“As a state legislator who served during Andrew Cuomo’s governorship and witnessed its collapse up close, I know firsthand that sending Cuomo to City Hall will not solve New York City’s challenges. It will make them worse.”
Andrew Cuomo at a press briefing in August 2021, shortly before he resigned as governor. (Flickr/Governor Andrew Cuomo)
As a state legislator who served during Andrew Cuomo’s governorship and witnessed its collapse up close, I know firsthand that sending Cuomo to City Hall will not solve New York City’s challenges. It will make them worse, especially under a Trump presidency, when we need principled leadership more than ever.
Many New Yorkers have a vision of Cuomo as an experienced statesman who appeared on our television screens daily during the difficult early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, filling a leadership vacuum left by Trump’s chaos and incompetence. But that vision is a mirage.
We know now that, away from the cameras, Cuomo was severely mismanaging the crisis. He directed staff to undercount the death toll and issued regulations to send sick patients into nursing homes, dramatically increasing the risk that they would spread the disease. I remember well because I chaired the oversight hearing exposing his lies.
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He also mismanaged the COVID Federal Emergency Rental Assistance program so badly that, a year into the pandemic, New York was the only state that hadn’t distributed a single dollar in rent assistance.
All the while, Cuomo was making government employees write his memoir and cashing a $5 million advance for a book deal. When he was investigated by the state’s ethics body for inappropriately using government resources, he sued investigators instead of taking accountability.
That self-dealing and disregard for the vulnerable wasn’t a bug—it was a key feature of Cuomo’s approach to leadership. His track record makes clear that his “experience” is rooted not in making government work better for working people, but in letting vulnerable New Yorkers down time and time again.
Take Cuomo’s history of workplace intimidation and sexual harassment. The U.S. Department of Justice and the state attorney general found him responsible for sexually harassing at least a dozen women. He’s since waged a vindictive legal campaign in an attempt to silence and scare the women who bravely came forward, including by subpoenaing one victim’s gynecological records. And he’s paid for those legal fees with $60 million of New Yorkers’ tax dollars.
Rent across this city is too high and homeownership has become an impossible dream for many. But during his tenure, Cuomo contributed to the city’s homelessness crisis by cutting millions in funding for a state rental-assistance voucher program. And despite begrudgingly signing laws to strengthen our state rent regulations—after having his hand forced by the legislature—he now says he would work to undermine renter protections.
By the way, those strengthened rent protections were only possible after Democratic candidates challenged and beat members of the Independent Democratic Conference—a group of senators who caucused with Republicans to keep them in power. Cuomo was actively involved in the formation of the IDC, encouraging it to maintain Republican leadership in the chamber to keep city Democrats out of power.
Our subway system is in desperate need of smart investment, but Cuomo oversaw the infamous Summer of Hell service collapse and defunded the MTA to bail out an upstate ski resort after a warm winter. Former MTA Chair Andy Byford, a global leader in mass transit, resigned after increasing tensions and interference by Cuomo in his work.
Mentally ill New Yorkers are forced to live on our streets, seek shelter in our subways, and cycle in and out of emergency rooms with no other place to go. But during his tenure, Cuomo worked to cut Medicaid and slashed hundreds of beds from the state psychiatric hospital system, exacerbating New York’s crisis of untreated mental illness and forcing cops to become de facto mental health first responders, a short-sighted decision that resulted in worse health and safety outcomes for New Yorkers.
Time after time, Cuomo failed to invest in safety net programs that support working families.
Take it as a sign: Cuomo isn’t interested in becoming mayor to make life easier for New Yorkers. He’s doing it to settle a political score and strong-arm others in government for the sake of his own power, even if it makes your life more expensive.
Now more than ever, New York City needs true, principled leadership, not a disgraced politician looking to make a comeback. Almost every other candidate in the June Democratic primary offers that leadership and has a track record to prove it. Rank them—not Cuomo—on your ballot.
Gustavo Rivera is a member of the New York State Senate, representing the 33rd District in the Bronx.
The post Opinion: New Yorkers Deserve True Leadership. That’s Not What Cuomo Offers. appeared first on City Limits.
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