Eliot

“You know somebody said to me, a little bit ago, somebody said, you know Cornwall is a Republican town. I don’t know if that’s true or not, We’re gonna change that this November. But if my history is correct….didn’t the Tories surrender at Cornwall? (applause) There’s a historical metaphor here. This is where we’re gonna start the road to victory. We’re gonna bring democracy back to New York and we’re gonna stand up for the principles that we care about. And this is a campaign that really is about principles. They’re very simple, they’re very basic. But we’re gonna show people that government can once again embrace them.”

“And I’m honored when people speak about the record that we’ve created in the Attorney General’s office over the last seven and a half, going on eight years now. And people say ‘Gee, has it been hard, has it been very difficult?’ And you know I won’t pretend some of the cases haven’t been difficult. That there haven’t been some enormously powerful interests on the other side,…that try to squash me every day. But that’s you know, a separate issue. In fact, somebody said to me one day, ‘How does it feel to have every billionaire in the world against you?’ And I said, ‘The good news is, they only vote once.’ (laughter) And there are more of us than there are of them. But you know this hasn’t been about a populist crusade. It’s been about really simple very principles that we all understand, and all decent people realize should be at the heart of what we do. And that is, that the law applies to everybody. Nobody is so rich, so powerful that they can escape playing by the rules. That’s all we want ‘em to do.”

“The amazing thing to me has been, sometimes when you make these cases, and you sit down in a room trying to explain to people what they did wrong, there is this look on their faces as though they’re saying, ‘Wait a minute, that doesn’t apply to me. That’s for everybody else.’ And I think finally it has sunk in. We don’t live in that type of society. We don’t live in a world where there are different rules for different people, and even the rich, the powerful, the CEO’s, the leaders in government, and government has as many problems as the private sector, let’s not kid ourselves. Everybody’s gotta play by these rules. And as of January first, we’re gonna make it that much more potent when we say, ‘Albany’s gonna play by them too,’ and that’s what we care about.”

“There’s another side to it, the principle that nobody’s so rich they don’t have to play by the rules. The other side is nobody’s so poor, or so power-less they don’t get the benefit of the law. And the cases that I have made to the office that really in a way mean the most to me, are the ones where we have stood up for the individuals who didn’t think there was a voice for them. And they would say, ‘Gee, we didn’t know government would stand up for us.’ Maybe they thought they were too insignificant. You know, there is nobody’s who’s too insignificant in our society. That’s the premise of our community. We are all in this together. Whether it’s your health care, your ability to have your investments protected, be paid a decent wage, make sure that when you’ve worked all day, you get paid for it. Those are the simple principles that we believe in. And we’ve worked hard to prove those points.”

“And frankly, the interesting thing to me has been that too many people in government weren’t willing to stand up. I’m embarrassed by the fact that, the fact that we were standing up for these principles made us stand out from the rest of the folks in government. Too many people ran away from making these cases. Too many people said, ‘If the powerful organizations are gonna be against me, I won’t do it.’ And that is what’s wrong with government.”

“I used to go down to Washington and testify, about these cases. You know, cause the folks on Capitol Hill, they got interested when they saw the headlines. They weren’t interested when I went down to them and said, ‘Look, people are being cheated out of their life savings. People have worked their whole lives, and their pensions are being taken from them.’ That didn’t resonate. Headlines got their interest. So I’d go down there to testify and sitting behind me in these huge chambers -- all the lobbyists in the world. And they were staring at my back. Man, if looks could kill, I would have been a gonner. I wouldn’t have made it through. They had every rationalization. They tried to take away the laws we use. But you know what won out at the end of the day? What won out at the end of the day was the facts. When we stood up and told the simple truth about what was going on. Once those facts go out, they had no choice but to pay attention.”