Up To Date with Ethan Callender Entry 19: All Wrong in Albany

 Up To Date with Ethan Callender Entry 19: All Wrong in Albany

CONTENT WARNING: This article discusses sexual harassment.

Andrew Cuomo, after a protracted and inevitably futile fight, has resigned as Governor of New York. This is amid a massive sexual harassment scandal that has been burying his career for a matter of months. It is a drastic fall from grace, relatively speaking, for a governor once foolishly championed by some (including myself) as a champion of handling COVID-19. He completely mismanaged that as well, as it turns out, but that was only the first few nails in his coffin. All the other nails come from this harassment scandal, and boy, is it a doozy.

One may wonder how this situation got the way it was, and to answer that, we take a trip to the distant past… of literally last year. Cuomo was on top of the world at this time, and he looked like a future Presidential candidate. In fact, some wanted him to jump into the Democratic Presidential race after most of the primaries had already happened. In hindsight, we should all be thankful that didn’t happen because that would’ve been really dumb then and outright cringeworthy now. However, the seeds of his downfall were already being sown, with the nursing home scandal making inroads at right-wing media. This was in addition to the first of several accusations of sexual harassment aimed at the Governor.

Now, on to the accusations themselves. These were detailed in an investigative report from the New York Attorney General, Letitia James. In brief, they show a pattern of workplace behavior which included inappropriate touching and frequent suggestive remarks. This behavior is akin to some characters on the famous TV show The Office (Todd Packer, for example), and is unacceptable in an actual office. Once this report came out, the writing was on the wall for Cuomo, and we all knew he was screwed.

The most ironic part of all of this is that a woman was his Lt. Governor, and she will now succeed him in the Governor’s office. Her name is Kathy Hochul. She will be New York’s first female governor, and she’ll have some cleaning up to do. Until then, though, Cuomo has two weeks to pack his bags. Given that his successor will likely pursue many of the same policies in terms of laws and actual governance, I doubt he’ll be missed.


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