New York rivals seek to thwart comeback by Andrew Cuomo

The disgraced governor does not own property in his own name and he might struggle to find a place in the Big Apple.

Andrew Cuomo quit a week after the state’s Attorney-General issued a report into allegations that he had sexually harassed 11 women. Picture: AFP

As Andrew Cuomo prepared to relinquish office he still faced a possible impeachment, inquiries into whether taxpayer funds were used to write his book and ­potential charges over allegations of groping.

Bound for the political wilderness, it was not clear where the ­disgraced governor of New York would go.

Mr Cuomo, 63, does not own property in his own name and there were suggestions on Thursday he might struggle to find a place in New York, where the process often requires approval by a board which investigates the applicant’s reputation and character.

Mr Cuomo announced his resignation on Tuesday (Wednesday AEST), a week after state ­Attorney-General Letitia James issued a report into allegations that he had sexually harassed 11 women, concluding that the claims were credible and that his office had retaliated, unlawfully, against one of the women.

Calls for his resignation had come from President Joe Biden and from most of his fellow Democrats in the state capitol, where he was feared rather than liked.

Aides considered running a ­series of television adverts showing New Yorkers saying what a great job the governor was doing, according to The New York Times. The idea was discarded and soon even his own brother, Chris, 51, a CNN anchor, was advising him to go, the paper reported.

An announcement on Sunday night by Melissa DeRosa, his most senior aide, that she was stepping down, was said to have helped to make it plain to Mr Cuomo that there was no way of surviving the scandal.

In his speech he attempted to refute the harassment allegations while at the same time saying that he had been “too familiar with people”. He added: “In my mind, I’ve never crossed the line with anyone. But I didn’t realise the ­extent to which the line has been redrawn.”

He appeared to hope that his departure would halt the ­impeachment investigation.

Jay Jacobs, chairman of the state Democratic Party, has said Mr Cuomo’s camp previously suggested a deal in which he promised not to seek a fourth term if the ­inquiry was dropped.

It is still possible that he could be impeached, with the aim of preventing him from seeking office.

“We need to hold him accountable for the nursing home deaths,” Ron Kim, a Democrat from Queens, told the New York Post, referring to claims that a Cuomo administration order to care facilities to accept hospital patients led to Covid-19 outbreaks, and that his administration sought to hide the number of deaths.

He said suggestions Mr Cuomo had used state employees to help him to write his book on leadership last year also needed to be ­investigated, although another member of the state’s assembly told the paper it might not be necessary to impeach Mr Cuomo: given his status now, the concern that he might run again was no longer “something we need to worry about”.

Mr Cuomo has faced political exile before, when he crashed out of the 2002 race for governor; a setback that coincided with his wife Kerry Kennedy ending their marriage.

His return, a few years later, led him to the governor’s office where he had once served as an aide to his father, Mario Cuomo.

While in office he stayed at the home of his girlfriend, the ­celebrity chef Sandra Lee, but they split up in 2019.

Curtis Sliwa, 67, the Republican candidate for New York mayor, suggested he might find lodgings in his brother’s basement in the Hamptons, a space made ­famous when Chris Cuomo retreated there while infected with Covid-19 last spring.

“It will become like the Corleone compound in The Godfather,” the founder of the Guardian Angels, a non-profit organisation of unarmed crime prevention, told the Post. “Everyone checked coming in. Only friends. No foes.”

The Times