ALBANY (CN) — New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced his resignation from office Tuesday, capitulating finally to the backlash that broke last year at the height of his popularity when multiple women came forward with allegations of sexual harassment.
The resignation is set to become effective in 14 days, with Cuomo handing over the reins to Lieutenant Governor Kathy Hochul. Cuomo said the timing is meant to ensure a smooth transition for Hochul, a Democrat who will become New York's first female governor.
“Given the circumstances, the best way I can help now is if I step aside and let government get back to governing," Cuomo said. "And therefore, that’s what I’ll do, because I work for you and doing the right thing is doing the right thing for you."
Cuomo's exit comes a week after state Attorney General Letitia James released the results of an independent investigation on Aug. 3, finding that Cuomo sexually harassed 11 women. The Democratic Cuomo, 63, has been elected three times and previously planned to seek a fourth term in the 2022 election.
Scandal jettisoned those plans in 2020, undercutting the national prominence Cuomo had briefly attained for his leadership of New York when the state was an early epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic. While also battling charges that his administration underreported Covid-19 deaths in nursing homes, Cuomo was hit last year with allegations from former aides who said he touched them without their consent, made sexually suggestive and gender-based comments, and used retaliatory tactics to keep them quiet.
Cuomo aggressively denied the allegations at every turn. Even as the calls for resignation grew from within his own party, he said to step down without an investigation would be undemocratic.
But in a live-streamed address just before noon Tuesday, Cuomo said he reconsidered his first instinct to fight what he called a “politically motivated” controversy that he regarded untruthful and unfair. At a time when the state is responding to the delta variant of Covid-19, Cuomo noted that efforts to impeach him would distract from the state's pandemic recovery, costing taxpayers millions of dollars for proceedings that would take months of political and legal wrangling.
“Government needs to perform. It is a matter of life and death,” Cuomo said.
Whether the State Assembly will still work to impeach Cuomo remains unclear. Cuomo would have been barred from being elected to state office again if he had been impeached and convicted by the Assembly's Judiciary Committee. Having just taken the report from Attorney General James into its confidential executive session on Monday, the committee is set to meet on Aug. 16.
Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie had promised to expedite impeachment proceedings a week ago and set an Aug. 13 deadline for Cuomo and his legal team to provide additional evidence in the governor's defense.
Still not admitting to any to the most serious allegations of unwanted touching that he faced, Cuomo reiterated Tuesday that he did not believe that he had committed any misconduct. Cuomo insisted that the investigation against him failed to distinguish between “alleged improper conduct and concluding sexual harassment.”
“In my mind, I’ve never crossed the line with anyone. But I didn’t realize the extent to which the line has been redrawn,” Cuomo said. “There are generational and cultural shifts that I just didn’t fully appreciate.”
Though the governor said he has always hugged and kissed men and women casually, and that his sense of humor can end up being insensitive, Cuomo also said he took full responsibility for his actions and acknowledging that he offended 11 women.
To one of those women, a female state trooper in Cuomo's protection detail who said he touched her back in an elevator and touched her stomach while walking past her, Cuomo apologized specifically.
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