Andrew Cuomo’s goose is cooked. Sorry, it really is. The three-term Governor (2010, 2014, 2018) was the darling of the left just one short year ago, when his news conferences on Covid-19 stood in stark contrast with Donald Trump’s lie-filled, self-aggrandizing, pandemic-minimizing news conferences. My God, Cuomo was getting better ratings than Trump!

Nursing Home Scandal

Early in 2021, it was determined that Cuomo had understated the toll of Covid-19 deaths in nursing homes by as much as 50%. Apparently, the problem was nursing home residents who were hospitalized who subsequently died in the hospital were counted as hospital deaths instead of as nursing home deaths.

From a legal perspective,  this doesn’t make a huge difference. It mostly skews the public health statistics. Cuomo’s initial defense was that if the true rate of nursing home deaths was reported that Donald Trump would have “politicized” the numbers.

Which he undoubtedly would have. 

It’s mostly a black eye for Cuomo because his early handling of the pandemic was so widely praised. At one point people were talking about him to replace Joe Biden as the Presidential nominee because he seemed so much more dynamic and articulate than Biden.

Sexual Harassment Allegations

More recently we had allegations of sexual harassment being reported against Cuomo by two different women. First we had Lindsey Boylan, a former aide for Cuomo (who also happens to be a Democratic candidate for Manhattan Borough president) who alleged, on December 13, 2020, that Cuomo had sexually harassed her. She claimed that Cuomo tried to goad  her to play strip poker with him while on a flight in October 2017 and that he forcibly kissed her on the mouth in his Manhattan office in 2018. Then, a second former Cuomo aide, Charlotte Bennett, came forward and alleged that Cuomo  asked her about her sex life, and inquired if she had been in sexual relationships with older men.

And then, yesterday another woman, Anna Ruch, who previously worked in the Obama White House as a photo editor, reported that Cuomo tried “forcibly kissing her on the cheek” at a 2019 wedding they both attended.

As sexual harassment allegations ago, this is hardly in Donald Trump territory. But they are problematic, and I wouldn’t be surprised if more women come forward in due time.

Cuomo has tried to take care of this by having his office initiate an internal investigation, but that is clearly not going to do the job. People have been calling for the Attorney General of New York to conduct an investigation, which Cuomo has now agreed to.

And, of course, Cuomo issued a “non-apology” apology (“if anyone was offended”).

Will this lead to an Al Franken-style resignation?

We shall see.

A lot of people are now of the opinion that Franken probably should not have resigned, given what Donald Trump (and other Republicans) have been able to get away with without any consequences.

But then, we’re not the Republicans.

Regardless, Andrew Cuomo’s whole firmament has changed in a rather brief period of time.