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I said what these women have said must be treated with respect. They are credible and serious charges, and then I called for an investigation. I have confidence in the Attorney General of New York,

Pushed by ABC's George Stephanopoulos about whether she was calling for Cuomo to resign, the California Democrat responded: "I think we should see the results (of the investigation), but he may decide -- and hopefully this result will be soon -- and what I'm saying is the governor should look inside his heart, he loves New York, to see if he can govern effectively."

While Cuomo has apologized for "making anyone feel uncomfortable," the Democrat has maintained that he "never touched anyone inappropriately."

A majority of New York's congressional Democrats, including Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, have called on Cuomo to resign in the wake of the sexual harassment allegations and his handling of Covid-19 deaths at nursing homes.

"I salute the brave women who came forward," Schumer said Sunday morning. "There are multiple, serious, credible allegations of abuse so that Gov. Cuomo has lost the confidence of his governing partners and so many New Yorkers, so for the good of the state, he should resign." When asked whom Cuomo would listen to within the New York delegation, Schumer responded: "Look, I'm not going to speculate on the future, he should resign, he should resign."

Asked if her decision to call for Cuomo's resignation is "reminiscent" of her move to call for then-Sen. Al Franken to step down in 2017, when the Minnesota Democrat faced sexual harassment allegations, the New York senator pointed to the pandemic. "The thing that is very different about this moment in time is we are in the middle of the worst crisis of our lifetimes... and focused leadership is needed, and you need the support of your governing partners."

"I am not going to resign. I was not elected by the politicians, I was elected by the people," he said, insisting that "New Yorkers know me."

The lack of enthusiasm for Cuomo nationally was reinforced by how lukewarm his support was in his home state. When matched up against other political figures from New York early in 2019, just 17% said Cuomo would make the best president in a Quinnipiac University poll.

Cuomo's 2018 reelection performance was not what I would categorize as strong.

this is New York state in a very good year for Democrats nationwide.

Sometimes, though, the traits that make others perceive you as a bad leader in one context can make you be seen as a strong one in another context. One of the biggest negative adjectives normally prescribed to Cuomo is that he is "heavy-handed." That's exactly the leadership style that can work very well during a crisis.

The progressive Working Families Party endorsed his rival Cynthia Nixon of "Sex and the City" fame. Cuomo won that primary by a little over 30 points, though pre-election polling indicated that he likely lost among self-identified very liberal Democrats.

The 2018 election also marked the second time in a row where he faced a primary challenge from the left.

Giuliani's reaction to the 9/11 attacks made him a hero to many, as Cuomo's actions regarding the coronavirus pandemic has made him one to many. Of course, Giuliani wasn't ultimately able to transfer that popularity into winning higher office;

His 2008 presidential bid floundered

What happens eventually with Cuomo's political future is anyone's guess. For now, Cuomo is getting more plaudits than he has in a long time.

Cuomo's favorable rating jumped to 77%. Just two months earlier, his favorable rating had been 44% -- a paltry figure for a Democrat from a blue state. close dialogThe world is watching as the Biden administration takes office.Get updates on US politics delivered to your inbox daily. Sign Me UpNo ThanksBy subscribing you agree to ourprivacy policy.The world is watching as the Biden administration takes office.Get updates on US politics delivered to your inbox daily. Please enter aboveSign Me UpBy subscribing you agree to ourprivacy policy.Success! See you in your inbox.</

California was one of the earliest states hit in the pandemic, and most voters applauded Newsom's response. His approval rating among likely voters in Public Policy Institute of California polling topped out at 64% in May 2020. That was up from 52% in February 2020 and 49% in January 2020. Newsom, though, has been criticized for how he handled lockdowns and business and school reopenings during the last year

His favorable rating is down to 44% and a mere 36% of voters want him to run for reelection, according to a March Quinnipiac University poll. The one piece of good news for Cuomo is that most Democrats (60%) have a favorable view of the governor, a slim majority (50%) want him to run again in 2022 and just 21% want him to resign.

More prominently, Cuomo is dealing with multiple allegations of inappropriate behavior toward women. The attorney general's office is investigating the claims, and the state Assembly speaker has allowed an impeachment investigation to begin. Many state and federal officials are calling on Cuomo to resign.

Still, the fact that Newsom is facing a recall and that his approval rating is averaging only about 50% right now is not a great position for a Democrat in California. Of course, both Cuomo and Newsom are in better political shape than Trump. While Trump ended up losing the election, at least in part to his response to the pandemic, voters actually had rallied around him early.

By the summer, Trump's overall approval rating dropped into the low 40s. He consistently low on who would better handle the pandemic compared with Democrat Joe Biden, who's now president. Indeed, Trump may very well have won the election without the pandemic. His approval rating on the economy was better than that of any of the incumbents who had lost in the last 45 years before him.

“I now understand that my interactions may have been insensitive or too personal and that some of my comments, given my position, made others feel in ways I never intended,” Mr. Cuomo said in a statement. “I acknowledge some of the things I have said have been misinterpreted as an unwanted flirtation. To the extent anyone felt that way, I am truly sorry about that.”

“I understood that the governor wanted to sleep with me, and felt horribly uncomfortable and scared,” Ms. Bennett, 25, said. “And was wondering how I was going to get out of it and assumed it was the end of my job.”

The governor’s attempts to control the narrative and the course of the investigations quickly ran aground, as he was forced to retreat from a plan to have Ms. Bennett’s claims investigated by Barbara S. Jones, a former federal judge who has close ties to Mr. Cuomo’s former top aide.

State Senator Alessandra Biaggi, a frequent critic of the governor, called on him to resign. “You are a monster, and it is time for you to go,” she wrote on Twitter. “Now.”

A more likely scenario would involve lawmakers using this recent spate of scandals to reclaim the unilateral emergency powers they had granted the governor at the start of the pandemic. Those efforts had been seemingly slowed last week, as the State Assembly could not reach a consensus on a plan by the State Senate to strip Mr. Cuomo of those powers. Now, however, such a move could be more likely.

“It’s not two separate sets of allegations,” she said. “It is two examples of longstanding abuse, harassment, retaliation and the culture of a hostile work environment.”

But a prolonged period of intraparty sparring over Mr. Cuomo’s future could be problematic for Mr. Biden. It threatens to distract from his early initiatives, including mass vaccination efforts and his party’s imperative to sell the public on the nearly $2 trillion stimulus package Mr. Biden signed into law last week.

On Tuesday, the White House will hold its weekly call on the coronavirus with the National Governors Association, which Mr. Cuomo typically leads as chairman of the group. Ms. Psaki said she expected Mr. Cuomo would join the call, adding, “We’ll leave that up to him.”

Still, the governor has flatly refused to contemplate resignation while questioning the motives of the women who have accused him of sexual harassment, invoking “cancel culture,”

During the presidential campaign, Mr. Biden successfully avoided getting dragged into controversies that didn’t directly relate to him. But the bullying behavior Mr. Cuomo is accused of is contrary to the standard Mr. Biden has set for his own White House.

When Mr. Biden in 2020 was accused of sexual assault by a woman who had worked in his Senate office decades earlier, he denied her allegation but did not impugn her motives. Mr. Cuomo has questioned the motivations of some of his accusers.

Still, support for Mr. Cuomo has eroded significantly from the highs of his coronavirus press briefings in the spring of 2020 — when he hit 71 percent approval — and even from February, when his approval among all voters was 56 percent in a Siena College poll.

“The state is about to be flush with Covid cash,” Mr. Sellers said. “Better days ahead for constituents. Hang on until you become everyone’s favorite bank.”

Some members of Congress and their aides were put off by a statement that the former senior member of the delegation, Representative Nita Lowey, of Westchester, had made in defense of Mr. Cuomo, according to a person familiar with the matter. The members had the sense that Ms. Lowey was inappropriately “instrumentalized” as a shield for Mr. Cuomo, the person said, adding that while it wasn’t the precipitating event for other members to speak out last Friday, it had left an impression.

Mr. Biden’s fondness for Mr. Cuomo does not necessarily extend to the staff level. The governor’s sharp-elbowed political operation has jabbed at many people in his path over the years.

“The governor’s sexual harassment, which Charlotte Bennett reported, was buried by his aides and never properly investigated,” Katz’s statement said. “Because of their enablement, another young woman was left in harm’s way.”

The woman whose account was reported by the Times Union also indicated that Cuomo had touched her and made flirtatious comments on multiple occasions.

In it, he denied ever touching a woman inappropriately. The aide subsequently became emotional, and told a female supervisor who approached her about her encounters with the governor. At least one supervisor reported the allegation to an attorney in the governor’s office Monday, the newspaper reported.

The state attorney general, Letitia James, has put together an investigative team to probe Cuomo’s workplace conduct. The governor has called on lawmakers and the public to await the results of that investigation. Federal investigators are also scrutinizing how his administration handled data concerning Covid-19 outbreaks at nursing homes.

Cuomo has repeatedly maintained he won’t resign.

The Republican assembly member Mike Lawler on Twitter called Cuomo “a sexual predator” who should be charged.

As three women stepped forward with claims of sexual harassment and other unwanted advances by Mr. Cuomo, the most visible governor in America effectively went dark.

Now he is at the whims of often-fickle public opinion, fuming legislators and investigations.

As the allegations unfolded, Mr. Cuomo’s team denied wrongdoing and issued statements, but a number of leading lawmakers in Albany and Washington did not hear from the governor on the matter.

Indeed, the public outcry and the dearth of vocal defenders illustrate both the complexities of the problems Mr. Cuomo faces and how little he has invested in building mutually respectful relationships in politics. As with other New York politicians in times of extreme crisis, it is a dynamic that is haunting him now.

“When the investigation concludes, Democrats, I believe, will coalesce around doing the right thing,” Mr. Jacobs said. “We have to let the chips fall where they may, but I don’t see the value in a rush to judgment. I only see the potential cost.”

Nadler, who chairs the House Judiciary Committee, said in a statement that Cuomo had "lost the confidence of the people of New York." "The repeated accusations against the Governor, and the manner in which he has responded to them, have made it impossible for him to govern at this point," he said.

Nadler's statement and others came after more accusers stepped forward, including an unidentified female aide who said Cuomo groped her at the governor's mansion last year.

Another woman, Jessica Bakeman, alleged in a New York Magazine essay published Friday that the governor touched her inappropriately while she was working as a statehouse reporter several years ago.

Bakeman, who now works at an NPR member station in Florida, recounted a time when Cuomo "humiliated" her at a holiday party he hosted for the Albany press corps in 2014

U.S. Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Jamaal Bowman also called for the governor to resign in a joint statement Friday.

U.S. Reps. Grace Meng, Yvette Clarke, Antonio Delgado, Nydia Velázquez, Brian Higgins, Mondaire Jones, Carolyn Maloney, Sean Patrick Maloney and Adriano Espaillat are also calling for Cuomo to step down.

In pointed remarks Friday afternoon, Cuomo seemed to respond to these calls by criticizing "politicians" for weighing in "without knowing any facts or substance."

The speaker of the New York Assembly on Thursday authorized the Judiciary Committee to begin an impeachment investigation into the misconduct allegations against the governor.Cuomo added that he would not give in to "cancel culture" and that he wants the ongoing inquiries into his behavior to proceed.

Some commentators have cried hypocrisy because there are not more immediate widespread calls for Cuomo to resign in the face of allegations of inappropriate behavior toward women. In fact, Cuomo is hanging on tenuously, at best. He spoke deferentially of the women who accused him, and few Democrats are defending him

Right now didn’t last for long. It turned out Cuomo was not so much in control as he or others assumed — not of the pandemic, nor of the giddy peaks and sudden plummets of his own public image

But the governor was not budging, telling reporters he would not quit after reportedly telling the state senate leader she would have to impeach him.

Cuomo said he would not resign because he was elected by people not politicians and the system depended on due process.“I’m not going to resign because of allegations,” the governor said. “The premise of resigning because of allegations is actually anti-democratic.”

the governor told Stewart-Cousins he would have to be impeached if his opponents wanted him out of office.

Five women have accused Cuomo of sexual harassment, accusations he denies

On Sunday prominent national Democrats including the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, who is from New York, and the governor of Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer, expressed support for the women who allege harassment and for an investigation run by the New York attorney general, Letitita James.

“Every day there is another account that is drawing away from the business of government,” she said. “We have allegations about sexual harassment, a toxic work environment, the loss of credibility surrounding the Covid-19 nursing home data and questions about the construction of a major infrastructure project.

The Michigan governor said: “I think that there are a lot of American women who have felt how she felt. And I think that’s something that resonates and why we need to take this seriously, and why there needs to be a full investigation, and whatever is appropriate in terms of accountability should follow.

“I think the allegations here are very serious,” she said, “and I do think that an impartial thorough independent investigation is merited and appropriate. And if [the allegations are] accurate and true, I think we have to take action.”Last year, Whitmer was one of many prominent Democrats to back Joe Biden when he denied an accusation, telling CNN: “Just because you’re a survivor doesn’t mean that every claim is equal. It means we give them the ability to make their case. And then to make a judgment that is informed.”

“This did not happen. Karen Hinton is a known antagonist of the governor’s who is attempting to take advantage of this moment to score cheap points with made-up allegations from 21 years ago.”

“I understand sensitivities have changed,” Cuomo said. “Behavior has changed. I get it and I’m going to learn from it.”

The charge of double standards points to a steep learning curve for a party that has struggled to keep pace with shifting public attitudes towards gender roles, power dynamics and sexual boundaries.

That same year, Gillibrand became the first Democratic senator to call for her Minnesota colleague Al Franken to quit over allegations of sexual misconduct. She was joined by others including Kamala Harris, who tweeted: “Sexual harassment and misconduct should not be allowed by anyone and should not occur anywhere. I believe the best thing for Senator Franken to do is step down.”Franken did just that, but some critics now believe that he was the victim of a rush to judgment and should have been allowed to wait for the results of an investigation.

This time, although Gillibrand said Cuomo’s alleged conduct was “completely unacceptable”, she stopped short of demanding he resign before the investigation is done

“The vice-president’s view is that she believes all women should be treated with respect. Their voices should be heard. They should tell their story. There’s an independent investigation that is happening now, being overseen by the New York attorney general, and she certainly supports that.”

But this puts Democratic leaders out of step with groups such as Women’s March, which was born out of the January 2017 protests against Donald Trump, who faced numerous allegations of sexual assault and harassment

“We share the view that there should be an independent investigation but Cuomo himself has not even denied many of the harassment allegations and, for us, it’s about behaviour that is disqualifying. It could be illegal, but it also could not be illegal.”

Just as the instant deification then instant demonisation of Cuomo has left many crying out for nuance and complexity, so it can be said that no two cases of sexual harassment in politics are quite the same.

In 2018 Eric Schneiderman, an attorney general of New York lauded as a liberal advocate of women’s rights, resigned after being accused of physically abusing four women. Cuomo was among those who were quick to call for him to step down.

Trump’s nominee to the supreme court, Brett Kavanaugh, was nearly derailed by allegations from Dr Christine Blasey Ford that he sexually assaulted her

In 2019 several women accused Biden of making unwanted physical contact.

Last year Tara Reade, a former Senate staffer, alleged that Biden sexually assaulted her in 1993. He vehemently denied the claim, which remained unsubstantiated and faded from the election race. Biden picked a woman – Harris – as his running mate and often highlighted his work as lead sponsor of the Violence Against Women Act.

Larry Jacobs, the director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota, said: “In hindsight, a number of the Democrats in the Senate who had pushed him to step down later expressed regret. They realised they moved too quickly, they didn’t know enough and the punishment didn’t really fit what they later learnt to be the misbehaviour.”

sexual

“I don’t think the Republican party is in any position to be lecturing anyone about how to handle sexual harassment. They seem to have actually gotten real expertise on how to evade it.”

“Just because we fire Andrew Cuomo and Bill Cosby and Harvey Weinstein, that doesn’t alone solve the problem. The bigger problem is still there, which is that harassment is seen as an acceptable part of our culture. That’s why so many of these people in power are doing it. So yes, we need to respond and uproot harassment wherever it lies but we also need to keep our eye on the ball.”

New York is conducting more testing per capita than countries such as South Korea, which may partially explain the spike in numbers.

“We need to be smarter about this … we need the federal help and we need it now,” he said, calling on Donald Trump to utilise the Defense Production Act (DPA) to force companies to produce medical equipment and provide them the necessary financial support to do so. So far, the administration has relied on volunteer efforts that Cuomo said were not appropriate for the urgency of crisis.

“What happens to New York is gonna wind up happening to California, and Washington state and Illinois. It’s just a matter of time. We’re just getting there first,” Cuomo said. “Look at us today … where we are today, you will be in four weeks or five weeks or six weeks. We are your future.”

Speaking later in the day, the vice-president, Mike Pence, said the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) had sent New York 2,000 ventilators and plans to send 2,000 more on Wednesday.

With cases surging, Cuomo said new projections estimate his state will need 140,000 hospital beds once the crisis reaches its apex, which could happen within 14 to 21 days instead of in May as previously forecast.

uomo’s urgent message comes as a spokesperson for the World Health Organization (WHO) warned the US has the potential to become the next global hotspot for the pandemic. The country already has more than 46,000 confirmed Covid-19 cases, resulting in close to 600 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

He also rejected the suggestion, floated by the president in recent days, that advice from public health officials could be rowed back in a matter of weeks to protect the US economy, saying that sensible steps in both areas could be made now without increasing risk to more vulnerable people in society.

The outbreak has led to a dramatic change in America’s social fabric: as of Monday, the New York Times estimated that more than 158 million people in 16 states would soon be under strict orders to stay at home – approaching half of the population.

The shift in messaging came after James Bullard, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis, predicted unemployment could reach 30% nationwide, according to Bloomberg News, and as negotiations for a coronavirus stimulus package dragged on for days in the US Senate. For weeks, suddenly jobless workers have been imploring the government for help, and Trump is staring down what could become a historic recession during an election year.

Even still, medical experts have cautioned against such an abrupt restart to the economy while the virus continues to spread exponentially. “You can’t call off the best weapon we have, which is social isolation, even out of economic desperation, unless you’re willing to be responsible for a mountain of deaths,” Arthur Caplan, founding head of the division of medical ethics at NYU School of Medicine, told the New York Times. “Can’t we try to put people’s lives first for at least a month?”

“If you ask the American people to choose between public health and the economy, then it’s no contest,” Cuomo said. “No American is going to say, accelerate the economy at the cost of human life, because no American is going to say how much a life is worth.”

"We have many challenges to address, and I think it is time for the Governor to seriously consider whether he can effectively meet the needs of the people of New York."

Earlier, two former aides and a woman who met the governor at a wedding accused Cuomo of unwanted touching and inappropriate comments.

Cuomo said New York lawmakers "don't override the people's will, they don't get to override elections." He added, "I was elected by the people of New York state. I wasn't elected by politicians."

Last week, Cuomo apologized for actions that may have made others uncomfortable, but denied touching anyone inappropriately. He refused to resign and called for an independent investigation to be conducted.

I wrote admiringly about Cuomo’s L.B.J.-style blend of the velvet glove and the brass knuckles when he did what Barack Obama did not deign to do in 2009 and clawed back millions from the rapacious financiers scarfing up bonuses while they were taking federal bailout money; when he pushed to legalize same-sex marriage in New York in 2011; and when he rammed through a gun control bill after the Sandy Hook children were slaughtered, surpassing Obama’s efforts again.“It took a terrible political toll on me, but it’s still the best gun law in the nation,” Cuomo says now.

He says that, in this era where personalities and celebrities rule politics, the pandemic “changes the lens on government and you’re going to now inquire about experience and capacity and your past performance, almost like the normal hiring process. We got to a place in government where credentials didn’t matter and performance didn’t matter.”

“We’ll have a different country — better or worse, I don’t know,” Cuomo says. “It will have a different personality. It will be more fearful. Less trusting. But maybe there will be a greater need for intimacy.”

“Biden is so empathetic and is seen as being such a decent man, and that was very important at that moment for Andrew Cuomo,” said Ms. Weingarten, who like other Democrats, saw a similar, perhaps anachronistic political sensibility binding the two men.

“Biden is a politician from a different age, when a sense of having somebody’s back, based upon the values you carry and the work you’ve done together, means something,” she said, adding, “That’s something that Cuomo and Biden share very, very deeply.”

"lost the confidence of the people of New York" and House Oversight Committee Chair Carolyn Maloney said Cuomo's resignation would be in the "best interest of all New Yorkers."

The source said the tipping point for the members had been a combination of the most recent developments, including State Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie's announcement on Thursday that Democrats there would begin an impeachment investigation. The decision to go in, nearly all at the same time, was also an acknowledgment that when one made the call, it would up the pressure on all the rest.

the majority of the state's congressional delegation -- said Cuomo must resign, arguing that the allegations have impeded his ability to effectively govern and serve the people of New York.

Several of the Democrats on Friday said New York State A

The accounts of a half a dozen accusers who have bravely stepped forward paint a vivid picture of a governor as a sexual predator who exploited his power to prey on women.&nbsp;His despicable response is to blame the victims&nbsp;–&nbsp;it’s their fault for "misinterpreting it as unwanted flirtation."&nbsp;Cuomo claimed he was just "being playful."&nbsp;At one point, he even blamed his father, as if learned behavior somehow makes it&nbsp;OK.&nbsp;Assaulting a woman is no more permissible because someone else did it.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;

Allegations, of course, are not proof of guilt.&nbsp;The governor is entitled to the due process that he now demands, even though he never afforded it to anyone else.&nbsp;When issues of sexual harassment or assault were raised against others, he promptly pronounced them guilty without due process.&nbsp;For example, Cuomo called the accusations against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh presumptively true, all but calling him a rapist.&nbsp;By his own standard, the governor should presume himself guilty.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;

When initially reporting the number of nursing home deaths caused by COVID-19, the state had only reported those who died in the facilities themselves, leaving out those who died after being taken to&nbsp;hospitals.

State lawmakers -- including many fellow Democrats -- began calling for Cuomo's resignation or impeachment after&nbsp;Cuomo aide Melissa DeRosa reportedly&nbsp;said on a call&nbsp;that nursing home death data had been withheld from state officials out of fear of repercussions from the U.S. Justice Department.

Cuomo has faced additional pressure to step down in the wake of multiple claims of sexual harassment, ranging from alleged inappropriate comments to an accusation that he groped a current staffer under her blouse. The governor has denied touching anyone improperly&nbsp;and claimed any offending remarks were not meant to cause discomfort.

The volunteer effort can sometimes feel like a full-time job, even though Ms. Phillips is already a high school teacher. “There are many moments where we’re like, ‘You know we’re just regular people, right?’” Ms. Phillips said.