Disgraced former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo couldn’t quit politics for long. He is beginning his political comeback just six months after resigning, and it isn’t hard to see a future in which the Democratic Party accepts him back once again.
Cuomo’s team launched an ad campaign this week, bemoaning the state’s loss of “a proven leader” in what Cuomo has said and his team continues to maintain was a political witch hunt. Cuomo has been taking victory laps after five district attorneys declined to pursue criminal charges against him for sexual harassment, even though many of them deemed those accusations credible, just not criminal.
In Cuomo’s mind, this is complete vindication. After all, nothing he did was ever wrong. Not repeatedly making women uncomfortable in the workplace. Not forcing nursing homes to accept COVID-19-positive patients early in a pandemic we knew was particularly deadly for the elderly. Not covering up that decision by deleting the executive order from the state’s website and then changing what was classified as a nursing home death to minimize the impact of the decision.
Cuomo was a saint, a brave hero from on high who was destined to save New York from COVID-19 and be viewed forever as one of the greatest governors who ever lived. His delusions of grandeur were made clear when he sold posters that were meant to depict how many people died of COVID-19 in New York as a form of self-promotion. He took a victory lap in October 2020 with a self-praising book, which my colleague Tiana Lowe politely described as “a deranged diary” with the “tact and prose of a sociopath.”
But his belief that he can return to politics as normal may not be as delusional as his view of himself. When he resigned in August 2021, 57% of New York Democrats still approved of his job as governor. His approval rating survived his nursing home failures and the allegations of sexual harassment up until New York Attorney General Letitia James’s report, which forced him to resign. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul has been hovering around 50% approval, which is lower than where Cuomo was throughout most of his scandals.
Cuomo was never going to go away quietly. Given that he was propped up as a “Resistance” hero and the top Democratic governor to heed on COVID-19, he could easily win back favor from New York Democrats. And he will certainly try: As the privileged and entitled son of a former governor and a near-lifelong leach on the taxpayer dime, he has nothing better to do.
