Cuomo also faces a serious scandal involving allegations that his administration misreported nursing home deaths. It’s a remarkably swift fall from grace for a politician who was just recently seen as one of the nation’s strongest managers of the Covid-19 pandemic.
But Cuomo didn’t belong in office even before these allegations came to light, given that he is widely known to be a bully. Before the governor was last reelected, New York City public advocate Jumaane Williams, who lost his bid for lieutenant governor in 2018, described Cuomo’s aggressive behavior as “kind of an open secret,” while Cynthia Nixon, who ran against Cuomo in the Democratic primary, said, “We’ve all seen it: Andrew the bully. He bullies other elected officials. He bullies anyone who criticizes him.”
Bosses who foster cultures of fear and set expectations for punishing schedules create workplaces that are hostile to women — which also means it’s less likely that women’s views and issues will be well-represented in their offices. New Yorkers should have a hard think about their role in repeatedly reelecting a man whose overly aggressive behavior was well documented before these latest claims came to light. And all of us need to radically reassess the standards to which we hold our leaders.
I didn’t vote for Cuomo in the 2018 Democratic primary because I was concerned about his management style. Cuomo has a history of launching personal attacks against people who cross him. In 2018, for example, when public radio reporter Karen DeWitt confronted Cuomo about allegations of sexual harassment against a member of his administration and asked what changes he might consider to his office’s policies, Cuomo criticized DeWitt for what he described as a “disservice to women” by doing her job as a journalist and asking him the question. And he certainly doesn’t appear to have changed. Just last month, New York Assemblyman Ron Kim said Cuomo called him while Kim was bathing his children and threatened…
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