Andrew Cuomo’s bullying has finally caught up to him
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) has had a rough couple of weeks.
His decision early in the pandemic to force nursing homes to accept COVID-19-positive patients morphed into a national scandal when it emerged that Cuomo’s administration hid the number of deaths in those facilities.
A browbeating phone call to Ron Kim, a Democratic state assemblyman, generated a new round of negative headlines about his well-known penchant for bullying.
On Wednesday, Lindsey Boylan, a former aide, accused Cuomo of sexual harassment. And on Saturday, a second former aide, Charlotte Bennett, accused Cuomo of sexual harassment as well.
It’s a stunning fall from grace for a governor whose daily televised press conferences during the pandemic won him an Emmy Award and the adoring moniker “America’s governor.” Media outlets fawned over him, and in a telling display of arrogance, he wrote a book about his leadership in the fight against COVID-19 only months into a pandemic that is still raging.
“At the very least, between the nursing home scandal and now [the sexual harassment allegation], what had been a great 12-month stretch, now no longer is,” said Bradley Tusk, a venture capitalist and political consultant whose firm is advising Andrew Yang’s New York City mayoral run. “You have a true moment of crisis for the governor.”
Cuomo has survived numerous smaller scandals and two progressive primary challenges since assuming Albany’s top post in 2011.
But this time feels different. It’s not every day, after all, that a Democratic Cuomo critic like Kim gets the chance to appear on ABC’s “The View” to tell millions of Americans watching in their homes that Cuomo is an “abuser” and a “coward.” [Continue reading…]