New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo must resign now. It is as simple as that. At a moment when the country may finally be emerging from the Covid-19 crisis, New Yorkers cannot risk having the state’s top elected official embroiled in a lengthy investigation. Either of the two unrelated scandals facing Mr. Cuomo would be enough to seek his removal. His handling and subsequent cover-up of nursing home deaths as the pandemic began would appear on its own to be disqualifying. And, with a growing number of women going public with corroborated accounts of unwanted advances, insinuations, and physical contact, his remaining in office should not be an option.
Attorney General Letitia James began the first steps of an inquiry this week into claims by two former members of the governor’s staff who reported inappropriate encounters. Lindsey Boylan left her job as deputy secretary of the state’s economic development agency in 2018 after enduring about two years of harassment. She described incidents including an unsolicited kiss on the lips from Mr. Cuomo while they were in his Manhattan office and once, on a state airplane, an invitation to play strip poker. Mr. Cuomo denied Ms. Boylan’s allegations, which she described in a detailed essay published just over a week ago. Initially, she had taken to Twitter, she said. “In a few tweets, I told the world what a few close friends, family members and my therapist had known for years: Andrew Cuomo abused his power as Governor to sexually harass me, just as he had done with so many other women.” It is worth finding her statement on Medium.com and reading it in its grisly entirety.
After Ms. Boylan went public about her experiences, Charlotte Bennett, a 25-year-old who had held an entry-level job in the governor’s office, reported receiving several romantic overtures from the 63-year-old Mr. Cuomo, notably asking her if she ever had sex with older men. His response to these details was that they were ordinary workplace comments that were misinterpreted as “an unwanted flirtation.” This is a ludicrous excuse, especially in a state that requires annual workplace anti-harassment training, part of a law that Mr. Cuomo himself signed and boasted about as a grand achievement. Meanwhile he was, behind the scenes, intentionally abusing his power to try to get sexual favors from subordinates.
The incidents appear to meet and go well beyond the threshold of New York’s definitions of illegal harassment. According to the state, sexually harassing conduct can be “unwanted verbal or physical sexual advances, sexually explicit statements, or discriminatory remarks that are offensive or objectionable to the recipient.”
Then there is the photograph — an appalling image showing the governor cradling a young woman’s head with both hands, his fingers curling into her hair at the nape of her neck while at a wedding reception. In the photo, from 2019, Anna Ruch can be seen bringing her arm upward, as if to try to break his grip. The governor has his upper lip extended over his teeth, as if savoring the anticipation in the style of manner low-rent porn star. Ms. Ruch said that it was at that moment that he asked to kiss her, loudly enough that a friend standing nearby could hear. Have a look at the image yourself, if you have the stomach for it.
Mr. Cuomo should also spend some time with that photo, too, and ask himself if it is really worth putting the state through a protracted struggle of piggish self-preservation as he tries to stave off the inevitable. If he has any sense of decency at all, he must know that his career is over and that he has to step down now.