances between men and women in the world of Southern politics. (She had worked as a journalist in Mississippi and as a press secretary for Robert Clark, a Black Mississippi legislator, during his 1984 congressional bid. She came to D.C. to work for Mike Espy, helping him become Mississippi’s first Black congressman since the Civil War.)
But Hinton says that Washington’s sexual dysfunction was even more intense.
Hinton experienced much of this during her four-and-a-half years working with Cuomo when he was in the Clinton administration. Their relationship was complicated from the start.
These days, both Cuomo and Hinton have a lot to say about each other. When contacted about this story, the former governor’s spokesman cast Hinton as a manipulator and liar, citing past instances (and an email) when she had spoken in flattering tones of her former boss.
“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,’ " the spokesman said. “It’s clear that her opinion of Governor Cuomo changes depending on whether he could be personally helpful to her or whether she can personally profit off his name. Consider that when gauging her credibility and this latest transparent attempt to rewrite history.”
There is no love lost on either side. Hinton responded to this depiction with a fierce rebuttal of her own, which Cuomo’s team then pushed back on. (“Cuomo’s statements about me only further expose the real Andrew Cuomo: a man obsessed with power, control and intimidation,” Hinton said.)
Despite what she has said before, she insists now that she decided to join her voice with Cuomo’s other accusers, adding tinder to the inferno that left his reputation in ashes.
Hinton says that at first she “loved” working with Cuomo, who was then the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s assistant secretary. She was excited to work for the big-personality Democrat because he prioritized finding solutions to homelessness and other issues she cared about deeply.
“I was very attracted to that, even though other people would say, ‘Well, he’s difficult. He’s arrogant. He’s bullying me. He’s just a pain in the butt,’ " Hinton remembers.
After working in D.C. for eight years, Hinton says she had no problem “push[ing] back” when Cuomo “attacked” or “criticized” her on an issue. Hinton says she also shut down his attempts at flirting.
Andrew Cuomo and Bill Clinton.Andrew Burton/Getty Images
“Did he flirt with me? Sure. But he flirted with a lot of women,” says Hinton. “You just had to ignore it. I did, I just ignored it.”
“I would say, ‘I don’t have time for that! Enough with your compliments about my dress or my hair or my makeup or whatever. We got to stuff to do here, here are the issues,’ " she says. “And then we would often argue about the issues.”
In addition to her own interactions with Cuomo — which she characterizes as pretty standard behavior for men of that ilk and era — Hinton also writes about stories that her colleagues shared with her.
Uncomfortable Encounters
Hinton says that her relationship with Cuomo became more volatile after she decided to come forward about then-President Clinton to detail a 1984 encounter she had with him when he was still the governor of Arkansas.
Hinton went on the record forWashington Postreporter Michael Isikoff, whose bookUncovering Clintonwas published in 1999. In it, Hinton details her chance meeting with the future president at a restaurant where she remembers they talked intensively about policy.
Clinton then handed Hinton, just 26 years old at the time, a napkin with his hotel name and room number on it, according toPenis Politics.
(In the years since, the allegation has bubbled up in news stories. President Clinton has repeatedly decline to comment.)
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When Isikoff’s book was published, Hinton wasn’t fired, even though Cuomo worked closely with the Clinton White House. Instead, Hinton claims, Cuomo privately requested that she not be confirmed for the assistant secretary for public affairs position.
She says he took it a step further when Hinton requested to go to Russia with her then-husband Pat for five days to adopt a 13-month-old girl. (By this time, Hinton had had two miscarriages and failed fertility treatments.) Cuomo was less than understanding, Hinton remembers.
He told her, according to her memoir, “Why don’t you just let Pat go get your daughter?”
When Hinton returned, after less than a week away, she says Cuomo had given her job to someone else. Hinton was “livid,” she says. She finally quit after they got into a yelling match over a project about which she was passionate.
Despite their phone call ending with a mutual “f— you!”, Hinton served as a consultant for Cuomo in the summer of 2000. She was tasked with promoting his HUD events on the West Coast, tied to the upcoming Democratic Convention in Los Angeles. It was while in this role, Hinton says, that Cuomo asked her to come to his hotel room to chat, like they’d done before, to discuss business. But she remembers that this interaction was different.
Hinton says Cuomo started asking about her marriage and discussing his own. She became increasingly “uncomfortable” and started to leave.
“And [Cuomo] says, ‘Well, wait.’ And he embraces me,” Hinton says. “And, at first, I think it’s just a get-to-know-you-better hug, but he pulls me close and it’s very intimate. And honestly, I can tell he was aroused.”
When Hinton pulled away, she says, Cuomo “pulls me back and says, ‘We have to take care of each other. Can you do that? I can do that. Can you do that?’ "
Hinton didn’t know what to make of the question or the physical contact. She tried to leave again.
“I said, ‘I really need to go back and just get some rest. So, I’ll see you tomorrow,’ " Hinton says. “And we never talked about it after that because he knew I was saying no.”
A spokesman for himtoldThe Washington Postin a statementin March 2021 that Hinton’s recollection was false and “reckless” on her part.
“This did not happen,” the spokesman said. “Karen Hinton is a known antagonist of the Governor’s who is attempting to take advantage of this moment to score cheap points with made up allegations from 21 years ago. All women have the right to come forward and tell their story — however, it’s also the responsibility of the press to consider self-motivation. This is reckless.”
‘One D— to Rule Them All’
Hinton had to deal with Cuomo again when she became press secretary to Mayor Bill de Blasio in 2015. Her appointment stirred up even more antagonism between the two politicians, whose bitter feud was the talk of New York politics for years.
Hinton only held the position for 12 months, but she came away with one big lesson.
“When it comes to politically-motivated men, for the most part, it’s always about one d— to rule us all,” says Hinton, referencing a chapter in her book called “One D— to Rule Them All.”
The experience reaffirmed what Hinton knew about ego and masculinity in politics. But she has hope for the women who decide to speak up — especially in the wake of the #MeToo movement and Cuomo’s sudden fall.
“Men and women in New York grew to hate Andrew, the same way Bill hated him,” says Hinton. “But they didn’t have the control, the power to end his political career. But the 11 women did — they did it.”
Penis Politicsis on sale now.
source: people.com
