Gov. Andrew Cuomo resigned over a barrage of harassment allegations Tuesday in a fall from grace a year after he was widely hailed nationally for his detailed daily briefings and leadership during the darkest days of COVID-19.
The three-term governor’s decision was announced as momentum built in the Legislature to remove him by impeachment. It came after New York’s attorney general released the results of an investigation that found Cuomo harassed at least 11 women.
Investigators said he subjected women to unwanted inappropriate behavior.
Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul, a 62-year-old Democrat and former member of Congress from the Buffalo area, will become the state’s 57th governor and the first woman to hold the post.
The #MeToo-era scandal cut short not just a career but a dynasty: Cuomo’s father, Mario Cuomo, was governor in the 1980s and ’90s, and the younger Cuomo was often mentioned as a potential candidate for president, an office his father famously contemplated seeking. Even as the scandal mushroomed, Cuomo was planning to run for reelection in 2022.
Cuomo still faces the possibility of criminal charges, with a number of prosecutors around the state moving to investigate him.
The string of accusations that spelled the governor’s downfall began to unfold in news reports last December and went on for months.
Cuomo called some of the allegations fabricated, forcefully denying he touched anyone inappropriately. But he acknowledged making some aides uncomfortable with comments he said he intended as playful, and he apologized for some of his behavior.
He portrayed some of the encounters as misunderstandings attributable to “generational or cultural” differences, a reference in part to his upbringing in an affectionate Italian American family.
As a defiant Cuomo clung to office, state lawmakers launched an impeachment investigation, and nearly the entire Democratic establishment in New York deserted him — not only over the accusations, but also because of the discovery that his administration had concealed thousands of COVID-19 deaths among nursing home patients.
The harassment investigation ordered up by the attorney general and conducted by two outside lawyers corroborated the women’s accounts and added lurid new ones. The release of the report left the governor more isolated than ever, with some of his most loyal supporters abandoning him and President Joe Biden joining those calling on him to resign.
Investigators also say the governor’s staff retaliated against one of his accusers by leaking confidential personnel files about her.
As governor, Cuomo touted himself as an example of a “progressive Democrat” who gets things done: Since taking office in 2011, he helped push through legislation that legalized gay marriage, began lifting the minimum wage to $15 and expanded paid family leave benefits. He also backed big infrastructure projects, including airport overhauls and construction of a new bridge over the Hudson River that he named after his father.
At the same time the behavior that got him into trouble was going on, he was publicly championing the #MeToo movement and surrounding himself with women’s rights activists, signing into law sweeping new protections against harassment and lengthening the statute of limitations in rape cases.
His national popularity soared during the harrowing spring of 2020, when New York became the epicenter of the nation’s coronavirus outbreak.
His tough-minded but empathetic response made for riveting television well beyond New York, and his stern warnings to people to stay home and wear masks stood in sharp contrast to President Donald Trump’s brush-off of the virus. His briefings won an international Emmy Award, and he went on to write a book on leadership in a crisis.
But even those accomplishments were soon tainted when it was learned that the state’s official count of nursing home deaths had excluded many patients who had been transferred to hospitals before they succumbed. A Cuomo aide acknowledged the administration feared the true numbers would be “used against us” by the Trump White House.
Also, Cuomo’s administration was fiercely criticized for forcing nursing homes to accept patients recovering from the virus.
The U.S. Justice Department is investigating the state’s handling of data on nursing home deaths. In addition, the state attorney general is looking into whether Cuomo broke the law in using members of his staff to help write and promote his book, from which he stood to make more than $5 million.
The governor had also increasingly come under fire over his rough and sometimes vindictive treatment of fellow politicians and his own staff, with former aides telling stories of a brutal work environment.
Cuomo has been divorced since 2005 from the author and activist Kerry Kennedy, a member of the Kennedy family, and was romantically involved up until 2019 with TV lifestyle personality Sandra Lee. He has three adult daughters.
He gained political experience early on as his father’s hard-nosed and often ruthless campaign manager, and went on to become New York attorney general and U.S. housing secretary under President Bill Clinton before getting elected governor in 2010.
New York has seen a string of high-level political figures brought down in disgrace in recent years.
Gov. Eliot Spitzer resigned in 2008 in a scandal. Rep. Anthony Weiner went to prison for an inappropriate relationship with a 15-year-old girl. Attorney General Eric Schneiderman stepped down in 2018 after four women accused him of abuse. And the top two leaders in the Legislature were convicted of corruption.
(AP)
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23 Responses
Its just a distraction from Mike Lindel’s cyber Symposium Look here not there
Whoever replaces him should learn from him to take a very pro medical stance and do everything within his or her power to save lives! Weather it means masks, closing Yeshivos and shuls or lockdowns. And if anyone is concerned about davening on yom kippur without a minyan if the situation calls for it, think what it means I don’t care about killing someone because I want to daven yom kippur with a minyan. Boy would you need a kaparah.
Good Riddance to the mass murder of 25,000 nursing home residents, and who shuttered Shuls illegally this past הושענא-רבה
widely hailed? he killed thousands of people by putting covid patients in nursing homes
I AM JUMPING WITH JOY
DONT ANYONE EVER START WITH YESHIVAS AGAIN
LET THIS SERVE AS A DIVINE WARNING TO ANYONE WHO WILL TRY TO USE DELTA-COVID TO CLOSE YESHIVAS AND SHULS
ברוך שפטרנו
I don’t know who the lutenanent governor is, but I doubt the next elected governor will be better than King Coumo. All Democrats are unreliable and evil.
Stevenn- you must be a Democrat. Also you are very good at copy and pasting. You have the same comment on Lakewood Scoop.
GO TRUMP
Now Letitia James can get back to what we elected her for, to go after former President Trump’s personal tax returns, dating back to 1978!!! What’s taking Mrs. James so long?!
Stevenn,
Even according to you the ones that are killing are the people that don’t get the vaccine
And they’re only killing themselves
That’s what happens when you start up with klal Yisroel. He didn’t just make laws against us. He openly said he was taking on the Jewish community. O and the mass murder just a side bar. באבוד רשעים רנה
@Stevenn dig a hole dip in the ground and go inside it. And I say this affectionally. Really. I don’t mean you any harm. But you’re too heavy. We just don’t have the patience to listen to your kind anymore.
@Stevenn dig a hole dip in the ground and go inside it. And I say this affectionally. Really. I don’t mean you any harm. But you’re too heavy. We just don’t have the patience to listen to your kind anymore. Sorry. Hope you’re not offended.
He is changing parties and will be running as a Republican to be the next president .
The GOP might even nominate him to the Supreme Court.
“Oh, how the mighty have fallen.”
He was arrogant, and callously interfered with Jewish prayers in Shul, and children’s Torah learning.
He ignored the fact that most of our community was already immune, and later he unreasonably limited prayers to 10 people, even if the Shul was as large as 10,000 square feet.
At the same time, he placed no restrictions on BLM protests. And did little to prevent looting.
Furthermore, as revenge for our vocally calling him out, he sent out his agents to unfairly dole out tickets for Jewish shops and Cheiders, even though there was nobody there except the owner or principal.
And worst of all, he commented that it’s not God that will end the pandemic (or something to that effect.)
I knew that it wouldn’t end well for him. But i had no idea it would be so swift.
He went from great popularity and power (and publishing a self-aggrandizing book, in which i doubt he thanked Hashem even once) to shamefully being kicked out.
Now he has a bit in common with Donald Trump.
But at least Trump wasn’t booted out before ending his term.
(And Trump still holds sway in the Republican party.)
כל הרואה סוטה בקלקולה יזיר עצמו מן היין
Another corrupt DemocRAT bites the dust. Burich Hashem.
Stevenn:
WHAT Brains would it take to think we would need to sacrifice yisddishkeit even more, when all the facts are pointing against your iditioc liberal philosophy of leading this State into misery!
Shame on us for having this ideology in our midst….
Bad day for the crazies on both sides. Cuomo is gone and nearly half of the Republicans in the Senate ignore Trump’s mindless rants about the infrastructure bill and vote in favor.
The democRAts should all be convicted.
So, will “they” be sure and impeach the rat anyway, post-resignation!?
Lock! Him! Up!
Signed,
The real President T.
meanwhile the ou the agudah and every other jewish institution supported him , why for money now all of a sudden they are willing to throw him under the bus, so they can get money from the next clown ,
I find it so interesting and predictable that the Democrats couldn’t summon enough interest in getting rid of this rasha for killing so many people, but instead went for the harassment issue with gusto. I guess killing innocents is something they are fine with as in abortions and and abundance of murders in their cities. Now, harassment is the cool issue to hang someone with when it’s politically expedient. Murder….meh. What hypocrites. Hope they all go down, iy”H soon.
He probably feels very confused. Political leaders have been engaged in such activities throughout history, and while our community has rules to make it difficult (e.g. yichud – its hard to cheat when someone is watching), the behaviors in question have almost always gone unquestioned among the goyim. If the society as a whole decides that such behavior is no longer tolerated, it will make it easier for frum Jews working outside the community (which in all fairness, is where the well paying jobs are).