Why is andrew cuomo important

He has pledged to end the AIDS epidemic by He puts students first and works to ensure that all New Yorkers are empowered to achieve their dreams. A Healthier New York Governor Cuomo believes health care is a right, not a luxury, and has fought to expand quality and affordable health care for more New Yorkers. He is also laser focused on combating the opioid epidemic, making record investments in treatment services and increasing access to life-saving Naloxone.

Today, every New Yorker pays a lower tax rate than they did before he took office. He took action to change a largely flat, regressive income tax into a fairer tax system by adding additional brackets. Now New York has more private sector jobs than at any point in history. Governor Cuomo has fought to give all New Yorkers the opportunity to succeed. Cuomo endorsed Joe Biden D in the presidential election. Cuomo endorsed Hillary Clinton D in the presidential election.

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Click here for more on federal campaign finance law and here for more on state campaign finance law. On August 10, , New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo D announced that he would resign effective August Between December and August , a series of events unfolded involving Cuomo that resulted in calls for his impeachment or resignation from office. He said on August 10, "Given the circumstances, the best way I can help now is if I step aside and let government get back to governing.

Cuomo was the ninth governor of New York to resign from office and the th governor in the nation's history to do so. Click here for more information. The report stated that many nursing home residents died from COVID in hospitals after they were transferred from nursing homes and that these deaths were not reflected in the Department of Health's count of nursing home deaths.

On February 17, the F. Attorney's office began an investigation of the actions of Cuomo's task force in relation to the handling of nursing homes during the COVID pandemic. Cuomo said about the timing of the release of nursing home fatality data, "More than anything it was just a capacity issue. Between December and April 7, , at least 11 women accused Cuomo of sexual harassment or inappropriate behavior.

In February, James announced that her office would be conducting an investigation into the accusations. On August 3, James released the investigation report , stating that Cuomo sexually harassed multiple women, breaking state and federal laws in doing so. The report's executive summary read, in part, that Cuomo "sexually harassed a number of current and former New York State employees by, among other things, engaging in unwelcome and nonconsensual touching, as well as making numerous offensive comments of a suggestive and sexual nature that created a hostile work environment for women.

Cuomo responded to the report's release, stating: "I never touched anyone inappropriately or made inappropriate sexual advances. I am 63 years old. I have lived my entire adult life in public view. Phil Murphy D-N. After the attacks in Paris, France, on November 13, , many U.

Cuomo expressed support for the resettlement of Syrian refugees in the state of New York. He said:. Following the December 14, , school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, Gov.

Cuomo sought to make firearms policy a legislative priority in The legislation included restrictions on ammunition and the sale of guns, as well as provisions to keep guns from people with mental illness who made threats.

As a part of the legislation passed following the Newtown shooting, provisions were put into place that expanded bans on certain types of weapons and high-capacity magazines. The memorandum was signed by the Cuomo administration and the Senate's Republican leadership. I believe the law should be followed and implemented as intended. Gianaris D , the deputy Senate minority leader, said the agreement was unconstitutional. Republicans characterized the agreement as a win for Second Amendment rights in the state.

Cuomo's office stated the memorandum only codified an already existing delay in the implementation of the database provision in the SAFE Act and had no impact on the law. Ballotpedia is not aware of any personal political advocacy by this officeholder related to ballot measures we track.

If you are aware of any, please email us. Note: Please contact us if the personal information below requires an update. Cuomo was married to Kerry Kennedy, the seventh child of Robert F.

Kennedy, for 13 years until they divorced in They have three children together. New York voted for the Democratic candidate in all five presidential elections between and Ballotpedia identified counties that voted for Donald Trump R in after voting for Barack Obama D in and Mario Cuomo, Andrew's father, dies on Jan. His death came within hours of Andrew Cuomo being sworn in for a second term. In January, U. Attorney Preet Bharara's office announces Cuomo will not face charges for disbanding the Moreland Commission, citing "insufficient evidence to prove a federal crime.

Bharara, however, does bring charges later in the year against Joseph Percoco, one of Cuomo's top aides and closest friends. Bharara also brings charges against several people involved in Cuomo's marquee economic-development program, the Buffalo Billion. Cuomo's administration opens up the Rockland-bound span of the new Tappan Zee Bridge , marking a major milestone for one of the biggest infrastructure projects in the country. The governor cuts a deal with state lawmakers to name the new bridge after his late father — a deal that angered Hudson Valley residents who had grown accustomed to the Tappan Zee name.

Now, the bridge is known as the Governor Mario M. Cuomo Bridge, though locals still refer to it as the Tappan Zee. Cuomo wins a third term as governor, first defeating actor Cynthia Nixon in a Democratic primary before besting Dutchess County Executive Marc Molinaro , a Republican, in the general election. State Senate Democrats, meanwhile, win a clear majority at the polls, giving the party total control of the Senate, Assembly and governor's office the next year.

With Democrats in control, the Legislature passes and Cuomo signs a series of progressive-minded legislation that Senate Republicans had previously opposed. Among the new laws are voting reforms meant to improve turnout, a Reproductive Health Act that bolstered the state's pro-choice laws, and a measure making it easier for employees to sue their employer for sexual harassment.

His daily briefings and PowerPoint presentations gain an international audience as cable news networks broadcast them live each day. He makes frequent appearances on talk shows and news shows, including a CNN show hosted by his younger brother, Chris.

Cuomo writes a book about the early days of the pandemic and the state's response. In December, a former Cuomo aide, Lindsey Boylan, accuses the governor of sexual harassment.

Few details are provided at the time, though Cuomo denies the accusation. For months in , Cuomo and his administration refused to reveal the true number of nursing home residents who died of COVID in hospitals, instead only releasing the number of those who died in the homes itself. On Jan. Within hours, Cuomo's administration releases the hospital figure; the nursing home deaths climbs from around 8, to around 12, In late February, Boylan provides more detail about her sexual harassment claims , accusing Cuomo of kissing her on the lips without consent as she left a one-on-one meeting in his Manhattan office.

Several other women follow with their own claims of harassment or misconduct by Cuomo, including Charlotte Bennett , a year-old former aide who accuses the governor of asking her repeated, invasive questions about her personal life, including whether she would be with an older man. When alone in a room, she claims Cuomo reached under her blouse and groped her. After the report, the governor's office refers the incident to Albany Police as an obligation under state policy.

Cuomo denies the incident and, at the time, refuses to resign. Kirsten Gillibrand and 16 of New York's 19 congressional Democrats call on him to step down. Federal prosecutors in New York City are still believed to be investigating a state policy in March that pressed nursing homes to accept COVID-positive residents, an order that was overturned two months later.

And he seems to have saved them from the Kennedy curse. He put the iron in their souls. But everybody was at the table. Spaghetti and meatballs every Sunday. Can you imagine Trump stirring a sauce?

He seemed better than the other guys—the President a maniac, the Mayor a buffoon. But what would happen when people got to know the boyfriend a little better? Six weeks later, on the final day of May, Cuomo devoted most of his daily briefing to a different subject. The city was scheduled to begin opening up in a week. But augmenting the absurdity of our reality was the chaos that had broken out the previous nights in cities across the country, including New York , in the wake of the killing of George Floyd.

Police had beaten, maced, and mowed down demonstrators and journalists; rioters had looted stores and torched police vehicles. Another night of mayhem loomed. Now Cuomo had specific fixes in mind: independent investigations of police-abuse charges, transparency with police disciplinary records. His voice had attained that higher, singsong pitch it sometimes does when he is strenuously insisting on something, in this case the failure of the political establishment to fix the relationship between the community and the police and, more broadly, the long-standing inequities between white and Black, rich and poor, in education, housing, and health services.

It was an impassioned call from a mainstream Democrat for a new progressivism, which he depicted as long overdue. And not just because the next day he announced, with Mayor Bill de Blasio , a curfew for New York City, the first in seventy-five years, and a surge in the deployment of police, or because, in the nights ahead, the police went on a spree of violence against peaceful protesters.

It was almost as if he were calling himself out. Frequently, it was he who kept the freighter steaming straight ahead. The latest crisis drew new attention to the quandary of Cuomo: the Cuomo people see on TV and the Cuomo people contend with behind closed doors. Even before the death of George Floyd Mr. Much of this could be ascribed to the density and inequity of New York City, along with its airports, which served as the main ports of entry for flights arriving from the most infected regions of Europe.

Cuomo reminded everyone that the virus had ambushed us precisely because the federal government had paid it such scant attention. But even if one allowed for the fog of war, and the pieties of hindsight, many of the moves Cuomo made in the earliest days of the pandemic were indicative of a governing style often hampered by political calculation and personal pique. People came after him either for overreacting or for underreacting.

This was easy to parry. Cuomo credibly made the case that the ventilator and I. And the shutdown did flatten the curve, greatly diminishing fatalities and hospital overload. In a pandemic, you hope to be accused, afterward, of having overreacted. The underreaction critique was harder to shake.

Had his policies led to the needless deaths of thousands of nursing-home residents? At the peak of the pandemic, hospitals—especially the public ones—had been in chaos. The city was a hellscape of ambulance sirens and mobile morgues. How much of this could be left at the feet of the Governor and his health department, as opposed to the Mayor, or an inept White House, or a decrepit, jerry-rigged, money-sucking health system that was decades in the unmaking?

Declaring victory became a full-time job; admitting error was impossible. The war, as articulated by Cuomo and his staff, was one of ideas, between people who believe government can be a force for good and those who think otherwise. And yet, for Homo politicus , especially perhaps the subspecies Cuomo , what is life but a campaign? If he remained in office, it would be the longest tenure since that of the first governor, George Clinton, more than two centuries ago.

Cuomo reads deeply and calls in historians for discussions about his predecessors, even if he usually does most of the talking. And what about the White House? At one point, people were suggesting, impractically, that he be drafted to replace Biden on the ticket. He hardly slept these days—a few hours a night, mostly lying there, staring at the ceiling. What if Biden wins, what if he loses? This running mate, that one. He might have concluded that four more years of Trump, whatever the pitfalls, would enhance his chances in People who have worked with Cuomo say that he has at least considered this.

Andrew had a knack for the pulleys and trapdoors, the mirrors and smoke. Andrew has always denied any involvement, and even the existence of the homophobic posters remains in dispute; no one has ever produced a smoking staple gun. Decades later, Andrew would become something of a gay-rights hero, for his success, as Governor, in passing a marriage-equality law—a legislative equivalent of the upset in In spite of—and sometimes because of—his maneuverings, you want to root for him.

In profiles through the years, his almost unsociable fastidiousness has come up again and again, even as he chain-smoked Parliaments. The furniture in his apartment was covered in clear plastic. He used Fantastik to buff his leather couch. Cuomo has always had a chip on his shoulder, as a child of Queens and of Mario. The neighborhood was not Hollis, which was predominantly Black, or Hollis Hills, which was wealthy and white, but Holliswood, more middle class.

His mother came from a Brooklyn family that owned real estate in the borough and in New Jersey. Mario, as Andrew called his boss, was the son of Italian immigrants who had a corner grocery store. Mario graduated from St. Mario was a largely absent but highly demanding patriarch. As people can sense from watching the Cuomo brothers chirp each other, even the most lighthearted Cuomo-family trash talk comes with a tincture of grievance. The son logged some private-sector years, as a lawyer at a firm that did work for many of the big New York real-estate families, including the Trumps, and then started a nonprofit, called HELP , that built housing for the homeless.

On his first date with Kerry Kennedy, he took her to one of these facilities. Later, he asked reporters how his marriage proposal would play in the press. Before the wedding, Shnayerson writes, he decreed that there be no toasts at the reception and, in another break from Kennedy-family tradition, that no exes be allowed at Hickory Hill, the family compound in Virginia, where he and Kerry later took up residence.

Cuomo denies all this. He was perhaps at his best, and his worst, when he had an enemy. In , after Al Gore lost to George W. The putative Democratic nominee, popular with the Party establishment, was a courtly apparatchik named H. Carl McCall. Cuomo has denied saying this. As it happens, Bill de Blasio, a city councilman at the time who had worked under Cuomo at HUD , was one of the few Democrats who stood by him.

After Cuomo dropped out of the race, Kerry Kennedy told him that she wanted a divorce. Cuomo foundered in the doldrums of an apparent political and personal dead end. Some friends even reported glimpses of introspection. He vowed never to let such a thing happen again. Cuomo started over, and in he won the attorney-general seat that Eliot Spitzer was vacating to be governor. Spitzer, before doing himself in, amid a prostitution scandal, was bedevilled, from within his own party, by Cuomo, who as A.

In early March, as the coronavirus took hold, Cuomo got the Legislature to grant him sweeping emergency powers, which enabled him to unilaterally make or suspend laws. The effort had started innocently, weeks before, as a request for forty million dollars, to help the state prepare for the new virus. By the time the bill came to the floor, it was also, incidentally, an authorization of absolute power.

In the coming months, he issued seventy executive orders and signed some two hundred and twenty-five laws, including one granting him the right to make budget cuts. In some ways, the occasion was perfect for Cuomo. Someone who can exert command and control. This situation is tailor-made for a tactician of his abilities.

But you can no more repress politics than you can feelings. Later, as the state began to open up, various advocates argued that Cuomo should cede those powers. Members of the Cuomo team relish the resentment. Cuomo has said, and his people insist, that he is a great progressive. They cite the accomplishments: gay marriage, marijuana decriminalization, gun control, a minimum-wage increase, paid family leave. It was F. They were the progressives. You have to believe that the right thing gets appreciated in the long run.

Only the long run matters. As a so-called Clinton Democrat, Cuomo came into office, in the wake of the financial crisis, determined to cut spending and to bring public-sector unions to heel. At the time, Republicans controlled the State Senate, a situation that had the perverse effect of helping Cuomo neutralize his left flank, which consisted mainly of New York City liberals. The city has almost half the people, and more than half the money, but the state is vast and diverse, and a governor has to triangulate.

In , the G. In the next electoral cycle, the Working Families Party, a left-wing movement that started in New York in the late nineties, grudgingly agreed to endorse Cuomo, over his challenger, Zephyr Teachout , if he promised, among other things, to end the I.