Well, it finally caught up with him. Over there in The New York Post Bob McManus, the retired editor of the paper’s editorial page and a seriously astute observer of New York politics both at the state and New York City level, wrote this after New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced he would be resigning. The McManus headline:
The rise and fall of Andrew Cuomo, New York’s glowering heavy
Wrote McManus of Andrew Cuomo:
“Biographer Michael Shnayerson in 2015 described the younger Cuomo as ‘his father’s all-knowing, all-purpose henchman … his father’s heavy,’ adding: ‘He was a nasty piece of work … You do not want him mad at you. He takes no prisoners.’
But while Mario brought subtlety to governance, his son never even tried; instead, rancor ruled. So while Andrew never lacked for allies in New York’s thoroughly transactional political environment, he had few, if any, reliable friends.”
Andrew Cuomo is no political dope. So it astounds that he had zero understanding that when you spend a career bullying people and being abusive, somewhere along the way this will catch up to you.
It has been remarkable to watch the parade of prominent New York Democrats abandon Cuomo at his maximum time of political peril. But they weren’t there for a reason.
Here’s the headline in The New Yorker…in February:
The Sound and the Fury of Andrew Cuomo Assemblyman Ron Kim was bathing his children when he got an unexpected call from the governor.
This jewel of political reporting on Cuomo’s behind-the-scenes behavior said this:
“Last week, Ron Kim, a Democratic State Assembly member from Queens, was preparing a bath for his three daughters—ages six, four, and two—when he got a call from the governor around 8 p.m. An hour earlier, the New York Post had published leaked details of a Zoom meeting between state Democratic lawmakers and Melissa DeRosa, one of Governor Andrew Cuomo’s closest aides. During the two-hour meeting, DeRosa seemed to confirm a suspicion that a number of lawmakers had had for months: the governor had intentionally withheld from them data confirming that thousands more New York nursing-home residents died from covid-19 than official numbers publicly showed. The lawmakers demanded an explanation, and DeRosa offered them one: last year, the Cuomo administration had been worried that Donald Trump and his Justice Department would use the numbers “against us.” “Basically, we froze,” DeRosa told the Democrats.
Kim, who has been a persistent critic of Cuomo’s handling of nursing homes during the pandemic, was in the meeting with DeRosa. A month earlier, he had become the chair of the Assembly’s Committee on Aging, and once the recording of the call leaked, the Post had reached out for comment. Kim told the reporters that, to him, DeRosa’s comments were as bad as they looked—“They were trying to dodge having any incriminating evidence,” he said—a quote that the governor’s office had tried to get Kim to retract. But the quote had stayed in, the story was up, and now the governor was on the phone, fuming. “I will destroy you!” Cuomo screamed, according to notes Kim wrote down after the call—which he shared with me. The governor was so loud that Kim’s wife and daughters grew upset, and Kim stepped out of the bathroom. “You haven’t seen my wrath,” Cuomo told him. “I will go out tomorrow and start telling the world how bad of an Assembly member you are, and you will be finished.”
And right there was a snapshot of Cuomo’s entire political career. This was his method of operation – period. Bad enough that his incompetence had resulted in the deaths of thousands of elderly New Yorkers placed in Covid-laced nursing homes. But he compounded his problem by first trying to cover it up-and then bullying Assemblyman Kim – a fellow Democrat at that – with screaming threats of political destruction.
There is no more certain recipe for political self-immolation than the combination of incompetence and bullying. American political life is littered with the political corpses of once-powerful politicians whose arrogance and high-handedness were mixed with an inability to do the job they were elected or appointed to do.
Much has been written about President Richard Nixon’s Watergate scandal. And anyone alive at the time recalls the tale of Nixon’s powerful senior staff members bullying anyone they perceived as being in their way, memorably including the reporters and editorial staff of The Washington Post.
Carl Bernstein, half of The Post’s investigating team on the unfolding Watergate scandal, called Nixon’s ex-attorney general John Mitchell, by then the chair of Nixon’s re-election campaign and one very powerful guy, to get a quote on a new scoop The Post was about to run. Publisher Katherine Graham wrote of what happened on the call:
“Mitchell exploded with an exclamation of ‘JEEEEEEESUS,’ so violent that Carl felt it was “some sort of primal scream” and thought Mitchell might die on the telephone. After he’d read him the first two paragraphs, Mitchell interrupted, still screaming, ‘All that crap, you’re putting it in the paper? It’s all been denied. Katie Graham … is gonna get her tit caught in a big fat wringer if that’s published.’”
Long story short, the once supremely powerful Mitchell wound up being tried and convicted of conspiracy, obstruction of justice and perjury, sentenced to two and a half to eight years for his role in the Watergate scandal, serving nineteen months of his sentence before being paroled for health issues. Once one of the most powerful men in America, Mitchell’s ego had brought him low.
Pick a political scandal and with an unerring certainty the behavior of the politician involved is always central to his or her downfall.
Andrew Cuomo is merely the latest in a long line of politicians whose ego got the best of them, and combined with their abuse of power, wound up in a political death spiral. A spiral that invariably ended with resignation, defeat and frequently enough imprisonment.
The Cuomo resignation is surely not the end of his spiral of political death. Criminal investigations are underway. And yes, it is entirely possible that Andrew Cuomo may end his career behind bars.
The question is will other powerful politicians get the message?
Answer here? No.
