If you were betting that New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo would hang tough till the very end — that he would “have to be dragged off kicking and screaming,” to quote a not-so-wise man, you just lost.
As you read these words, Cuomo is delivering his rather windy resignation speech on the same major networks that hung on his every word during his daily COVID progress reports last year.
Cuomo has said in his speech that he will resign effective 14 days amid sexual harassment allegations, according to the Associated Press:
Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?
The three-term Democratic 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 sexually harassed at least 11 women.
“The best way I can help now is if I step aside and let government get back to government,” Cuomo is further quoted as having said.
Cuomo will be replaced by Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul, a former member of Congress, who will become the first woman to hold the post.
The pressure on Cuomo to resign has been mounting over the past week. Last Friday, one of his accusers who is known only as “Executive Assistant #1,” in Attorney General Letitia James’ sexual harassment report, filed a criminal complaint against him with the Albany County Sheriff’s Office. And Sunday evening the governor’s, top aide, Melissa DeRosa, said she was calling it quits.
The AP opines that the “scandal cut short not just a career but a dynasty,” noting that Cuomo’s father, Mario Cuomo, was governor of New York in the 1980s and ’90s. But in truth, Andrew Cuomo created the Moreland Commission to investigate public corruption, only to shut it down abruptly less than a year later amid allegations that he had obstructed its work.
And who could ever forget the 5,000 elderly New Yorkers who died do to his mishandling of the COVID pandemic as it applied to nursing homes? The sad answer to that question is “plenty of Democrats.”
