New York hasn’t had a governor leave in dignity in years—and that is not a fluke.
For the 11 years Andrew Cuomo was governor of New York, he acted like a caricature of someone drunk with power, a boy-king gifted the position by his father’s name, greedy for acclaim and control. He grabbed everything for himself, literally and figuratively. He harassed and assaulted state employees and other women because he thought he could—and that no one would dare speak up. He retaliated against the smallest slight. He used state workers to grab himself a multimillion-dollar book deal. He lied about people’s deaths, trampling on the sacred with an entitled shrug. And he lied for the simplest and grossest of reasons: because telling the truth about nursing home deaths would take the shine off his glory, and cost him his book deal and his victory lap. Cuomo was a taker. He took power, and collected chits, and took credit wherever he could. He took credit for a fracking ban when activists who followed him everywhere forced him into it against his will. He took credit for the $15-an-hour minimum wage—after fighting tooth and nail against it. He took credit for criminal justice reform that he spent years blocking. He took credit for campaign finance reform that he hobbled. Wherever there was glory, he ran to the headlines and used his perch to take credit. And where there was shame—or should have been—he hid and pointed fingers. In the end, he has proven himself a predictable and dull tyrant, simply out for himself. The big Cuomo narrative that time has destroyed is that he was a jerk, but a competent jerk. The truth is he couldn’t even build a bridge that was safe. He was competent at tearing people down, but not at building roads, bridges, the MTA, fully funded schools, or sewer systems—the actual things a state needs to thrive. He left New Yorkers with gaping holes in our social fabric and immoral levels of inequality.
