On Monday, Andrew Cuomo made his first in-the-flesh, outside-Albany public appearance in 12 days—well, it wasn’t truly public, in that stray civilians and reporters were conspicuously barred from attending. But the composition of the few people standing behind the embattled Cuomo was highly significant: 22 Black and brown New Yorkers. The tableau was thoroughly on-message considering the governor was speaking about the racial inequities in who has received COVID-19 vaccinations so far, and that he was standing inside the cavernous Javits Convention Center, in Manhattan, which is now a vaccination site. Yet the photo op also made enormous political sense: Black Democrats are a crucial part of Cuomo’s strategy to save his job.
After a month on his heels—reeling from stories claiming his administration hid the total number of nursing home residents killed by the coronavirus, then from accusations of sexual harassment, the most recent of which came on Tuesday—Cuomo is launching his counteroffensive. He will fight on two main, interconnected fronts. The first is inside Albany, where the leaders of the two houses of the state legislature have called on Cuomo to resign. Here the governor retains considerable power. He can reward or punish legislators during the current state budget negotiations, which are supposed to conclude by April 1. Cuomo has also pointed out, none too subtly, that legislators who are criticizing him sure wouldn’t like it much if ethical allegations against them were aired publicly. (The governor has apologized to Charlotte Bennett, one of his accusers, if he made her uncomfortable, and denied touching anyone inappropriately.)
The second theater of operations is public opinion. Cuomo insiders are provisionally encouraged by polling done in the immediate aftermath of former aide Bennett’s allegations that the governor was trying to sleep with her. Quinnipiac University and Emerson College polls showed drops in Cuomo’s favorability rating—but not off the table. “We’ll see over time, but this doesn’t suggest he’s bleeding out,” one Democratic strategist says. In the Emerson poll, men (44% disapproval) appear to be angrier at the governor than women (25%), though the poll’s methodology has been questioned. “It was bizarre to me to see it in focus groups at the time of the Supreme Court hearings,” the strategist says, “but older women were some of the people most turned off by the attacks on Brett Kavanaugh. With Cuomo, I think there will be a big generational divide.”
Cuomo’s relationship with Black New Yorkers has been consistently strong, with significant complications. The worst political embarrassment of his career, until this year, came in 2002, the first time he ran for governor. Criticizing George Pataki, the incumbent, as a phony 9/11 hero was a huge gaffe, but Cuomo also angered Black New York political leaders by jumping the line and challenging Carl McCall for the Democratic nomination. The combination sent Cuomo into the political wilderness for four years. As governor, Cuomo has raised the minimum wage and the age of criminal responsibility; he has also cut Medicaid budgets, which hurt hospitals serving majority-minority communities.
Now Cuomo is borrowing a page from the playbook used by Democrats in trouble: Hug Black Democrats as tightly as possible. It worked for Cuomo’s old mentor, President Bill Clinton, after revelations emerged about his treatment of Monica Lewinsky. More recently, Black voters rescued Joe Biden during the 2020 presidential primaries. In New York, Cuomo ran strong with Black voters in all three of his winning gubernatorial campaigns, and they stuck with him during prior turbulence. “There’s a reason why he’s won his last two primaries: the strength of his performance with Black and brown voters,” a Cuomo insider says. “They’ve stayed with him at other difficult times, and in the public polls his Black and brown support remains as strong as ever.”
In the past week the Cuomo camp has reached out to a range of Black New York leaders, including the Rev. Al Sharpton. “I’ve got a conference call tonight with my National Action Network leaders around the state, and I want to get a feel from them,” Sharpton says. “But on my radio show and at our NAN rally on Saturday, I would say 70% of the people are saying they ought to wait and see what happens with the investigation, which is the position I’ve taken. The Black community has always seen people in our community charged with things or accused of things that end up not being right, and we rallied around them. So a lot of it is consistency.”
This time Cuomo’s three main political obstacles happen to be Black Democrats. Carl Heastie is the speaker of the state assembly; Andrea Stewart-Cousins is atop the state senate. Both, however, have a much lower statewide profile with voters than Cuomo does—which is part of why the governor was so eager to have as many Black and brown faces as possible standing with him at the Javits on Monday, a day after the two legislative leaders backed his resignation.
The third—and, for Cuomo, possibly most worrisome—player in this drama is New York attorney general Letitia James. On Monday, James announced that she’d picked a pair of formidable outside lawyers to conduct the investigation into the sexual harassment allegations against the governor. The contents of their report will of course be key; so, however, will be the timing of the report’s release. Cuomo’s camp is hoping for later rather than sooner, giving him more time to attempt to demonstrate that he’s delivering on the economy and the pandemic, and to shore up his standing with key constituencies. If he’s able to pull that off with Black and female voters, it would have a collateral political benefit: undercutting any ambitions James might have to challenge Cuomo in a 2022 Democratic primary.
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