Columnist’s view
Chris Churchill says hits keep coming for Albany’s bully.
Andrew Cuomo’s team insists the governor didn’t threaten Ron Kim, the Queens assemblyman who has been a persistent and effective critic of the governor’s nursing home policies.
But nobody who follows state government heard Kim’s story and said, “Gee, that doesn’t sound like Andrew Cuomo.” The alleged threat to “destroy” Kim sounds exactly like the governor. It’s who he is.
For a decade, until the pandemic temporarily elevated his reputation, Cuomo was Albany’s leading bully, the secretive, scheming, petty narcissist who used fear and threats to subdue friends and opponents alike.
Some perhaps believed such distasteful pugilism was needed to wrestle New York’s anarchic government under control. If nothing else, Cuomo seemed
competent. He was reelected, twice, without breaking a sweat.
But now, suddenly, everything is crashing down around him.
The searing report released at the end of January by Attorney General Letitia James, the one that castigated the governor for dramatically undercounting nursing home deaths, was a watershed, perhaps because James had been considered a Cuomo ally.
It’s been a drumbeat of bad news for the governor ever since. The blows keep coming.
You probably know that a state judge said the Cuomo administration illegally ignored Freedom of Information Law requests for truthful nursing home information. You’re aware of the firestorm that erupted when a top Cuomo aide blamed a federal inquiry for the administration’s stonewall.
Last week, we learned the FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Brooklyn have launched a new probe into the Cuomo administration’s handling of nursing homes during the pandemic.
Lawmakers, increasingly frustrated by the administration’s intense gaslighting, are calling for investigations and threatening to strip the governor’s pandemic power. There’s even impeachment talk.
So, Cuomo was in real trouble even before he spent 20 minutes angrily assailing Kim at a news conference Wednesday, an assault that led the assemblyman to talk publicly about frightening threats from a raging governor.
“I will destroy you!” Cuomo screamed, according to Kim. “You haven’t seen my wrath.”
Who, other than raging megalomaniacs, talks that way? Why do we insist on electing such miserable people to positions of power? Why do they get away with behavior that would get anyone else fired?
After Kim’s revelation, other lawmakers stepped forward to say Cuomo had treated them similarly, which is no surprise around Albany. Ask three strangers on State Street for a Cuomo horror story and you’ll get a disturbing tale from each.
“Cuomo is an abuser,” Kim subsequently said. “He has abused his powers. Abusers are cowards.”
Kim, a Democrat who lost an uncle living in a nursing home to a suspected COVID -19 death, didn’t utter those words to the NBC affiliate in Watertown. He said them to the audience of millions watching “The View.”
New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, another Democrat, was speaking to MSNBC’S national audience when he declared that the bullying Kim described is “classic Andrew Cuomo” and “a lot of people in New York state have received those phone calls.”
Oh, how the tide has turned since Cuomo was a folk hero of the pandemic, the Emmy-winning, bookwriting talisman of COVID -19. All the glowing coverage has turned dark. The chickens are back and roosting in their cozy home.
Of course, much of this could have been avoided had the governor found the strength to admit that the March 25 order requiring nursing homes to accept COVID -19 patients was a mistake.
It obviously was, especially since the governor had already granted owners of the facilities sweeping legal immunity. An Empire Center report estimates the controversial order likely increased deaths by “a few hundred to maybe over 1,000.”
And much of this would have been avoided had Cuomo not spent months trying to hide the true toll of COVID -19 in nursing homes.
Only in New York, remember, did residents moved to hospitals before they died not count as nursing home fatalities. Instead of 8,500 nursing home deaths, as the state had dishonestly been reporting, there were more than 15,000.
Last week, after Cuomo launched his shockingly self-destructive attack on Kim, I mentioned to a state lawmaker that it was hard to tell if the governor was unraveling or simply no longer getting away with what he’s always done.
The legislator said it was the latter, which seems right. While Cuomo has been touched by scandal before — hello, Joe Percoco! — this feels like a turning point that’s far more dangerous to the governor’s future.
After all, this isn’t about political contributions or an ethics commission suspiciously disbanded. This is about nursing homes. This is about parents and grandparents. This is about the vulnerable.
Meanwhile, amid vaccine chaos and other mounting problems, it’s increasingly difficult to make the case for
Cuomo’s competence. And when that goes, what’s left?