So far, President Biden has made only a fleeting comment about the crises that have involved Governor Andrew M. Cuomo, and he seems to hope to avoid being pulled further.
But as a longtime friend of the New York governor, Biden is one of the only people in the country with the potential to avoid a prolonged standoff between increasingly isolated Cuomo and the rest of the Democratic Party. This hampered Biden’s efforts to remain firmly on the sidelines, while the governor faces a series of resignations.
Cuomo is facing a growing set of allegations and investigations involving sexual harassment, a toxic workplace, manipulating the death toll in New York nursing homes and perceived loyalty tests from the governor’s vaccine secretary.
Biden and Cuomo did not speak, people close to the two said. Asked on Sunday night whether Cuomo should resign, Biden just said: “I think the investigation is underway and we should see what that brings us.”
The governor and his allies urged people to wait for the results of the investigations to buy time, hoping to stabilize Cuomo’s support. And Biden seems inclined to give him that time – at least for now.
But a prolonged period of intra-party disputes over Cuomo’s future can be problematic for Biden. This threatens to divert attention from his early initiatives, including mass vaccination efforts and his party’s obligation to sell the nearly $ 2 trillion stimulus package that Biden signed last week to the public.
The New York Times and the Washington Post reported over the weekend that Larry Schwartz, the governor’s vaccine czar and a former lieutenant, attempted to assess the loyalty of county executives to Cuomo during calls about the distribution of the vaccine – drawing special attention to White. Home on Monday.
Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, said the reports were “worrying” and that Schwartz’s calls were “reported inappropriate behavior”.
The calls prompted an executive to file a preliminary complaint with the state attorney general’s public integrity office. Mr. Schwartz denied having discussed vaccines in a political context.
Ms. Psaki insisted that there were “checks” in the system to prevent the vaccine from being distributed based on favoritism.
On Tuesday, the White House will hold its weekly coronavirus conference with the National Governors Association, which Cuomo normally leads as the group’s president. “I would expect to get on the call tomorrow; let’s leave it to him, ”said Psaki.
Both New York senators, Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, asked Cuomo to step down last Friday, along with most of the Democratic delegation from the state’s Congress. One factor at the moment for members of Congress who made their announcements in quick succession was the desire not to overshadow Biden’s signature on the pandemic aid package, according to people involved in the discussions.
Mr. Cuomo was surprised by the statement by Mrs. Gillibrand and Mr. Schumer; he had believed that day that they would not join the charges against him, according to someone familiar with his thinking.
Still, the governor flatly refused to consider the resignation while questioning the motives of the women who accused him of sexual harassment, invoking “cancellation of culture”, one of the Republicans’ favorite themes, as he intruded on Friday.
“There is work to be done, and New Yorkers have elected the governor to do it,” said Richard Azzopardi, a senior adviser to Cuomo, on Monday. “He remains focused on vaccine distribution and a state budget that is due in two weeks, and we are grateful for the help that the White House has provided on both fronts.”
During the presidential campaign, Biden successfully avoided getting involved in controversies that were not directly related to him. But Cuomo’s intimidating behavior is blamed – not to mention sexual harassment – contrary to the standard that Biden set for his own White House.
Currently, there are two investigations into allegations of sexual harassment against Mr. Cuomo, one overseen by the Attorney General’s Office and the other by the State Assembly.
Biden and Cuomo followed different paths when accused of improper conduct. When Biden, in 2020, was accused of sexual assault by a woman who had worked in his Senate office decades earlier, he denied the charge but did not contest his motives. Cuomo defensively suggested that some of his accusers may have malevolent motivations.
A senior government official said Biden’s desire to stay away is partly motivated by his personal relationship with Cuomo and partly by pragmatism.
If he eventually gets involved, Biden’s options range from encouraging Cuomo to resign and asking him not to run again in 2022, as the governor has indicated he still plans to do.
“Biden has a long friendship with Cuomo, and I think he and [Nancy] Pelosi and others are clearly hoping that the situation will be resolved through this investigative process, and they are giving him a lot of rein, but how sustainable that will be over time is very questionable, ”said David Axelrod, former senior adviser to the president Barack Obama.
While it is an extraordinary move for Biden to intervene, there are precedents for a Democratic president getting himself into a complicated situation involving a New York governor from his own party. In 2009, Obama delivered a message through intermediaries to the then governor. David Paterson said he did not want him to run for another term the following year.
Paterson, mired in constant controversy, has become an unwanted distraction for the Obama administration; he soon announced that he would not run again, paving the way for Cuomo to run in 2010.
But there was a significant difference between Paterson and Cuomo: Paterson’s poll numbers were disheartening, with 21% approval in June 2009, and threatened Democrats to hold a seat that a Republican, George Pataki, had run for three terms, until 2006 .
Mr. Cuomo has much stronger support from his constituents. A new poll from Siena College on Monday showed that only 35% of New York voters want Cuomo to step down immediately (and only 25% of Democrats), although the poll was done mainly before the wave of congressional demands for he resigned.
Understand the scandals that challenge Governor Cuomo’s leadership
The three-term governor is facing two crises simultaneously:
Still, support for Cuomo has declined significantly since the high points of his coronavirus press conferences in the spring of 2020 – when he reached 71% approval – and even from February, when his approval among all voters was 56% in a survey by Siena College.
Its current approval rating, 43 percent, is lower than the disapproval rate, 45 percent. Among Democrats, however, their support remains high, 59%, the poll showed, and 61% among black voters.
Most state lawmakers – and more than 40% of Democratic lawmakers in Albany – have called for Cuomo’s resignation. The State Assembly launched an impeachment inquiry and, in addition to Biden, the politician with greater control over Cuomo’s fate is Assembly spokesman Carl E. Heastie, who will determine if and when to proceed.
Impeaching and dismissing a governor is a serious task, and Cuomo can expect it to be a huge leap, even for those who signed a letter calling for his resignation.
“Calling the legislature on the impeachment vote, he recognizes that voting for impeachment is a heavy vote for many,” said Bakari Sellers, a former member of the South Carolina House of Representatives, who voted for the impeachment of then Gov. Mark Sanford in 2009. (Mr. Sanford ended up being censored.)
“The state is about to get full of money from Covid,” said Sellers. “Better days ahead for the constituents. Wait until it becomes everyone’s favorite bank. “
Some lawmakers and their advisers were disconcerted by the statement that former delegation member Nita Lowey of Westchester made in defense of Cuomo, according to a person familiar with the matter. The members had a feeling that Lowey was inadequately “instrumentalized” as a shield for Cuomo, the person said, adding that while it was not the precipitating event for other members to speak on last Friday, it left an impression.
A member of the Cuomo family had contacted Ms. Lowey before her statement, according to someone else familiar with the events.
“This is ridiculous,” Mrs. Lowey. “I don’t get used to things like that.” She said she has known the Cuomos for decades, as they were neighbors in Queens.
Biden and Cuomo have been relatively close politically in recent years. In 2015, when Biden was considering a late running for president, they met in New York; although Cuomo was formally supporting Hillary Clinton at the time, he did not discourage Biden from running for the White House.
In 2018, when Cuomo faced a major challenge from Cynthia Nixon, the actress and activist, Biden offered a full endorsement to Cuomo at the New York Democratic Party convention.
Biden’s affection for Mr. Cuomo does not necessarily extend to the team level. The governor’s violent political operation has hit many people on its way over the years.
Biden chose Cuomo for a prime-time speech on the first night of the Democratic convention last year, at the height of the governor’s popularity. The pre-recorded address, which did not mention Biden by name until near the end, was handed over to the convention organizers with little opportunity for review, according to people involved in the process; they said the Cuomo team was among the most difficult to work with in planning the entire four-day event.
Mr. Cuomo’s political operation also featured a production bill that far exceeded other videos from similar conventions; Convention officials refused to pay the full amount.