Cuomo still popular with most New York Democrats despite calls to resign over harassment accusations
He still has majority support from the public even as six women accuse him of harassment
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Your support makes all the difference.New York Governor Andrew Cuomo remains popular with a majority of Democrats in the state, according to a new poll, despite twin scandals accusing the governor sexually of harassing six women and covering up the extent of Covid deaths in nursing homes.
Seventy-three per cent of New York Democrats still approve of Mr Cuomo’s job performance, according to a Morning Consult poll released on Monday, down 7 points since the harassment allegations began in February and 13 since January reporting about the nursing home first broke.
Still, according to the data, he’s more popular than he was overall a year ago, and retains majority support, with a 52 per cent total approval rating.
Several women, including three former staff members, have accused Mr Cuomo of sexual harassing them, including making inappropriate comments about their appearance, asking questions about their sex life, and kissing a colleague without consent, all of which he denies.
New York’s attorney general has appointed a former federal prosecutor and an employment lawyer to investigate the allegations, and the leaders of both houses of the New York legislator called on Mr Cuomo to resign in recent days.
“New York is still in the midst of this pandemic and is still facing the societal, health and economic impacts of it,” State Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins said at the time. “We need to govern without daily distraction. For the good of the state Governor Cuomo must resign.”
“I’m not going to resign,” Mr Cuomo said at a press conference last week. “I’m going to do the job the people elected me to do.”
He also said he “fully support[s] a woman’s right to come forward”, but denied any inappropriate conduct.
Mr Cuomo and his administration have denied a series of reports that he and his administration concealed the real number of Covid-related deaths in nursing homes in the state.
The governor’s office have said that certain data wasn’t included because it couldn’t be fully verified.
Still, despite his popular support, Mr Cuomo has lost major political clout in New York, and the publisher ofAmerican Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the Covid-19 Pandemic, his memoir about leadership during the Covid crisis, has said it has “no plans” to reprint the book.
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