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Cuomo Has A Long History Of Using Women As Props To Empower Himself, Critics Say
By
Brigid Bergin
Published Mar 3, 2021
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By
Brigid Bergin
Published Mar 3, 2021
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Governor Andrew Cuomo is facing an unusual set of circumstances for someone accustomed to running the show: he is playing defense as the state’s Attorney General prepares to investigate allegations of sexual harassment leveled by two women who used to work in his administration, with a third allegation of an unwanted advance from a woman he met at a wedding reception.
While Cuomo’s tightly held grasp on power appears to be quickly unraveling — with some calls for his resignation coming from other Democrats at the city, state, and federal level — the governor’s potential undoing stems from a series of personal actions in which he allegedly abused that power, leaving women feeling shaken, undermined, embarrassed and worse.
The reports stand in contrast to how Cuomo has positioned himself on policy matters, as a champion of women's rights. He was the man behind the Women’s Equality Party, who eventually signed the Reproductive Health Act and even pushed to extend the statute of limitations on allegations of rape, sitting flanked by leaders of Hollywood’s Time’s Up movement.
But critics say beneath the press releases and public appearances, Cuomo has actually appropriated feminism as a tool, positioning women as props in a political strategy that maintains his own power and control.
“The governor has provided a performance of feminism with himself as the poster child,” said Alexis Grenell, a Democratic political consultant and columnist for The Nation who has written about issues of gender and politics for nearly a decade. “That's what the Women's Equality Party was.”
In the summer of 2014, when the governor was seeking his first reelection, he invented a new ballot line, the Women’s Equality Party, and drafted his newly picked candidate for Lieutenant Governor, Kathy Hochul, to be its champion along with former City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, fresh from her defeat in the 2013 mayoral primary. Organizing the party was a chance for Quinn to reemerge in politics with a strong ally.
“For me, this is a great opportunity to help a friend who I think is amazing and one that has done things that have made my personal life better," Quinn told the Daily News at the time, invoking Cuomo’s support for legalizing gay marriage in 2011. Quinn married her partner, Kim Catullo, a year after that.
At the time, the governor faced a challenge from his left: Fordham University law professor Zephyr Teachout, who challenged the governor for the Working Families Party nomination and decided to primary the governor on the Democratic line. Throughout the race, Teachout said, Cuomo refused to debate her, to say her name, or to even greet her in public settings.
In a moment captured on a video that went viral, Cuomo’s staff, aided in a rare moment of comity with Mayor Bill de Blasio, managed to physically block Teachout from even shaking hands with Cuomo at a Labor Day Parade just days before the primary.
“He's shown sort of a deep disdain and lack of respect for anybody who challenges him, but in particular for women who are speaking up and challenging his power,” said Teachout.
Cuomo won that primary with more than 60% of the vote; Teachout secured just over 30%. He also won the general election and managed to score enough votes on both the WFP and WEP lines to ensure the parties would be on the next ballot, in 2018.
Since its inception, the WEP raised eyebrows among other women leaders, including State Senator Liz Krueger, who called its establishment a “mistake” and saw it as a potential threat to women’s leadership within the Democratic party, Politico reported.
That threat came to bear just two years later when Krueger faced a challenge from Michael Zumbluskas, who ran against her on the Republican and Women’s Equality Party line. Krueger won her race soundly, despite being forced to confront the very concern she had raised.
Beyond using women in electoral settings, progressive advocates say Cuomo’s support of the Independent Democratic Conference [IDC], a group of eight Democratic state senators who conferenced with the Republicans to give them control of the chamber, served as a major obstacle to enacting policies, like the Reproductive Health Act, a policy long supported by women’s advocacy organizations.
In 2017, during the first year of Donald Trump’s presidency and after millions gathered for the Women’s March across the country, advocates in New York directed their energy to securing passage for the RHA, which would update the state’s abortion laws to ensure women in New York would have access to full reproductive health care even if Roe v. Wade was overturned.
That spring, as advocates tried to pressure Cuomo to support the legislation, they began a series of regular lunchtime protests outside his office. In early May, representatives from a handful of the groups were summoned to a meeting with Cuomo’s counsel, Alphonso David, at the governor’s Manhattan office.
“We went in basically knowing that they were calling us in to give us a stern talking to and tell us to shut up. So that was not surprising,” said Danielle De Matteo, who attended the meeting on behalf of Forward March, an organization that formed as an outgrowth of the Women’s March.
De Matteo said what was surprising was that she said David told the group that they would put the power of the governor’s office behind fighting to pass the RHA, “if and only if we stopped demonizing the governor and the members of the IDC,” she said.
David, who served as Cuomo’s counsel from 2015 until June of 2019 when he left to lead the Human Rights Campaign, said that description of the meeting was inaccurate.
“In negotiating legislation, my goal was always to engage with advocates to present a full picture of what was possible under the circumstances and advise on courses of action that we thought was most productive.” David said. “I would never condition support for progressive legislation for political gain. And my personal history reflects that.”
After Democrats officially took control of the State Senate, defeating six IDC members without Cuomo’s support, the Reproductive Health Act passed at the start of the session in January 2019, 46 years to the day of the United States Supreme Court’s ruling in Roe v. Wade. The governor signed the bill that day, sporting a pink necktie.
State Senator Jessica Ramos, who defeated former IDC member Jose Peralta in a primary, said Cuomo has refused to negotiate in good faith with people who challenge him.
“This is someone who is highly insecure, a narcissist, and who is unwilling to productively work with others in a collaborative way that isn't bullying and isn't manipulation of people and facts,” said Ramos.
While a spokesperson from Cuomo’s office has not yet responded to a request for comment for this story, there is a list of policy achievements the administration can point to, including policies enacted to address women’s reproductive health, pay equity, elimination of gender-based pricing, with ongoing work to address maternal mortality and how to create recovery programs that address the impact COVID-19 has had on women.
He has women in top positions in his administration, most prominently Melissa DeRosa who has sat by the governor’s side throughout the pandemic, coordinating the state response. She serves as Secretary to the governor, the top appointed position in state government. She also chairs the state’s Council on Women and Girls and is behind recent legislative changes on domestic violence protections and increased access to in vitro fertilization.
At the same time, the issues raised in the recent series of allegations point to a disconnect between his public persona and his personal interactions with staff and acquaintances, some of which are now under scrutiny.
As an example, in 2019, Cuomo held a press conference at his Manhattan office flanked on either side by Julianne Moore and Mira Sorvino, two of the actresses from Time’s Up, a movement aimed at addressing sexual harassment and sexual violence, where he signed legislation that extended the statute of limitations for rape from five years under the previous law to 10 to 20 years, depending on the nature of the crime. The change gives people more time if they want to seek charges against their attackers.
In the press release announcing the law, the Cuomo administration described New York as “a national leader in the fight against sexual harassment,” and noted that the state had enacted new workplace harassment protections, “to ensure employees can seek justice and perpetrators will be held accountable by eliminating the restriction that harassment be ‘severe or pervasive’ in order to be legally actionable.”
That event was held in September, the same month that Anna Ruch told the NYTimes that the governor attempted to kiss her at a wedding.
Tagged
Governor Andrew Cuomo
Cuomo in Crisis
andrew cuomo
Brigid Bergin
Brigid Bergin is an award-winning senior reporter on the People and Power desk. She is fiercely committed to telling stories that help people engage and support democracy. In 2022, she hosted a live, ten-week call-in politics show ahead of the midterm elections called The People's Guide to Power. Brigid's reporting in 2017 included some of the first coverage of a political newcomer now known as AOC. In 2016, she broke the news of a voter purge in Brooklyn just days before New York’s presidential primary, triggering city, state and federal investigations. Brigid also guest hosts The Brian Lehrer Show and All Of It. She graduated from the University at Albany and the CUNY Newmark School of Journalism. Got a tip? Email [email protected] or Signal 917-723-4719.
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