From the very first days of the pandemic, Governor Andrew Cuomo was a superstar. He was the “control freak” we needed right now, the face glowering from the covers of national magazines, and a hero to “Cuomosexuals” everywhere. Cuomo merchandise was hawked on Etsy. His favorability rating neared 80 percent. There was idle chatter about making Cuomo the Democratic nominee—and dumping Joe Biden.
All of that, in retrospect, was quite absurd, though the delusions were fed because New York’s governor had the greatest of all foils: Donald Trump. A fellow bruiser from Queens, Trump oversaw a response to coronavirus that was at turns incendiary and idiotic, as his federal government completely abdicated all responsibility in preparing for the worst pandemic in a century.
Each Trump lie—each ludicrous performance at a press briefing—only doomed him more during those painful weeks for America, and guaranteed any Democrat who could utter three consecutive logical sentences in a row would be elevated to the status of political demi-god.
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Now the Cuomo myth, belatedly, is coming to pieces. On Thursday, the New York Post reported that the Cuomo administration intentionally withheld data on nursing home deaths out of fear the Department of Justice, under Trump, would target them.
Since last summer, Cuomo’s Department of Health had been stonewalling state lawmakers and outside experts on the true number of people who died in New York nursing homes and health-care facilities, intentionally tabulating numbers in a way designed to suppress the tally.
Democrats are increasingly outraged, and at least 14 state senators have called for revoking the sweeping emergency powers Cuomo was granted nearly a year ago. This comes as New York continues to vaccinate at a middling rate, and was so slow initially that doses had to be thrown out.
There was a time, in March and April and May of 2020, when Cuomo’s fame seemed to increase in proportion to the number of people who were getting sick and dying of COVID-19 in his own state. It was an unsustainable dynamic because numbers don’t lie. Still today, even after successive national waves, New York has the second-highest death rate in America, trailing neighboring New Jersey, and an overall death toll neck-and-neck with California’s, despite the Golden State boasting twice the population. About 45,000 people, overall, have died from coronavirus in New York.
Why did so many people in New York die? There was the disastrous federal response, of course, and the vagaries of the virus. For all politicians and public health officials, COVID-19 was a challenge like none other. Even vaunted European countries with stronger public health systems than ours struggled to contain it. We must acknowledge, under such terrible circumstances, people were going to die regardless of what happened.
But New York made horrible mistakes that fueled mass death in March and April. Cuomo ignored calls from Mayor Bill de Blasio and other public health officials to institute a shelter-in-place order for New York City, even though San Francisco and surrounding counties had done so already with far fewer prevalent cases.
Though California was another COVID-19 epicenter later in the year, San Francisco never knew such carnage: remarkably, fewer than 400 people have died from coronavirus there since the pandemic began. (A Columbia University study would later find that New York’s decision to delay shutdown and social distancing measures cost thousands of lives.)
Before Cuomo was dismissing drastic measures to contain coronavirus, he was repeatedly downplaying the threat. As late as March 11, he was, like Trump, comparing it to the common flu, and he spent much of the crucial early days of March telling New Yorkers the fear of the virus was worse than the virus itself. He ignored public health experts and failed to coordinate on a proper response to the pandemic with city government. De Blasio was terrible too, urging New Yorkers to go about their lives as normal and working out at his local gym on the day it was set to close.
But de Blasio never wrote a memoir of his response to the pandemic during the pandemic. He was never feted by Ellen, celebrated by CNN and MSNBC, and made into an object of worshipful fascination. He never won an Emmy. He was properly pilloried, as Cuomo should have been.
The oddity of Cuomo’s star turn was that there were actual living, breathing politicians who rose to the occasion and tamped down deaths in their own states. No Emmy was awarded to Washington’s Jay Inslee, even though his trust of public health experts, early shutdown orders, and consistent messaging helped contribute to the low rate of death in his state, where fewer than 5,000 people have died. No national magazines rushed to plaster Phil Scott on their covers, though Vermont is tied with Hawaii for the lowest death rate in America.
The reckoning for Cuomo is coming sooner rather than later. Prestige media has wised up. The state attorney general, an old ally, is unafraid to investigate him now. It will be a new era for Cuomo, with re-election just a year away. This time, there won’t be a fawning media and political class to save him.
