Gov. Andrew Cuomo, New York’s three-term Democratic governor, was once one of the most popular governors in the country. Many had hailed him for his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. Unfortunately, in an ugly turn of events for Cuomo, multiple scandals are now plaguing him. Not only was it discovered that Cuomo had underestimated the number of COVID-19 deaths in the state’s nursing homes by as much as 50 percent, but at least six women have also accused the governor of sexual harassment and misconduct.
We’ll discuss both scandals briefly here, then move on to the implications of these scandals.
Cuomo had been celebrated for his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. In March 2020, New York (and the rest of the Northeast) was the hardest-hit region in the United States in terms of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the state (and New York City) made up the vast majority of cases at the time. Cuomo’s leadership and imposition of virus-controlling measures ultimately led the state and the nation’s largest city out of the darkest days of the pandemic, and helped the state avoid a surge in the summer in 2020. (Unfortunately, right now, the Northeast, particularly in the New York City metro area, is an area is suffering from stagnant rates of new cases—cases still remain stubbornly high in the area.)
The state had imposed a rule requiring nursing homes to take back residents who had been hospitalized with COVID-19 once they recovered, beginning last spring. Although there was an outcry over the rule because people thought it would increase the number of COVID-19 deaths among residents of nursing homes, Cuomo dismissed this as politically motivated and cited a report from the New York State Department of Health which found that the rule did not cause an increase in deaths in the homes, though it did find some issues with how the state reported a death due to COVID-19.
This January, the New York attorney general released a report claiming that Cuomo’s team had severely undercounted the number of deaths in nursing homes by 50 percent. This was because nursing home residents who were hospitalized and eventually died of coronavirus in the hospital did not count toward nursing home deaths. The report resulted in the state increasing the death toll of those in nursing homes from 8,500 to 15,000.
This scandal was made public after the New York Post published an article with leaked audio of Cuomo’s secretary apologizing to the state’s leadership team. The secretary said, in the audio, that back in August 2020, the state had intentionally withheld information regarding deaths in nursing homes over the fear that the Trump administration would use the information against Cuomo and help score Trump points in the 2020 election. A federal investigation over the scandal has now begun.
As this scandal happens, another more serious scandal for Cuomo unfolds. At least six women have now accused the governor of sexual harassment and misconduct. This has made Cuomo’s workplace “toxic,” according to a lengthy article looking at the sexual harassment claims published by the New York Magazine.
These women, all of whom worked for Cuomo at some point in the past, have accused him of inappropriate groping, using inappropriate language, kissing these women, inappropriate touching, made “humiliating” comments about them in front of other people, and asked personal questions about their sex lives, among other claims.
Aides, former officials, and other related people have also said that in Cuomo’s “toxic workplace,” tasks are assigned not based on people’s roles and titles, but rather on who Cuomo personally likes, resulting in an unprofessional and chaotic workplace, especially for young, attractive women. In fact, some women have been hired by Cuomo simply because the governor found them attractive.
Lawyers working for the state attorney general are now independently investigating these claims, and the New York legislature is looking at possibly opening an impeachment investigation into Cuomo. President Joe Biden has stated that he supports the investigation.
The backlash over Cuomo’s behavior has been bipartisan. Virtually all of New York’s representatives in the U.S. House and over 120 state assemblymembers and senators, both U.S. senators, and Bill de Blasio, the mayor of New York City, have called on Cuomo to resign. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has said that the women “who have come forward with serious and credible charges against Gov. Cuomo deserve to be heard and treated with dignity.”
Despite the backlash against him, Cuomo has resisted calls for him to resign, declaring that he was not going to resign before his term expired. For him, this seems to make sense. Though many high-profile national and statewide politicians have called on Cuomo to resign, many voters still do not believe that Cuomo should resign. A new poll from the Siena College Research Institute showed that 50 percent of surveyed voters believed that Cuomo should not immediately resign, compared to just 35 percent that said he should. In addition, 48 percent of voters believe that Cuomo can still effectively do his job as governor despite the allegations, compared to just 34 percent that believes he can’t.
In addition, 57 percent of voters are satisfied with the way Cuomo has addressed the allegations, and 60 percent of voters continue to approve of Cuomo’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, in spite of the nursing homes scandal (which voters gave him a low grade in).
And though Cuomo’s favorability has definitely taken a turn for the worst, with him now being in the net-negatives in terms of statewide approval and down to 59 percent approval from 78 percent among Democrats, he still isn’t that unpopular—yet.
Besides, until the results of the investigation are known, all those allegations are just what they are—allegations. Until they are conclusively proven, which could take a few months, Cuomo could do a lot of things to gain favorability with voters, such as controlling the pandemic through a vaccination campaign as the allegations go off the airwaves.
Cuomo will be next up for reelection in 2022 if he decides to run. FiveThirtyEight has published a great article outlining what could possibly happen in then. Basically, there are four possible paths that Cuomo could go down: either he resigns before his term is up, he retires at the end of his term, or he runs for reelection, and either loses or wins. Though it is unlikely he will resign, he could retire, which could save him from the embarrassment of potentially losing or being primaried.
It is also unlikely that Cuomo will lose to a Republican. The likeliest scenario which involves Cuomo losing is losing to another Democrat in a primary election. New York is just such a partisan state that it is simply unlikely for any Republican to win. If Democratic voters—which make up an overwhelming majority of the state’s voters—are given a choice between Cuomo and a Republican, it is hugely likely that they will continue to back Cuomo, despite the scandals.
Of course, Cuomo could possibly recover from the scandals and come roaring back in the 2022 elections. For example, Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam, a Democrat, faced a scandal back in early 2019 over how he was portrayed in a racist photograph from his 1984 medical school yearbook, but he recovered from the scandal and won reelection in late 2019 (Virginia holds elections in off-years). This could certainly happen to Cuomo—two years is a very long time, politically speaking.
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