What is it with Democratic politicians in New York? They love to parade their commitment to the most up-to-date progressive causes. They present themselves as outspoken supporters of the rights of women. They speak with passion about equal opportunity. They denounce sexism in all its forms. They know all the right gender-neutral terminology.
But when it comes to actually interacting with women, these avatars of modern feminism behave like oversexed aristocrats in a medieval European court, seemingly determined to exercise their droit de seigneur over every attractive female within their grasp.
Andrew Cuomo this week became merely the latest in a long line of Democratic leaders of the state that presents itself as a citadel of equal opportunity to find himself battling documented allegations that he treats women as his personal playthings.
In a damning report commissioned by his own attorney-general, Cuomo, governor since 2011, is reliably accused of sexually harassing at least 11 women. The accusers include a 25-year-old employee who recounted creepy episodes in which the 63-year-old divorced father of three inquired about her sex life, multiple women who claim the governor touched them inappropriately, and a state trooper who, after Cuomo had met her at an event, found herself transferred to his personal security detail and subjected to repeated uncomfortable physical encounters and a succession of suggestive remarks.
This all comes after Cuomo’s predecessor, David Paterson, decided not to stand for re-election following accusations he had tried to get a woman to drop a case of domestic abuse against her husband, a subordinate of the governor. His predecessor, Eliot Spitzer, resigned after he was caught patronising expensive prostitutes. Eric Schneiderman, the state’s attorney-general for seven years, resigned in 2018 after allegations that he had physically abused four women during sexual encounters.
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So much for gender equality. As long as they continue to mouth the right platitudes, it seems, these powerful “progressive” men think they can do more or less exactly as they please in their offices and hotel bedrooms.
For Cuomo, the attorney-general’s report represents another spectacular drop from the dizzy heights of a year ago when he was widely, if inexplicably, lauded for his leadership during the Covid-19 pandemic that hit New York first and hardest in the US. His daily press conferences then, in which he sombrely chronicled the scale of the crisis and spoke in homely terms about the state’s response, earned him predictably cloying media coverage and cringeworthy bouts of adulation from celebrities. He was nicknamed “The Nation’s Governor”, and, more improbably , the “Luv Gov”, as talk show hosts wondered out loud whether he possessed a nipple piercing.
It was all inexplicable because, even as he was delivering his daily homilies, his state was dealing with the consequences of his disastrous decision to order nursing homes to admit patients with Covid — a move that almost certainly led to the unnecessary deaths of hundreds of elderly residents.
In what must rank as one of the weirdest exercises in self-justification, Cuomo has issued a video that included a compilation of pictures of him variously grasping and kissing the faces of a dozen or more people in random encounters, supposedly to show that’s just how he is with everyone.
No one was impressed. Almost every Democratic leader from President Biden and Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House of Representatives, down to state-level officials has called on him to resign. It seems a majority of the state assembly members are ready to impeach him if he doesn’t, though whether they can muster the two thirds required to remove him from office is unclear.
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Beyond the sordid allegations and the picture of a bullying, narcissistic predator they paint, there’s a larger political dimension to the story. Cuomo’s fall from grace represents another big advance for the far left that increasingly dominates the Democratic Party.
The governor has long been a stalwart of the party’s dwindling centrist bloc. He’s a longstanding friend and ally of Bill Clinton (who’d have guessed?) in whose cabinet he served. He has clashed repeatedly with the left wing of the New York Democrats who have seized control of most of the commanding heights of the party — people like Bill de Blasio, the Fidel Castro-admiring mayor of New York city, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the firebrand young congresswoman from Queens. He has pushed back at efforts to weaken police forces and raise taxes, though he has of late increasingly ceded ground to the left on many big policy issues.
While no one disputes the integrity of the damning report, which was compiled by independent investigators, it’s surely no coincidence that the attorney-general who authorised it is a progressive rival of Cuomo’s. Letitia James is the first African-American woman to hold statewide office in New York and has made no secret of her ambitions to run for governor — and perhaps even higher office — herself. As attorney-general she has won plaudits from the party’s left for her pursuit of some of their favourite targets: the National Rifle Association, big pharmaceutical companies and Donald Trump, among others.
Just as his former boss President Clinton did when confronted with similar allegations a generation ago, Cuomo has insisted he will fight on. But these are different times. Intolerable behaviour will always be tolerated, it seems, as long as the political context is the right one.
This latest example of alleged Democratic lechery is unlikely to pass that test.
