After her second-in-command resigned on Tuesday over federal bribery charges, New York Governor Kathy Hochul said that she has begun the search for a new lieutenant governor.
Lieutenant Governor Brian Benjamin resigned after being charged with illegally funneling funds to one of his previous campaigns. After surrendering to police officials earlier in the morning, he pleaded not guilty to bribery allegations in federal court in Manhattan on Tuesday. On a $250,000 bond, he was released.
“We’re going to go through a process right now,” said Hochul during an interview on WNYC, a local radio station. “It was clear to both of us he could not continue to serve.”
Benjamin’s resignation comes just months before his name is set to appear as Hochul’s running mate on the Democratic primary ballot in June. Soon after taking over as governor following Andrew Cuomo’s retirement in August, Hochul chose Benjamin to be her lieutenant governor.
Hochul now leads a slew of Democratic candidates for governor of New York in 2022, and it’s unlikely she’ll be able to keep his name off the ballot due to a peculiarity in the state’s voting system.
“The laws are very complicated,” she added.
According to the indictment, Benjamin participated in a plan to receive corrupt campaign donations from a real estate developer from at least 2019 to 2021. Prosecutors allege that in exchange for the payments, he pledged to use his power as a state senator at the time to get a $50,000 state grant for a nonprofit run by the developer.
When asked if press reports about Benjamin’s donors in the comptroller campaign triggered red flags before she chose him as lieutenant governor, she stated a background study cleared him.
“We had been told that everything that had risen up had been addressed.” she added. “I made the best decision I could with the information I had at the time.”
She expressed her disappointment with “how this played out,” but said his resignation gave her campaign a chance to “reset.”
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