Democrats Need to Hold Cuomo Accountable
By Jeet Heer
The New York governor’s alleged misdeeds may pale next to Trump’s and the GOP’s crimes, but a worry about double standards is no excuse to junk all standards.
Less than a year ago, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo was touted as the golden boy of American politics. Amid the terror of the initial outbreak of the Covid pandemic, Cuomo’s seeming hands-on competence and commanding presence was often contrasted with Trump’s clownishness. Cuomo’s press conferences and regular appearances on CNN, where he was frequently interviewed by brother Chris Cuomo, exuded confidence and toughness. There was talk that the Democrats would be wise to replace Joe Biden on the presidential ticket with the self-assured governor. Cuomo even had the unbridled chutzpah to write a book offering leadership lessons he learned during the pandemic—as if he were the Winston Churchill of virus-fighting.
Yet even at the height of his alleged Covid triumph, Cuomo had a few naysayers, particularly among the New York press that had long been aware of his heavy-handed, authoritarian governing style. Writing in The Nation on August 10, 2020, Ross Barkan detailed Cuomo’s mishandling of the nursing homes file during the pandemic. Barkan documented how the Cuomo administration worked diligently to give nursing homes and hospitals blanket immunity from lawsuits, while systematically undercounting nursing home deaths. The Cuomo administration had also sent Covid patients to nursing homes, thereby accelerating the spread of the disease. In January 2021, CNN reported on a finding by the state attorney general’s office that the New York State Department of Health “undercounted Covid-19 deaths among nursing home residents by approximately 50%.”
Concurrent with the nursing home scandals, Cuomo has been fending off multiple sexual harassment allegations. On Monday, The New York Times reported the story of Anna Ruch, who claims she was subjected to unwanted advances from Cuomo during a 2019 wedding. The newspaper added that “Ms. Ruch’s account comes after two former aides accused Mr. Cuomo of sexual harassment in the workplace, plunging his third term into turmoil as the governor’s defenders and Mr. Cuomo himself strain to explain his behavior.” The earliest of these allegations was made in December 2020.
In the wake of these revelations, there’s been a rising chorus calling for Cuomo to resign, including from six state legislators and the Working Families Party. Washington Post columnist Helaine Olen points out that this dynamic is likely to get worse for Cuomo as victims of his toxic political style smell blood in the water.
“Cuomo governs in a take-no-prisoners, control-freak style,” Olen observes. “For the past decade, the governor has bullied and threatened Democrats and Republicans alike, not to mention political appointees. When a political commission studying state corruption appeared to come too close to Cuomo’s inner circle, he shut it down. He threatened to put the progressive Working Families Party out of business if they ran a candidate against him in 2018.” The Working Families Party is only one of many political actors that will use this moment for payback.
Olen concludes that “Cuomo is now discovering, bullies have few real friends but many enemies. Once someone successfully challenges them, it can all come apart.” Confirming this judgement, a high-ranking Democrat told Ross Barkan, “You can’t make three enemies a week for 10 years and hope to survive.”