On Tuesday, March 9, a sixth woman came forward accusing New York Governor Andrew Cuomo of sexual harassment.  The first accusation was made against him on Dec. 13, 2020 by Lindsey Boylan, who accused him of kissing her against her will. These cases gained national attention as they continue to pile up, including one particularly uncomfortable video of Cuomo challenging a female reporter to eat a sausage surfacing from 2016. Since these allegations began, Cuomo’s approval ratings have sunk to 38%, his all-time low since taking office back in 2010.

Andrew Cuomo, one of the most outspoken opponents of Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the Supreme Court following the allegations of Dr. Christine Blasey-Ford — going so far as to insist he take a lie-detector test before he be allowed to sit on the bench — has remained adamant in fighting this growing wave of criticism and flatly denied several of the accusations. Cuomo reportedly told the New York State Legislature “I’m not resigning, and if you want to get rid of me, impeach me.” Fortunately for the state of New York, it would appear that many are taking his uncharacteristically sound advice to heart.

Thus far, 37 lawmakers and counting from the New York Assembly and Senate have called for Governor Cuomo’s resignation, including powerful Democrats such as State Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins and Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie. Of these 37 lawmakers, 10 are advocating for impeachment. Even national figures such as U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and more than a dozen of New York’s 27 House members are joining in with calls for Cuomo to step down.

With this increasingly powerful bipartisan bloc forming to remove Andrew Cuomo, his sole line of defense is currently state Democratic Chairman Jay Jacobs — who was appointed by none other than Cuomo himself — imploring state officials to table the scandals for the time being and focus instead on other issues the state faces.

However one of the most important questions to take away from this situation is not simply if Cuomo’s governorship will survive these allegations, nor even if it should. Rather, we should be asking ourselves: Why are we only talking about impeachment now? Why not after his disastrous management of the Covid-19 pandemic within his state, where the virus claimed nearly 50,000 lives — a narrow second only to California, who has double the New York state population? Why not after New York’s pandemic spread and crippled the American northeast, immediately after he blocked attempts at interstate travel restrictions through threats of lawsuit? Why not after 15,430 LTC facility residents died following his absurd policy of forcing nursing homes to take in Covid-19 patients, a policy he then blatantly lied was forced upon him by the CDC? And worst of all, why not after it was revealed his administration covered up the true figures on nursing home deaths by almost half specifically as a means to ward off federal investigators, an abhorrent abuse of power for which Cuomo’s administration is now the subject of a new federal probe?

That last act in particular came to light Feb. 12 following a leaked private call between Cuomo’s top aide Melissa DeRosa and Democratic lawmakers. “We were in a position where we weren’t sure if what we were going to give to the Department of Justice, or what we give to you guys, and what we start saying, was going to be used against us and we weren’t sure if there was going to be an investigation.” Despite the damning admittances of DeRosa, Cuomo himself has tried playing off the false figures as an issue of “categorization” and further claimed that all deaths were “publicly and accurately reported.” Democratic Assemblyman Ron Kim, whose uncle passed away of a presumed Covid-19 case in a nursing home, commented that Cuomo’s defense “doesn’t pass the smell test,” and argued that had Cuomo been more forthcoming with the true figures, New York’s policies could have been adjusted accordingly to create a “different outcome in how we protected our communities.”

The reason impeachment has only now been seriously discussed is quite simple: because the establishment Democrats and their allies were personally invested in portraying Cuomo as a hero of the pandemic and did not allow his atrocious failures to detract from the criticism they levied against now-former President Donald Trump. They couldn’t afford for the pandemic to simply be a government failure going into the 2020 election cycle; it needed to be a Trump failure. Why else, as his administration initially came under fire during the pandemic, was he being regularly brought onto his brother Chris Cuomo’s CNN Prime Time slot and a plethora of late-night talk shows for unabashed self-love fests? Why else would the celebrity world grant him an Emmy in a hollow salute to his “masterful” leadership during the pandemic? Why is it that he was under consideration for the next United States attorney general? To make Donald Trump the villain of America’s story, the leftist establishment needed a hero. And Andrew Cuomo blundered right into that role.  

Cuomo himself was principally concerned with preserving this image built for him and capitalizing off of it as much as possible. As constituents died the governor lied through his teeth about the severity and cause, this man had the audacity to use the pandemic as a means to make seven-figure book sales, crash the Emmys and stand on his brother’s soapbox to tell the world “I put my head on the pillow at night saying I saved lives.”

Andrew Cuomo has proven that the only thing exceeding his sheer incompetence as a leader is his sociopathic sense of apathy towards his own constituents. Although this national realization may be overdue, if it takes mounting allegations to finally crack Cuomo’s invincible public image and hold him accountable, New York will be better off for it.