Should Gov. Cuomo Be Investigated? His Fellow Democrats Don’t Say No.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo has not been accused of wrongdoing, and under state law the attorney general lacks the power to investigate him even if he had. But that didn’t stop his fellow Democrats vying to run for attorney general to say on Tuesday that they would be open to doing just that.

All four candidates, including one endorsed by Cuomo, were asked in a taped debate that airs Wednesday if they “support calls for an investigation into the governor” for the use of state government offices for campaign purposes by a top Cuomo aide convicted in March on federal corruption charges.

No one said they did not.

“If individuals used a public office for political purposes, they should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. What I, as the next attorney general, will do is follow the evidence and the facts wherever it leads, and if it leads to the second floor, so be it,” Letitia James, the city’s public advocate who has the support of Cuomo as she runs for the Democratic nomination for attorney general, said in reference to the location of the governor’s office at the Capitol.

“Anytime there is corruption at that level of state government, the person at the top of state government should say ‘I’m the accountable person, the buck stops here with me,'” said another candidate, Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney. “You shouldn’t be afraid of the truth, you shouldn’t be afraid of a full investigation, and that’s what should happen.”

They were answering a question posed by the debate moderator, Ben Max, the executive editor of the Gotham Gazette, during a debate taped Tuesday at Manhattan Neighborhood Network’s studios in midtown.

As the race for the Democratic nomination for attorney general enters its final weeks, candidates are ramping up efforts to show that they are independent from Cuomo, who has had to answer questions about corruption during his run for a third term after the conviction of two top aides.

Joseph Percoco, once Cuomo’s executive deputy secretary and a longtime confidant, was found guilty of accepting $300,000 in bribes from the executives of two companies with business before the state.

During the trial, prosecutors showed that Percoco flouted state ethics laws in 2014 by continuing to work from Cuomo’s Manhattan offices, even though he had taken a leave of absence from his state job to work on the governor’s re-election campaign. State laws prohibit the use of taxpayer resources for campaign purposes.

Records show that 837 calls were made from Percoco’s office during 68 days he was working on the campaign. Cuomo’s public schedules reveal that he was often in the office during the same time period. Cuomo has said that Percoco was working on state government “transition matters.”

In calling for an investigation, James, who has come under scrutiny for being too aligned with the governor, said there is “a problem with corruption” in New York state government.

Leecia Eve, a former aide to Cuomo, said the rules regarding the use of taxpayer resources for a campaign are written in “black and white” in state law.

“You are not to engage in political activity in a government space,” Eve said. “I would support an investigation, and wherever that investigations leads, if it leads to prosecution, I will absolutely prosecute for violations of civil and criminal law.”

Zephyr Teachout, who challenged Cuomo for governor in 2014 and has sought to position herself as a corruption fighter, said there was a need for “further investigation” into Percoco’s actions and called for the resignation of Seth Agata, executive director of the Joint Commission on Public Ethics and a former counsel to Cuomo.

“There is an agency that is supposed to investigate corruption and sexual misconduct in Albany. It’s called JCOPE,” Teachout said.

Walter McClure Jr., a spokesman for JCOPE, said he was unable to comment on ongoing or future investigations. At a March meeting, the JCOPE chairman, Michael Rozen, said that the public should not draw conclusions about what the agency is investigating.

Cuomo’s counsel, Alphonso David, called the candidates’ answers “politically convenient” but “not based in fact or law.”

“The attorney general’s office does not have plenary, independent jurisdiction here and, as the administration has previously said, we have and would cooperate in any review by an entity that does,” David said in a statement.

Still, Susan Lerner, the executive director of Common Cause New York, a government accountability group, said the comments from attorney general candidates were an “important step” in the debate around public corruption in New York.

A July poll from Quinnipiac University found that 85 percent of voters polled found corruption to be a “very serious” or “somewhat serious” issue in New York state. “It’s a response to public concern,” Lerner said. “Whether they will be able to follow up on those representations remains to be seen, but it tells us that they perceive this as a matter of concern to voters that they need to take a position on.”

Jeanne Zaino, a professor of political science at Iona College, called the response from all four Democratic candidates, especially James, a “significant” indication of the success that Cuomo’s primary challenger, actress and activist Cynthia Nixon, has had raising the issue of corruption leading up to the Sept. 13 primary.

“That the leader of the party is under attack by four members of his own party on the lower end of the ticket,” Zaino said, “has to be a big concern.”