The Guardian
‘Meet the governor we’ve known all along’: how Cuomo fell from grace
At the beginning of the pandemic, the New York governor found himself on the national scene with his daily instructions. Now he faces resignations and a federal investigation Andrew Cuomo speaks in Washington DC on May 27, 2020. Photo: Jacquelyn Martin / AP On March 20, 2020, as the coronavirus pandemic ravaged New York, Andrew Cuomo announced new restrictions at home visits for older and vulnerable people. Revealing the rules, named Matilda’s Law in honor of his mother, in his daily televised briefing, the governor spoke with passion about the need for New Yorkers to take care of each other. “These three-word sentences can make all the difference,” he said. “‘I miss you’, ‘I love you’, ‘I’m thinking about you’, ‘I would like to be there with you’, ‘I’m sorry that you’re going through this’.” It was, he later recalled, “a very emotional moment for me, and it was reported that I shed a tear. I know I was very touched that day. ”The moment of Matilda de Cuomo’s Law – tears and all – was made for TV. These displays of unbridled emotion quickly transformed him into an American icon, the Italian-American tough guy in touch with his tender side fighting for people at the heart of a terrible pandemic. His daily briefings became mandatory views, pushing Cuomo to the center of the national scene as Donald Trump’s empathetic antithesis. The New York Times declared him “politician of the moment”, CNN fantasized about a “president Andrew Cuomo”, and even far-right Fox News guru Sean Hannity praised him on his radio show. To top it all off, Cuomo, 63, got a contract for a book with that. With characteristic arrogance, he titled the work: Leadership lessons from the Covid-19 pandemic. What a difference a few months make. Move forward today, and Cuomo now faces resignations, an FBI investigation and angry federal prosecutors and state legislators from his own Democratic party who want to strip him of the emergency powers he was granted during the pandemic. Andrew Cuomo holds a press conference in Manhasset, New York, on May 6, 2020. Photo: Lev Radin / Pacific Press / Rex / Shutterstock As for emotion, there is still a lot of that. But it’s not like “Matilda, I miss you”. One of the New York Democrats who signed a letter calling for the withdrawal of Cuomo’s emergency powers told the New York Post that last week he received an unexpected call from the governor. According to Ron Kim, a deputy from Queens in New York City, the call started with silence before Cuomo said, “Mr. Kim, are you an honorable man?” He then started yelling on the phone with Kim for 10 minutes, shouting, “You will be destroyed” and “You will be finished”. When the Post report was published, Cuomo responded by dedicating much of his briefing to the press to a total attack on Kim, accusing him of a series of unethical practices. The contrast between this week’s Cuomo free-attack machine and the teary-eyed empath he designed last March is so striking that it left many outside observers stumped. But for New York politicians who have been in Cuomo’s orbit for years, it was as surprising as the spaghetti with meatballs that the governor likes to prepare for every family Sunday dinner. “Meet Governor Cuomo that we’ve known all along, behind the Emmy-winning performance he has been presenting for months,” was how Jumaane Williams, the New York City public defender, put it on Twitter this week. The pandemic exposed many things, and this is one of them Jumaane Williams, The Guardian, asked Williams, who acts as an official watchdog for New Yorkers, to clarify. “The pandemic has exposed many things, and this is one of them,” he said. “It’s like a secret that Cuomo has so far escaped – his lack of responsibility, the way he responds to political winds only when forced.” Ironically, the area that left Cuomo in such warm waters is precisely the area that inspired his tearful ad in honor of his mother – caring for older and vulnerable New Yorkers during the pandemic. Three days after executing Matilda’s Law, he created a new clause protecting hospital and nursing home executives from potential responsibility for decisions that could lead to Covid’s death. As journalist David Sirota at the Guardian noted, Cuomo received more than $ 2 million from the Greater New York Hospital Association and its associate executives and lobbying firms – the same healthcare industry group that claims to have “drafted” the immunity. The provision of immunity has had a detrimental impact on the ongoing investigation into Covid’s deaths in New York’s nursing homes, which accounted for nearly a third of the total death toll of around 46,000. In a fulminating report released by state attorney general Letitia James last month, she said it created confusion about whether homes that did not meet health standards to contain the pandemic could be held responsible. James demanded that the new immunity rules be eliminated. That was not the end of it. Two days after creating the immunity clause – five days after announcing the Matilda Law – Cuomo issued an advisory notice. He advised nursing homes to accept patients who were infected or who might be infected with the coronavirus back from the hospital. Residencies had to admit anyone who was “clinically stable” – no resident would be denied readmission “solely on the basis of a confirmed or suspected Covid-19 diagnosis”. The motivation behind the warning was clear – there was an “urgent need” to expand the hospital’s capacity to handle Covid’s growing case. In other words, free up hospital beds by taking older patients back to their nursing homes. The rest is history. A New York Department of Health report found that, between the publication of the statement on March 25 and May 8, more than 6,000 Covid-positive residents were allowed to return to nursing homes and long-term care institutions. There has been much debate about the extent to which the March governor’s council was to blame for the large number of deaths in Covid’s nursing homes. When the Poynter Institute’s fact-checking arm, the Politifact, reviewed the issue, it concluded that Cuomo had not forced health facilities to receive sick patients, as his Republican detractors claimed. But Politifact concluded that the warning gave care managers the distinct impression that they had no option but to accept residents back. As with so many other political scandals in the past, the real problem with “Cuomo-gate” was not debatable mistakes that were made, but the lack of transparency about what happened next. This is what really bothers the public defender. “My problem with Cuomo’s leadership is not that mistakes were made – mistakes are always made. But if you can’t take responsibility for them and report what went wrong, then mistakes are made over and over and people are dying for it, ”said Williams. The confusion started with the Attorney General’s report last month, which revealed that the deaths of New York nursing home residents were substantially higher than that recorded by the Cuomo administration. Residents who fell ill and died after being transferred to the hospital were mysteriously excluded from the official count. Then the New York Post dropped a bomb. The newspaper reported that Cuomo’s top aide, Melissa DeRosa, admitted to Democratic leaders in a conference call that the government had withheld state legislators’ true death toll from nursing homes. Melissa DeRosa at one of Covid de Cuomo’s daily briefings in New Rochelle, New York, on May 29, 2020. Photo: Lev Radin / Pacific Press / Rex / Shutterstock DeRosa told them in the leaked conversation that we “froze” because Donald Trump was trying to use the deaths as a “giant soccer ball”. What started out as a dispute over health and immunity guidelines quickly turned into a complete cover-up scandal. In the wake of the Post’s history, the state revised its official count of 8,500 to more than 15,000 deaths – ridiculing Cuomo’s long ostentation that his state had one of the country’s best records regarding deaths in Covid nursing homes. On Monday, Cuomo was forced to issue a kind of apology. “We made a mistake,” he said, before quickly going on to clarify that the mistake was to create a “void” that “allowed misinformation and conspiracy” to flourish. But he stubbornly continued to deny that the death toll was massaged and insisted that everything that could have been done to save lives was done. The semi-excuse left many unsatisfied. “It sounds like the ‘I’m sorry I got caught’ kind of excuse,” said Williams. On Friday, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the Democrat who represents parts of the Bronx and Queens in Congress, added her powerful voice to calls for a thorough investigation into how Cuomo is dealing with the crisis in nursing homes. “Thousands of vulnerable New Yorkers lost their lives in nursing homes during the pandemic,” she said in a statement. “Your loved ones and the public deserve answers and transparency from your elected leadership.” The public defender wants even more complete accounting – a thorough investigation into all aspects of Cuomo’s response to the health crisis. There are leadership lessons to be learned here, he thinks – far less optimistic than those the governor suggested in the title of his book. Williams points to the start of the pandemic, when the state took several days to close schools and ban meetings; the classification of “essential workers” obliged to continue working and who, for the most part, came from black and Latin communities; and evidence of glaring racial disparities now only emerging in the distribution of the vaccine. “From infection to injection, the governor’s decisions were wrong in almost every step,” said Williams. “He writes a book about leadership during the pandemic and at the same time hides data and people are dying. The arrogance is incredible. “