New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has had a bad year and the hits just keep coming.
Cuomo one of the few politicians who offered up a semblance of reassurance during the early days of the pandemic is now watching his image and political career quickly erode.
Amid a slew of sexual assault allegations, a federal investigation into his administration’s undercounting of nursing home COVID-19 deaths, and reports of a structurally unsafe bridge named after his father, Cuomo now faces a fourth major controversy.
The third-term governor is accused of arranging special access to state-administered coronavirus tests for his own family members and other high-profile figures as the pandemic battered New York early last year.
According to The Washington Post, Cuomo’s administration dispatched a top doctor and other state health officials to his family member’s homes, including brother Chris Cuomo’s Hamptons home. The CNN anchor was diagnosed with COVID-19 last March.
The accusations of coronavirus testing corruption come on top of growing calls for his resignation, possible impeachment, and major staff departures in his administration all since March began.
Cuomo first came under intense scrutiny earlier this year amid reports that his aides had pressured state officials to undercount the nursing-home death toll in a July report. The Federal Bureau of Investigation has launched an investigation into whether the governor and his advisors provided false numbers. And The New York Times reported last week that federal investigators had subpoenaed Cuomo’s office for documents regarding the data.
Next came the allegations of sexual harassment, inappropriate touching, and cultivating a toxic work environment. Since his first accuser came forward, eight additional women have made accusations against Cuomo, including three former aides to the governor as well as two journalists.
Then, two weeks ago, a Times Union report found the Mario Cuomo Bridge has “structural safety” issues that could lead to its collapse that the state had known about for years.
Cuomo has rejected calls to resign even as they come from top New York lawmakers, including his fellow Democrats, saying doing so would be “anti-Democratic.”
The recent wave of events represents a dramatic departure from the status Cuomo enjoyed last year, when many praised his handling of the pandemic and his daily press conferences, especially in contrast to those of former President Donald Trump.
Cuomo even published a book in October called “American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic,” praising his own coronavirus response and saying, “we have seen how the virus is confronted and defeated.”
But his self-aggrandizement was premature.
New York wouldn’t experience its peak number of daily cases for another three months, during the country’s third and worst surge in COVID-19 case numbers, though deaths in the state never again reached the highs of April 2020.
And just as the third surge began to wane in February, the tide started to turn for Cuomo. It hasn’t turned back since.