ANALYSIS | Andrew Cuomo just did the least Andrew Cuomo in the most Andrew Cuomo way possible

(CNN) – To any neutral observer, the situation was very clear: Andrew Cuomo had to resign.

The governor of New York was facing 11 allegations of sexual harassment by current and former state employees, verified by an investigation by the state attorney general. Many of his allies – and high officials – had left Leo. The state assembly was moving toward opening an impeachment inquiry.

There was simply no way forward for him, politically speaking. And yet the political world seemed to recoil in shock when Cuomo announced just after noon Tuesday that he was, in fact, resigning.

Andrew Cuomo, “political shark”

“This is really amazing”, tweeted Laura Nahmias, former member of the editorial board of the New York Daily News, following the announcement. “Anyone who has covered @NYGovCuomo knows that he is like a political shark. To stop swimming voluntarily, to voluntarily renounce power in this way, is like a small death.”

Andrew Cuomo, Governor of New York.

Cuomo left. Which, once again, was the right thing to do – the accusations against him suggested that the chief executive was acting totally inappropriate with those who worked for him – and the only option he had.

The fact that he has surprised people speaks to the reputation Cuomo has built over decades in public life – from his father’s campaign manager for governor to his time in the Clinton administration to his abandoned candidacy for governor in 2002 and eventually his three unrepentant terms as head of the Empire State.

“I am a New Yorker, born and raised here,” Cuomo said as he resigned. “I am a fighter and my instinct is to fight through this controversy because I really think it is politically motivated, I think it is unfair and it is false and I think it demonizes behavior that is unsustainable for society.”

Of ambition, resentment and tough politics

This is an overly generous reading of his career, both in and out of the governor’s office. All that “all I did was fight for the people of New York” stuff overlooks the ambition, resentment, and tough politics that Cuomo not only practiced but perfected.

Cuomo sexually harassed several women, says Prosecutor’s Office 6:03

(The fact that Cuomo resigned without apologizing and apparently unaware that President Joe Biden’s greatest achievement in his first term – a bipartisan deal on infrastructure – had just been approved by the Senate was something decidedly in Cuomo’s style.)

You see, for Cuomo politics wasn’t something he did. It was all he did. There was no separation between work and life. He was an obsessive man, who at his height was considered the best bureaucrat in the country, while at his lowest moments – the lowest we have seen them all in recent weeks – he was stubbornly incapable of seeing the truth when it repeatedly struck him in the face. face.

As he wrote The New Yorker on Cuomo in 2020, when he was at the peak of his popularity as a result of his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic in New York State:

“Here was a politician known as a man who doesn’t like people very much and who most people don’t like, at least in the way they would like, say, a colleague or a friend. … When people thought of him, they envisioned a calculating strategist, highly capable and somewhat grim, a man of relentless and ill-concealed ambition and intrigue – a government mechanic, it used to be said, in a nod so much to his understanding of the levers of power as well as his talent for tinkering with high-performance cars. “

Frustrated dreams of a fourth term

Cuomo was politics. Politics was Cuomo.

Governor Andrew Cuomo’s image grew from his handling of the covid-19 pandemic. (Eduardo Munoz Alvarez / Getty Images)

To imagine that he could ever voluntarily quit a job that, according to him, was the only one he really wanted, seemed impossible; do it right now, even more.

You see, prior to this series of indictments – and New York Attorney General Letitia James’s report – Cuomo was primed to run for (and win) a fourth term in 2022. (New York is one of the few states they have no term limits for their governors).

That would have placed him in the elite of the state; Nelson Rockefeller was the last governor of New York to be elected to four terms, although he resigned before the end of his fourth term.

The most important thing for Cuomo is that being elected to a fourth term would mean having done something that his father, Mario, could not do. While the eldest Cuomo was considered a front-runner in the 1994 campaign, he found himself caught in a Republican wave that was sweeping the country, losing to a little-known state senator named George Pataki.

Increasing pressure for Cuomo to resign 0:46

For young Cuomo, a fourth term would be a psychological departure from the huge shadow his father had long cast over the family. Yes, he would always be the son of Mario Cuomo. But he would have taken the family name – and the legacy – to a place his father couldn’t. It would be the culmination of a career and a life that he had spent marinating in politics, and without apology. It would be Andrew Cuomo, a man whose relentless ambition had long defined him, reaching that ultimate ultimate goal.

It was the collective weight of this entire story that kept Cuomo in denial for the past week. Which kept him insisting, publicly and privately, that he could overcome this latest challenge the same way everyone else had done: keeping his head down and working harder than anyone else.

Such was his arrogance that it blinded him to the reality of his behavior for several years. There are battles that cannot be won. There are behaviors that cannot be explained. Some lines that, once crossed, cannot be returned.

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