Dear Mayor Adams:
It is with a heavy heart that I respectfully request you withdraw your nomination of me to become the City's next Corporation Counsel. I appreciate the opportunity you sought to afford me. And I remain deeply honored and humbled by the confidence you have shown in me to serve the City in this important legal capacity. But it is not to be.
Speaker Adams has now made clear, by the way she permitted the Council to conduct its hearing on my nomination, that she intends to deny you the nominee of your choice. I do not know what possessed the City Council to conduct this confirmation hearing as it did. Indeed, every newspaper editorial board that has weighed in since has condemned the Council's conduct here, calling it a "kangaroo court," "misplaced anger" at the Mayor that denied me a "fair shake," and
"a legislative pile-on" and "scripted affair "to deny New York the service of one honorable and impeccably qualified man."
New Yorkers have a right to expect more from their elected officials. But unfortunately, as much as I respect the City Council's role and looked forward to representing it with the same professionalism and responsiveness as the rest of City government, I will apparently be denied that opportunity, based on a hearing that was anything but fair.
I had hoped that this confirmation decision would ultimately be made on the merits, believing, perhaps naively, that Council members would value my background as:
• A proud, life-long Democrat who is fiercely independent, standing up to Mayors, Governors and even Presidents when they get it wrong.
Someone who literally put his life on the line in serving the City before, tackling organized crime corruption in the Fulton Fish Market and private carting industry, receiving La Cosa Nostra death threats as a result.
• An attorney who has devoted hundreds of hours a year to pro bono causes and community service, representing peaceful racial justice protestors assaulted by federal authorities at Lafayette Square in June 2020, standing up for same-sex couples' rights, and serving as Chair of Citizens Union and Vice Chair of the Legal Aid Society.
• Someone who already knows the City's Law Department well and offers a transformative vision for its future -- to move more of its resources into affirmative litigation to advance social justice, civil rights, constitutional rights, and public safety, something that has never happened before.
• An attorney with a proven track record of success in getting results for clients, who would now be getting those results for the City of New York, including the City Council.
Had the Council conducted a fair hearing at a time that permitted full public participation, it would have heard from more than 100 prominent supporters and pro bono clients of mine, including top elected Democrats, leading New York judges and lawyers, former Obama administration cabinet officials, and five former Corporation Counsel spanning the last four administrations. Instead, Council members grilled me for eight-and-a-half straight hours, reading speeches off of prepared scripts and trying to deny me the opportunity to respond. Even worse, they kept dozens of my supporters (including former Governor David Paterson) who hung in there all day waiting until the evening hours of a late summer hearing to testify, then cut them off at the two-minute mark, without asking any of them a single question.
So at the end of the day, I had a hearing, but most Council members weren't listening. They'd already made up their minds for reasons unrelated to the merits.
Respectfully,
Randy M. Mastro