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Flannery Amdahl’s memories of working for Andrew Cuomo are strongly at odds with the rock star status that the New York governor enjoyed last year.
“People were talking all the time about how he screamed, scolded and disparaged people,” says Amdahl, 37, who describes the governor’s office as the most toxic and abusive place she has ever worked.
“His team members copied this behavior, so I felt that I was treated that way by my supervisor. I think it was rampant and known: everyone in Albany talks about how nasty the camera is. “
As Cuomo goes from hero to zero, these complaints are just the tip of the iceberg. He is accused of covering up the number of deaths from coronavirus in state nursing homes. Amdahl, a former labor policy adviser, believes he should resign just for that. But it is the other scandal that consumes the three-term governor that offers particularly treacherous ground for national Democrats.
Four women came forward to accuse Cuomo, 63, of sexual harassment. Charlotte Bennett, 25, a former aide, told CBS that during an individual meeting last June, Cuomo’s questions led her to conclude that “the governor is trying to sleep with me”.
Another former aide, Ana Lis, 35, made a complaint on Saturday night, telling the Wall Street Journal Cuomo “asked if she had a boyfriend, called her a boyfriend, touched her lower back … and once kissed her hand when she got up from her table ”.
Before Lis introduced herself, Cuomo apologized for the comments that made any of the women uncomfortable by denying the inappropriate touch. Although an independent investigation is underway, he faces calls for resignations from Congressmen Kathleen Rice, a Democrat, and Elise Stefanik, a Republican, as well as Democratic state officials.
But no other national Democrats have joined the chorus. The Axios website called it the party’s “hypocritical moment”, arguing: “Governor Andrew Cuomo should face explicit calls to resign President Biden, if you apply the standard that Democrats have set for similar allegations against Republicans. And it is not a difficult decision. “
The double standards accusation points to a steep learning curve for a party that has struggled to keep up with changing public attitudes towards gender roles, power dynamics and sexual limits.
His hierarchy defended Bill Clinton about his inappropriate relationship with young intern Monica Lewinsky in the 1990s. But in 2017, while the #MeToo movement held powerful men to account, Kirsten Gillibrand, a senator who holds Hillary Clinton’s former seat in New York, argued that the ex-president should have resigned because of the case.
That same year, Gillibrand became the first Democratic senator to ask her Minnesota colleague, Al Franken, to resign on charges of sexual misconduct. She was accompanied by others, including Kamala Harris, who tweeted: “Sexual harassment and misconduct must not be permitted by anyone and must not occur anywhere. I believe that the best thing for Senator Franken is to resign. “
Franken did just that, but some critics now believe he was the victim of a rash trial and should have been allowed to wait for the results of an investigation.
This time, although Gillibrand said that Cuomo’s alleged conduct was “completely unacceptable”, she did not actually demand that he resign before the investigation was completed. It is a position shared by the other New York senator, majority leader Chuck Schumer, as well as by Joe Biden and Harris, now vice president.
Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, told reporters on Friday: “The vice president’s view is that she believes that all women should be treated with respect. Their voices must be heard. They were supposed to tell their story. There is an independent investigation going on now, being overseen by the New York attorney general, and she certainly supports that. “
But that puts Democratic leaders out of step with groups like the Women’s March, which was born out of the January 2017 protests against Donald Trump, who faced numerous accusations of assault and sexual harassment and was recorded on tape bragging about grabbing the genitals of women.
Rachel O’Leary Carmona, executive director of Women’s March, said: “Any man who makes women feel insecure at work should resign. This is our general position on harassment in the workplace.
“We share the opinion that there should be an independent investigation, but Cuomo himself has not even denied many of the allegations of harassment and, for us, this is disqualifying behavior. It may be illegal, but it also cannot be illegal. “
Carmona urged the governor to take responsibility for his actions.
“Cuomo needs to be the person who talks about it and the burden of his personal behavior should not fall on other people. However, the Democratic Party needs to set the standard here because women have been under-served, certainly for the past four years, and of course before. “
‘Sensitivities have changed’
Just as Cuomo’s instant deification and then instant demonization left many clamoring for nuances and complexity, it can also be said that no two cases of sexual harassment in politics are exactly alike.
Sometimes the allegations are decades old and happen before the accused is in charge. In Cuomo’s case, they are much more recent, implying that the governor ignored the lessons of #MeToo. Sometimes complaints are related to inappropriate touches or comments. Others involve rape or other forms of violence.
In 2018, Eric Schneiderman, a New York attorney general praised as a liberal advocate for women’s rights, resigned after being accused of physically abusing four women. Cuomo was one of those who called quickly to resign.
Later that year, Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh, almost derailed over Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s allegations that he sexually assaulted her at a party when they were both teenagers. Harris, then a member of the Senate judiciary committee, was praised by other Democrats for criticizing the judge during a tough political struggle.
In 2019, several women accused Biden of making unwanted physical contact. For example, Lucy Flores, a former Nevada state deputy, recalled a 2014 meeting in which he touched her shoulders, leaned down to sniff her hair and kissed the back of her neck. He released a video message that promised: “The limits of protecting personal space have been redefined. I understand.”
The parallels were unmissable this week when Cuomo, whom Anna Ruch claims to have put her hands on her face and asked to kiss her at a wedding in 2019, explained that she often greets people with a hug and a kiss, a habit acquired from his father, former governor Mario Cuomo.
“I understand that sensitivities have changed,” he told reporters. “The behavior has changed. I understand and I will learn from it. “
Last year, Tara Reade, a former Senate official, claimed that Biden sexually assaulted her in 1993. He vehemently denied the allegation, which remained unfounded and disappeared from the electoral dispute. Biden chose a woman – Harris – as his running mate and frequently highlighted his work as the main sponsor of the Violence Against Women Act.
His fate was very different from that of Franken, who has already been appointed as a candidate for the presidency.
Larry Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Policy and Governance at the University of Minnesota, said: “In retrospect, several Democrats in the Senate who pressured him to resign later expressed regret. They realized that they acted too quickly, did not know enough and the punishment did not really correspond to what they later learned to be bad behavior ”.
Jacobs added: “There is a learning curve and it is as much about understanding what happened as it is not being intimidated by Republicans who refuse to play for the appearance of decency. Remember Kavanaugh? They didn’t even investigate, and instead, you had [Senator] Lindsey Graham yelling at the committee.
“I don’t think the Republican Party is in a position to teach anyone how to deal with sexual harassment. They seem to have really gained real experience in how to avoid it. “
Cuomo, who was Bill Clinton’s Housing Secretary and last year delivered Emmy-winning Covid-19 briefings, has long been known to New Yorkers for his hard-hitting, boxer and old school style. While he fights for his political life – if he does not resign, running for a fourth term may become unsustainable – activists hope that broader lessons will be learned not only by politicians, but by society in general.
Emily May, co-founder and executive director of Hollaback !, a global movement to combat harassment, said: “As a society, we need to change the conversation from just looking at these high-profile individuals who create harm and really start to look at the ways in which damage is part of the everyday water in which we swim.
“Just because we fired Andrew Cuomo, Bill Cosby and Harvey Weinstein, that doesn’t solve the problem on its own. The biggest problem is still there: harassment is seen as an acceptable part of our culture. That is why so many of those in power are doing this. So, yes, we need to respond and eradicate harassment wherever it is, but we also need to keep an eye on the ball. “