GREENWICH VILLAGE — Assemblywoman Deborah Glick is running for re-election in a contested Democratic primary for the first time in many years.
Her opponent, Village-based lawyer Arthur Schwartz, has made the race, in part, into a referendum on disgraced former Speaker Sheldon Silver.
However, Glick said the fallout from Silver's corruption charges and the more recent disclosure of his extramarital affairs into her race is the ultimate in hypocrisy.
"Men behave badly and it's women's a) responsibility and b) their fault," Glick told DNAinfo New York during a broad-ranging conversation at a Village cafe last week. "But when the majority of people in the [Assembly] body are men, they are very resistant to making the changes that need to be made."
Silver was convicted on corruption charges in November and last week was exposed for having multiple affairs with women who had business before the state.
► READ MORE: Ghost of Sheldon Silver Haunts Manhattan Assembly Race
Glick initially stuck by Silver after a graphic 68-page ethics report detailing Brooklyn Assemblyman Vito Lopez's sexual harassment of his female staffers was released in 2013.
The report also revealed that Silver had paid settlements to some of Lopez's victims to keep them quiet.
Some female Assembly members called on Silver to step down as speaker. Glick, despite her reputation as a feminist and advocate for women's rights, was not one of them.
► READ MORE: Silver's Affairs Among Several Sex Scandals to Plague His Public Service
Queens Assemblywoman Cathy Nolan said time and again women are more penalized for their silence than their male colleagues who also remain silent.
"I don't understand how the only fallout about Shelly Silver's behavior is [Rep.] Nydia Velazquez has a primary [challenger] and Deborah Glick has a primary [challenger]," Nolan said. Velazquez is facing off against Chinatown banker Youngman Lee, former superintendent of the state Department of Banking, for the Democratic nomination for the 7th Congressional District.
Many women in the Legislature refused to speak to Lopez for years, Nolan said, adding they tried to point out to their male colleagues that there was something indicative about the fact that so many of their female colleagues refused to engage with him.
"We tried to tell other men in the place that the guy was problematic in his behavior," she said. "A lot of us made it very clear that we did not appreciate how Vito Lopez conducted himself. Nobody cared."
She added: "To suggest that Deborah is somehow responsible is absurd."
In the early years after she was elected to the Assembly in 1990, Glick recalled, she would go out to dinner or be out somewhere in Albany and run into a colleague having dinner with a woman.
Days later, she'd be at an event, and meet that same assemblyman's wife — not the same woman.
She recalled thinking, "I’m never going out in Albany because I don’t want any guilty knowledge and it’s really uncomfortable."
But that culture has changed — "a lot," she said.
Glick is in charge of the Assembly's internship program. She said she is proud that there have been "zero instances of any untoward behavior" since she took over.
The first thing she did, she said, is establish rules that set boundaries to protect interns, such as keeping them out of events where alcohol is served and prohibiting them from traveling with Assembly members.
She recalls an assemblyman justifying accompanying a young woman home by saying, "Well, I didn't know how she was going to get home."
"You call a cab," Glick said. "That's what you do. You don't escort the young woman home."
Glick and other female legislators said that while Silver's recent revelations into his alleged affairs sheds new light on his personal conduct, his professional conduct with them was above board.
Former Assemblywoman Audrey Pheffer, who is now the Queens county clerk, recalled that Silver was one of the few people who saw women as qualified to do anything other than chairing the mental health or social services committees.
Silver put women in charge of committees that were considered more significant, like judiciary and economic development.
"That was a really big thing," Pheffer said. "That was pretty gutsy, to put a woman into something dealing with business."
But, in light of the latest allegations that Silver may have done political favors for two women with whom he was having an affair, Pheffer said her female colleagues earned their positions through hard work.
They had been around long enough, and chair appointments went to people with seniority.
For years, the Albany machine was overwhelmingly male, and "resistant to change," Glick said. Complaints women made about Lopez fell on deaf ears, Nolan said.
"Nobody would have listened," Nolan said. "Nobody did listen."
