Source: Politics<\/p>\n
From all appearances, the implosion of Andrew Cuomo is near complete. Top aides are leaving his office<\/a>, and new revelations about his nursing home scandal continue to drip out<\/a>. Over the weekend, the newspaper of record in his adopted hometown called for his resignation,<\/a> while two<\/a> more<\/a> former aides came forward with accusations of inappropriate conduct.<\/p>\n On Sunday, Democrats at the helm of the state Legislature broke ranks, with the Senate majority leader, Andrea Stewart-Cousins, saying Cuomo \u201cmust resign\u201d and the Assembly speaker, Carl Heastie, suggesting that, for the good of the state, Cuomo should \u201cseriously consider\u201d whether to remain in office.<\/p>\n Yet if Cuomo\u2019s reign as \u201cAmerica\u2019s governor\u201d has come to an end, it\u2019s far less certain that his actual governorship is end-stage. Ralph Northam, the Virginia governor who was on a political death watch following his blackface scandal, survived. So did an on-the-ropes President Bill Clinton, in whose administration Cuomo served during impeachment, giving him an up-close look at how to survive the seemingly unsurvivable.<\/p>\n \u201cOne thing we\u2019ve learned from watching Northam and several of these others is if you just don\u2019t go anywhere, it\u2019s hard to get rid of you,\u201d said David Doak, a retired longtime Democratic strategist and ad maker. \u201cThe question is, can you withstand the pressure?\u201d<\/p>\n Cuomo is confronting the dual crises with a spartan circle of weary advisers, with some of his more tenured staffers moving in recent days to close ranks, appealing to wavering aides that \u201cwe\u2019re in this together, this administration has done great work and will continue to do so,\u201d according to a former administration official.<\/p>\n The Cuomo crisis management playbook now unfolding is essentially a repeat of Clinton\u2019s: Do everything possible to focus the public\u2019s attention on governing instead of the scandal, and hope to wait out the outrage.<\/p>\n \u201cGo buy some time, and hope that things calm down\u201d was how the official described the administration\u2019s current approach to overcoming the scandals. The strategy was reflected in a call Cuomo held with reporters on Sunday, in which he said state government has work to do and pledged he is \u201cnot going to be distracted.\u201d<\/p>\n Cuomo, who got his start in politics on his father\u2019s campaigns for governor in the 1980s, is well aware of the mortality rates of wounded politicians. As the New York governor himself acknowledged in his recent \u2014 and now widely mocked as premature \u2014 book about \u201cleadership lessons\u201d from the coronavirus pandemic, \u201cdead politicians don\u2019t usually come back to life.\u201d<\/p>\n But a Quinnipiac Poll last week<\/a> showed some cause for hope for Cuomo: A majority of New Yorkers don\u2019t want him to resign.<\/p>\n Indeed, for most of his governorship, Cuomo operated as if made of Teflon \u2014 seemingly impervious to scandal. And it wasn\u2019t just his overbearing temperament that New Yorkers and Democrats across the country were willing to overlook. Among the catalogue of controversies Cuomo weathered: his former aide\u2019s bribery conviction<\/a>, \u201cBuffalo Billion<\/a>\u201d and his office\u2019s meddling in a high-profile corruption probe<\/a>.<\/p>\n The sexual harassment accusations and claims that Cuomo concealed the number of coronavirus-related deaths at nursing homes have hit him harder than any of those past controversies. The two scandals are mushrooming at the same time, and the issues they touch \u2014 the coronavirus and mistreatment of women \u2014 are both readily digestible and at the top of voters\u2019 minds.<\/p>\n In Albany, legislators have already moved to strip Cuomo of his emergency powers related to the pandemic (which Cuomo on Wednesday characterized as the result of a mutual negotiation, something lawmakers bidding to reassert their authority amid Cuomo\u2019s self-destruction quickly refuted).<\/a><\/p>\n Cuomo has not said whether he still plans to run for a fourth term.<\/p>\n One looming problem for him is that the fallout has metastasized far beyond New York. In Washington, the sexual harassment accusations are squeezing Democratic lawmakers who have been leery to interject \u2014 but for whom Cuomo has become a test case of fealty<\/a> to the #MeToo movement. Republicans at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Florida recently held Cuomo up as a joke, while Bill de Blasio, the progressive mayor of New York who is his nemesis, has been skewering his alleged behavior<\/a> as \u201cterrifying\u201d and \u201cperverse.\u201d<\/p>\n Cuomo, once accustomed to being asked whether he planned to run for president, was reduced last week and again on Sunday to telling reporters he won\u2019t resign.<\/p>\n \u201cWith Andrew, it\u2019s a cumulative thing,\u201d said George Arzt, a Democratic strategist in New York, noting that the nursing home and sexual harassment scandals are attracting constituencies from across the political spectrum. \u201cThe two together \u2026 it\u2019s his twin nightmares.\u201d<\/p>\n Still, Arzt said: \u201cIf anyone could get through it, it\u2019s Andrew. The man is a master tactician.\u201d<\/p>\n Chris Lehane, a former Clinton White House staffer who helped to manage the fallout from his impeachment proceedings, said that for a politician beset by scandal, the immediate priority is less to mount a full-throated defense than to ensure that \u201cwhatever position you establish early on\u201d is sustainable for the duration of the saga.<\/p>\n \u201cYour North Star\u2019s ultimately going to be credibility. Can you earn back trust?\u201d he said. \u201cIf you effectively do that, then you want to be able to buy yourself some time by using the processes that are available that, in effect, extend the time window on this.\u201d<\/p>\n Lehane wasn\u2019t speaking specifically about Cuomo. But that\u2019s exactly what Cuomo\u2019s done. While expressing contrition for acting \u201cin a way that made people feel uncomfortable,\u201d he said last week that he \u201cnever touched anyone inappropriately\u201d and that he \u201cnever knew at the time that I was making anyone feel uncomfortable.\u201d<\/p>\n In his book about leadership and the pandemic, Cuomo wrote that he viewed himself as living a rare \u201csecond life\u201d following his unsuccessful bid for governor in 2002. He planned to serve, he said, \u201cas long as the people will have me.\u201d<\/p>\n But that will largely depend on whether he can hold his grip on the party\u2019s power grid and maintain relationships with establishment Democrats who have so far calculated that getting along with the overbearing governor was preferable to getting on the bad side of a man who\u2019s been known to hold grudges for decades. And much of his fate will hang on an investigation by state Attorney General Letitia James into the sexual harassment accusations.<\/p>\n Cuomo\u2019s standing appeared to worsen significantly over the weekend. Before Stewart-Cousins and Heastie came out against him, the governor had the friable backing of almost all the state\u2019s top Democrats, who have said they\u2019ll wait for a report from the state attorney general before judging his political future. While neither Stewart-Cousins nor Heastie have had reputations as particularly strong Cuomo allies, they necessarily work with the governor to keep New York running. The state budget is due at the end of March, and it is typically negotiated by the two legislative leaders and Cuomo, who has in the past held outsize advantage in those talks.<\/p>\n Calls for resignation have come from dozens of rank-and-file members in both chambers, and it is possible that Stewart-Cousins\u2019 statement will open the door for even more legislators to speak up. But that doesn\u2019t necessarily mean that they will take formal action against the governor before his term is up, said Hank Sheinkopf, a longtime Democratic strategist who has advised Cuomo in the past.<\/p>\n \u201cLegislative leadership responds to Senate and Assembly members and must appear independent of the governor,\u201d he said. \u201cThus Stewart-Cousins and Heastie are doing exactly what they must do. Added benefit: they both will appear unified and tougher during budget negotiations. Their play is tactical. You\u2019ll know it\u2019s over if impeachment proceedings start.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s possible Cuomo\u2019s call with reporters on Sunday, in which he said \u201cthere is no way I resign\u201d and noted that he was elected by people, not politicians, was a preemptive strike to the statements he knew or suspected were coming, Sheinkopf added.<\/p>\n In the meantime, coverage of his dual scandals has been nonstop. Rebecca Katz, a consultant who advised Cynthia Nixon in her primary campaign against the New York governor in 2018, called it \u201cthe worst press he\u2019s ever gotten.\u201d<\/p>\n In the past, Katz said, negative publicity \u201cnever stuck\u201d to Cuomo. But with the avalanche of news about the nursing home and sexual harassment scandals, \u201cPeople get it now. \u2026They know he\u2019s a bully.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAndrew Cuomo is one of the meanest, most vindictive public officials in America,\u201d Katz said. \u201cIf there\u2019s a way to use his power to hurt or squash people, he will. The question remains, does it backfire now?\u201d<\/p>\n The governor\u2019s office did not respond to requests for comment for this story.<\/p>\n