Embattled New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo appears to have few friends right now, but he has stood by President Biden at key moments — meaning the new president could feel a sense of loyalty that will help his old friend survive.
Cuomo is facing multiple scandals, including sexual misconduct charges, that have led a list of prominent national and state Democrats to demand his resignation. But the governor, for now, appears to have an ace up his sleeve: a powerful political lifeline in the White House.
The president said in an interview taped Tuesday that if the allegations of Cuomo’s accusers are proven, the New York governor should step down. But those investigations could take months, meaning Biden’s comments give Cuomo’s political life some air. But the commander in chief had a warning for his old friend: “Yes,” Biden told ABC. “I think he’ll probably end up being prosecuted, too.”
“Somehow, Andrew managed to make whether he should stay in or leave about what the president of the United States thought, and he said, ‘We’ll wait,’” said Gerard Kassar, a political strategist and chairman of the state Conservative Party. “Biden provided him with his life vest.”
FORMER ALBANY REPORTER IS SEVENTH WOMAN TO ACCUSE ANDREW CUOMO OF SEXUAL MISCONDUCT
Seven women have accused the New York governor of harassment, and he is facing calls to resign from most of his state’s congressional delegation. In separate scandals, Cuomo is under fire for an alleged cover-up over COVID-19 deaths at nursing homes and group homes for people with developmental disabilities and for another incident in which a top aide he placed in charge of vaccine distribution used the governor’s office to gauge the loyalty of local officials.
“Unless something more comes out, I think Biden will not ask for his resignation,” said George Arzt, a New York political consultant who was press secretary to Mayor Edward Koch, a Democrat.
“Biden is an old-time politician and believes in loyalty, also believes there shouldn’t be a rush to judgment, and there is an investigation,” Arzt said.
Biden was at Cuomo’s side when he faced challengers from the Democratic Party’s progressive wing in 2014 and 2018, and he helped the governor secure federal funding for state infrastructure projects while vice president during the Obama administration.
Cuomo’s close personal and political friendship with Biden goes back decades. Both are long-serving centrists, with Biden as the rare politician Cuomo has shown deference toward, and whom his father Mario also touted over the years. Mario praised then-Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee Biden’s handling of a political fight over Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork, recommending him to speak at the next convention, typically a route to greater national prominence.
He was also briefly the beneficiary when Biden exited the 1988 presidential race. Andrew Cuomo, who later married into the Kennedy dynasty, a family central to Biden’s own political formation, has spoken of working with Biden’s late son Beau while both were attorneys general in New York and Delaware.
But that does not mean the duo is always in lockstep.
“You couldn’t have two more different styles of governing than Andrew Cuomo and Joe Biden on face value,” said Marc Molinaro, a Republican challenger to Cuomo in the 2018 governor’s race. “The president speaks about bringing people together and healing the soul of America. Andrew Cuomo has spent an entire career destroying the reputations, the livelihood, and the self-worth of others.”
The West Wing issued its strongest condemnation Monday, with press secretary Jen Psaki telling reporters that the president found the sexual misconduct allegations “hard to read.”
“Like everyone who continues to read stories, new developments seem to happen every day. We find them troubling. The president finds them troubling, hard to read,” Psaki said.
An investigation is underway, which Biden has said he wants to see play out. Intervening could prove harmful to the president politically, said historian David Greenberg, author of a book about presidential public relations spin.
“Biden has nothing to gain by entering this fray,” said Greenberg, explaining that the governor’s supporters are already irked by calls for resignation coming from New York Sens. Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand and members of the House delegation. “Why incur the voters’ wrath?”
Moreover, Cuomo’s enemies, who tend to be on the far Left or the Right, don’t like Biden, leaving little if any upside, Greenberg said.
“So why risk a miscalculation?” he asked. “If New York’s Democrats really want Cuomo out, they will impeach him. If not, he will ride out his term.”
Jay Jacobs, a Cuomo ally who chairs the New York Democratic Party, told the Washington Examiner that the governor’s biggest challenge ahead will be negotiating the state’s budget in two weeks. “Of course, the investigations are ongoing and they will determine whether he stays or has to go,” Jacobs added.
A senior Democratic congressional aide and former Cuomo campaign adviser said the state legislature is now pulling together an impeachment investigation headed by law firm Davis Polk.
“The rest of us are sort of in a holding pattern,” this person said. Meanwhile, voters in New York believe Cuomo “should be afforded the results of the investigation, and that he should not be forced to resign.”
Cuomo, who has denied the allegations, may be hoping to New Yorkers will heed his calls for due process.
Those around him say he harbored presidential aspirations through his last campaign.
“A lot of folks perceived his third term as, ‘Okay, he’s now matched his dad,’ which is significant for him personally, and that he was going to position himself to be the Democratic nominee in 2020,” this person said. “But that didn’t happen.”
Instead, Cuomo backed Biden in the race.
Molinaro said Biden’s loyalty could prove essential to Cuomo’s political survival.
“His opinion matters. Everybody knows that if this were not Andrew Cuomo and this were not a Democratic governor, there would be a much different approach from the White House,” he added.
Notably, Biden faced unproven allegations of misconduct from several women while running for president last year.
On Monday, the White House said Biden had not talked with Cuomo. The two spoke nearly every two days last summer as Biden campaigned for the presidency and Cuomo led New York’s coronavirus response. If Biden stays away, Cuomo’s political ambitions may still be tarnished irrevocably.
“Whether he could win another term seems doubtful, though it is too soon to say,” Greenberg said.
But the governor still holds the support of a majority of the state’s voters, according to a Siena College poll published this week.
The poll said exactly half of registered voters there said Cuomo should not immediately resign, while 35% disagree, according to the survey, which was conducted March 8-12. Fifty-seven percent of voters said they were satisfied with how he had addressed the situation so far.
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For Cuomo to leave office now, Biden would need to make the decisive nudge, several strategists said.
“It goes on until you get something where the president himself says, ‘This can’t go on,'” Kassar said.
