FROM OUR CORRESPONDENT
WASHINGTON The governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, does not yield: “I have never harassed anyone, I do not resign.” But his is now a national case. On Friday evening, the two New York senators, Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, called for his resignation. Schumer is the majority leader in the Upper House of Congress, a key figure in the party at this stage. Gillibrand is a point of reference for the «Me Too» movement, one of the few MPs to speak from the stage of the «Women’s March», on January 21, 2017, the day after Donald Trump’s inauguration. The two released a dry statement: “Due to the multiple and credible allegations of sexual harassment and inappropriate behavior, Governor Cuomo has lost the trust of his government partners and the people of New York. He should leave office. “
Schumer and Gillibrand join to almost all New York deputies in Congress: 16 out of 19. Among them Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Jerry Nadler, Kathleen Rice, Grace Meng, Yvette Clarke, representatives of different political orientations and expressions of influential African American and Asian-American minorities. Cuomo is also besieged in the Albany state parliament: 121 senators and local deputies, including 65 Democrats, are asking him to leave. It is a bipartisan camp that covers 57% of the elect.
The position of the sixty-three-year-old governor, therefore, it is increasingly precarious. At the moment there are seven women who accuse him of “harassment”, “sexual assaults”, “inappropriate behavior”. Six worked with him in the governor’s offices. All more or less with the same story to tell. Cuomo alternated compliments and embarrassing physical appreciations. But, above all, he stretched out his hands. We fish a testimony for all, that of Jessika Bakeman, chronicler of Politico New York in Albany, the administrative capital of the State of New York. Bakemen came out of the closet with an article published on Friday since New York Magazine. He tells a series of public meetings with the governor, his jokes, his own advances to reach this conclusion: “It is not that Cuomo spared the bullying attitude of the men in his orbit. But the way he “bullied” women was different. The way he touched us, the sexual innuendo was a way to instill fear. A textbook example for the definition of sexual harassment ”.
And it is on this line that in the Democratic Party the anti-Cuomo campaign is mounting. A need for ethical rigor, a cultural thrust rather than a political one. The parliamentary group asks to use the same criterion that in December 2017 forced Senator Al Franken, of Minnesota, to resign, accused of sexual harassment by seven women. On that occasion, 32 party comrades forced him to leave, on the initiative of Senator Gillibrand.
Cuomo seems convinced he can resist: “People know how to recognize political games; I will not bow to the logic of cancel culture (a form of prejudicial ostracism ed). Let’s keep the investigation going. ‘ The governor is referring to the file opened by Letitia James, New York State Attorney General. And this is the defensive line on which the Democrats still at his side have stood: we await the trial, we cannot crush a career without evidence.
Cuomo, however, risks being removed with an impeachment procedure by the local parliament. The governor tries to seek solace in the polls. According to the latest, led by Quinnipac, 55% of respondents are against his resignation. Attention also to the movements of the White House, which so far has remained equidistant.
March 13, 2021 (change March 13, 2021 | 21:53)
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