NYC Mayor de Blasio urges Gov. Cuomo to come out of hiding
Gov. Cuomo should stop avoiding the public, Mayor de Blasio said Tuesday, continuing his attacks as the governor reels from sexual harassment allegations and other crises.
“All leaders have to answer tough questions from the media regardless of whether it’s convenient,” Hizzoner said at a Tuesday news conference when asked whether Cuomo should resume his own press briefings.
Cuomo’s office declined to comment on that criticism.
The last time the governor held a press conference was Feb. 22. Since then, he’s avoided questions from reporters as a growing number of women accuse him of misconduct — a jarring development after a year of near-daily pandemic briefings from Cuomo.
On Monday, Anna Ruch stepped forward to reveal a 2019 encounter with Cuomo in which he touched her bare lower back without permission and bluntly asked if he could kiss her, making her feel “confused and shocked and embarrassed.”
That account followed damning allegations from two women former staffers who said the governor had harassed them while they were working for him.
Gov. Cuomo has denied touching former staffers and apologized for remarks he characterized as “playful.”
De Blasio suggested those accusations and Cuomo’s handling of nursing home deaths — data about which his administration held from the public for months — show the governor should lose emergency powers he has had since around the start of the pandemic. He’s also decried Cuomo’s “bullying” tactics, citing Assemblyman Ron Kim’s (D-Queens) account that Cuomo recently threatened to “destroy” him for speaking up about the deaths.
“A way to move everything forward is to restore local control,” the mayor said. “It should not be in the hands of one person. We’re getting a real object lesson in that right now.”
He called Tuesday for the state to again expand eligibility for COVID vaccinations, to sanitation workers, Board of Elections staff, lifeguards and people who work at courts, among others.
“If you put too much power in one person’s hands, bad things happen,” de Blasio said. “We should not have to go hat-in-hand to Albany for every little change in the vaccination rules.”
Cuomo’s office noted capacity to distribute vaccines is far greater than supplies to date.
“With more doses coming online after the Johnson & Johnson vaccine received emergency authorization, we are exploring how and when to expand eligibility further,” Cuomo spokesman Jack Sterne said in a statement.
De Blasio insisted the relationship between City Hall and Albany hasn’t completely broken down.
“There’s still plenty of people on the staff level who talk to each other,” the mayor said. “This, too, shall pass, and we’re all going to keep moving.”
