A few days in, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo is already having a terrible month. The New York Times has now published claims by a third woman accusing him of acting inappropriately – he’s already facing allegations of unwanted kissing, suggesting to a female staffer that they play strip poker, and a litany of other creepy behavior. None of the allegations thus far rise to the level of sexual assault, but Cuomo has already moved from total denial to apologizing for any actions “misinterpreted as unwanted flirtation,” which is about as slimy as fellow feminist Justin Trudeau’s admission that a woman he groped may have “experienced it differently” than he did.
These allegations do seem to be curiously timed. Just as Cuomo transformed overnight from Democratic media darling (with, I’m sure, the inevitable presidential aspirations that accompany such attention) to the governor who personally ordered a directive resulting in the deaths of well over 10,000 nursing home residents facing open revolt from fellow Democrats. Cuomo and his team had been trying to gloss over the fact that they lied about the number of deaths by saying that they were afraid that Trump and the GOP would make the issue “political” which, since Cuomo is a politician, is a profoundly stupid excuse. As it turns out, many in his own party can see that it’s a stupid excuse too.
It is worth noting, as Cuomo scrabbles to save his career as the literal and figurative Ides of March draws near, that the governor has been one of the staunchest abortion activists in America, known for openly antagonizing pro-life and pro-family New Yorkers. Back in 2014, he suggested that pro-lifers who disagreed with him might like to simply leave the state; when New York “flattened the curve” last year, he stated explicitly that “God did not do that.” He passed legislation that expanded access to both abortion and abortifacient drugs and demanded that crisis pregnancy centers, medical facilities, and even faith-based organizations recognize abortion as healthcare. He demanded that Brett Kavanaugh take a lie detector test (a standard he appears disinclined to follow.)
