Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand joined a growing group of New York Democratic lawmakers who asked New York Governor Andrew Cuomo to step down on Friday on charges of sexual misconduct and distortion of Covid-19 mortality data.
Increasing pressure on Cuomo by politicians from his own party raised questions about whether he will be able to govern effectively at a time when he was tasked with overseeing the state’s management of a complex public health crisis, including the Covid deployment. -19 vaccines and reopening companies safely.
It also showed that Democrats are willing to join the opposition against a prominent member of their own party facing charges of sexual harassment, holding their own members accountable in a similar way to the way they treated Republicans accused of misconduct.
“We commend the courageous actions of individuals who have made serious allegations of abuse and misconduct,” said Schumer and Gillibrand in a joint statement. “Due to the multiple and reliable allegations of sexual harassment and misconduct, it is clear that Governor Cuomo has lost the confidence of his partners in the government and the people of New York. Governor Cuomo must resign. “
Also on Friday, 16 other members of the 19-person New York Democratic delegation – including House Judiciary Committee chairman Jerrold Nadler and progressive leader Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez – asked him to step down.
Representatives who did not explicitly demand his resignation offered little comfort to Cuomo. Representatives Tom Suozzi and Gregory Meeks said that if Cuomo did not rule effectively, he should step down. Meanwhile, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries called the allegations are “deeply disturbing” and support investigations into his conduct – but ultimately, they asked Cuomo himself to reflect on “whether he can continue to effectively lead the state”.
On the same day, New York magazine and the New York Times published investigations that indicated that Cuomo promoted a poorly managed and abusive work environment at the governor’s mansion. “In interviews last week, more than 35 people who worked in Cuomo’s executive chamber described the office as deeply chaotic, unprofessional and toxic, especially for young women,” reported the Times.
Currently, New York Attorney General Letitia James is overseeing an independent investigation into allegations of sexual harassment against Cuomo, which began when former aide Lindsey Boylan claimed in February that he kissed her on the lips against her will in 2018. Her statement was then followed by a series of other allegations of women’s misconduct, including a former aide who accused him of palpating her in his private residence and another aide who said that he actually made her proposals as he inquired about her life sexual.
This week, the New York State Assembly also opened an impeachment inquiry into Cuomo’s behavior in relation to allegations of sexual misconduct and evidence that he seemed to hide the true death toll from residents in nursing homes in the state caused by Covid-19. On Thursday, more than 50 Democrats from the Senate and New York State Assembly said Cuomo “has lost public confidence” and asked him to step down.
But Cuomo resisted growing resignations on Friday and described efforts to force him to step down as a “culture cancellation”. He denied harassment and abuse and remained determined about his intention to remain in office. “I didn’t do what was alleged, period,” he said during a news conference.
“I am confident that when New Yorkers know the facts of the review, I am confident in the decision based on the facts,” he said. “But wait for the facts. An opinion without facts is irresponsible. “
Cuomo’s political fortunes have changed dramatically since the early stages of the pandemic, when he projected quiet confidence to the public at press conferences that earned him praise among Democrats and even an Emmy. Now, the buzz about a presidential race in 2024 has been replaced by questions about whether he will survive his current term.
Cuomo’s allegations tested the Democrats’ commitment to dealing with sexual harassment
As Vox’s Anna North noted, Democrats sometimes seem more hesitant to act on allegations of misconduct against members of their own party than against Republicans accused of sexual abuse, such as former President Donald Trump or Supreme Court Judge Brett Kavanaugh:
When several women came forward in 2017 to report unwanted touches or kisses by Senator Al Franken (D-MN), several Democratic senators, including Gillibrand and the then senator. Kamala Harris (D-CA), asked him to resign. But Gillibrand, in particular, later faced a political setback to the decision, with donors moving away from it.
In 2020, when Tara Reade came forward to report that Joe Biden had sexually assaulted her in 1993, Democrats – including Gillibrand – largely defended him (a task made easier, perhaps, by the fact that Reade faced doubts about his reporting changes. of Biden’s actions as well as his earlier writings on Russia).
Now Biden is president, Democrats control Congress and Trump is no longer in the White House or on Twitter to remind Americans of the charges against him. And what Democrats do about Cuomo will, to some extent, be a test of how seriously they take sexual harassment accusations at a time when they are in power.
Increasingly, New York Democrats are signaling that they will not tolerate the types of accusations that Cuomo faces.
There are also other factors that contributed to the Democrats’ decision to push for Cuomo’s resignation. Before several allegations of sexual misconduct emerged, the scandal over the suppression of Covid-19 death data by Cuomo seriously undermined his reputation as an effective and reliable policy maker in his signature edition of last year.
Crucially, Cuomo’s downfall was accelerated by his bitter relations with New York Democrats long before any scandal emerged. For example, New York Assembly member Ron Kim said that after criticizing Cuomo’s handling of nursing home fatality data, he received a call from Cuomo during which the governor spent “ten minutes threatening my career and me ordering to issue a statement that would be used to cover the secretary of state. ”
As Clio Chang and Alex Shephard of the New Republic explain, many Democrats are fed up with Cuomo’s adversarial relationship with their own party:
Although the State Assembly has remained largely more loyal than the Senate, which is more or less in open rebellion, Cuomo has spent a decade in office intimidating, flattering and humiliating politicians who occupy these bodies. Part of what we are seeing now is revenge. Thanks in part to Cuomo’s decision to prevent a Democratic majority from taking over the Senate for several years, there is an extraordinary amount of bad blood.
Whether Cuomo will resign is an open question. But it is clear that his reputation and political capital were more fragile than commonly believed, and suffered a huge and irreversible blow.