The Guardian
‘Meet the governor we’ve known all along’: how Cuomo fell from grace
At the start of the pandemic, the New York governor found himself on the national stage with his daily briefings. Now he faces calls for his resignation and a federal investigation Andrew Cuomo speaks in Washington DC on 27 May 2020. Photograph: Jacquelyn Martin/AP On 20 March 2020, as the coronavirus pandemic was rampaging through New York, Andrew Cuomo announced new restrictions on home visits for older and vulnerable people. Unveiling the rules, named Matilda’s Law after his mother, at his televised daily briefing, the governor spoke passionately about the need for New Yorkers to care for one another. “Those three-word sentences can make all the difference,” he said. “ ‘I miss you’, ‘I love you’, ‘I’m thinking of you’, ‘I wish I were there with you’, ‘I’m sorry you’re going through this’.” It was, he later recalled, “a very emotional moment for me, and it was reported that I shed a tear. I do know that I welled up with emotion that day.” Cuomo’s Matilda’s Law moment – tears and all – was made for TV. Such displays of unrestrained emoting rapidly turned him into an American icon, the Italian American tough guy in touch with his tender side fighting for people in the heart of a dreadful pandemic. His daily briefings became obligatory viewing, pushing Cuomo to the center of the national stage as the empathetic antithesis to Donald Trump. The New York Times declared him “politician of the moment”, CNN fantasised about a “President Andrew Cuomo”, and even the far-right Fox News guru Sean Hannity heaped praise on him on his radio talk show. To cap it all, Cuomo, 63, got a book deal out of it. With characteristic hubris, he titled the work: Leadership Lessons from the Covid-19 Pandemic. What a difference a few months make. Fast-forward to today, and Cuomo is now facing calls for his resignation, an investigation by the FBI and federal prosecutors, and angry state legislators from his own Democratic party who want to strip him of the emergency powers they granted him during the pandemic. Andrew Cuomo holds a media briefing in Manhasset, New York, on 6 May 2020. Photograph: Lev Radin/Pacific Press/Rex/Shutterstock As for emoting, there is still plenty of that. But it’s not of the “Matilda, I miss you” variety. One of the New York Democrats who signed a letter calling for the withdrawal of Cuomo’s emergency powers told the New York Post that last week he received an unexpected phone call from the governor. According to Ron Kim, an assemblyman from Queens, New York City, the call began with silence before Cuomo said: “Mr Kim, are you an honorable man?” He then proceeded to yell down the phone at Kim for 10 minutes, shouting: “You will be destroyed” and “You will be finished”. When the Post’s report came out, Cuomo responded by devoting a large chunk of his press briefing to an all-barrels attack on Kim, accusing him of a slew of unethical practices. The contrast between the untethered attack-machine of this week’s Cuomo, and the teary-eyed empathist he projected last March is so startling it has left many outside observers bemused. But to New York politicians who have for years been in the Cuomo orbit, it was as surprising as the spaghetti and meatballs the governor likes to cook his family every Sunday dinner. “Meet the Governor Cuomo we’ve known all along, beneath the Emmy-winning performance he put on for months,” was how Jumaane Williams, the New York City public advocate, put it on Twitter this week. The pandemic has exposed many things, and this is one of them Jumaane Williams The Guardian asked Williams, who acts as official watchdog for New Yorkers, to elucidate. “The pandemic has exposed many things, and this is one of them,” he said. “It’s been like a secret that up to now Cuomo’s got away with – his lack of accountability, the…
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