Andrew Cuomo speaks during a news conference, at the National Press Club in Washington.
Credit: AP
Andrew Cuomo, New York’s Governor, has been accused by a former aide of sexual assault and of "creating a culture" within his administration where harassment of women was “not only condoned but expected.”
Lindsey Boylan on Wednesday alleged Mr Cuomo, a star in the Democratic Party who has been tipped as favourite for the 2024 US presidential nomination, “abused his power as governor to sexually harass me, just as he had done with so many other women.”
Writing in a post on website Medium, Ms Boylan, 36, who was working as a deputy secretary for economic development and as a special adviser to the governor, says she resigned in 2018 after Mr Cuomo allegedly forcibly kissed her on the lips after a meeting in his office in New York City.
Ms Boylan had alluded to the governor’s “inappropriate” behaviour in tweets back in December, but decided to go public now “in hopes that it may make it easier for others to speak their own truth.”
"My boss soon informed me that the Governor had a ‘crush’ on me,” Ms Boylan wrote, saying the 63-year-old politician told staff she reminded him of his former girlfriend, only "better looking".
“It was an uncomfortable but all-too-familiar feeling: the struggle to be taken seriously by a powerful man who tied my worth to my body and my appearance," she writes.
She details specific events which made her uncomfortable, including Mr Cuomo allegedly “going out of his way” to touch her legs and lower back.
Ms Boylan, who recently launched a campaign for Manhattan borough president, also claimed he joked about them playing strip poker.
She claims the governor created an uncomfortable atmosphere for female staff, giving them Valentines’ Day presents, commenting on their appearance, their weight and their relationships.
“Governor Andrew Cuomo has created a culture within his administration where sexual harassment and bullying is so pervasive that it is not only condoned but expected,” she writes.
Mr Cuomo’s office did not immediately provide comment. However, in response to more general allegations made about his behaviour by Ms Boylan last year, he said: “I fought for and I believe a woman has the right to come forward and express her opinion and express issues and concerns that she has, but it’s just not true.”
In the wake of the national reckoning brought on by the #MeToo movement, the third-term Democrat signed a series of measures to address sexual harassment in 2018, including mandating standards for sexual harassment training in the state’s workplaces.
However, more recently, he has faced allegations of creating a work environment that some former staffers called “beyond toxic” and “endlessly dispiriting.”
Karen Hinton, who says she worked on and off with Mr Cuomo for decades, described him on Wednesday as a “master of the art” of what she called “Penis Politics.”
Writing in the NY Daily News, Ms Hinton claimed Mr Cuomo championed women’s rights and equality in public, but “behind closed doors, uses gender domination as one means to assert their power over women.”
The empathy and candor Mr Cuomo showed during the height of the Covid-19 crisis in New York made the governor a nationwide star and one of the key faces responding to the pandemic. He wrote a book on the subject and even won an Emmy Award for his daily briefings.
Would-be Democratic voters polled over who they would vote to be the party’s presidential nominee should the election be held today put Mr Cuomo out in front, two points above Vice President Kamala Harris.
However, Mr Cuomo has since become embroiled in a scandal over his administration’s decision to withhold New York State’s nursing home death toll, which was nearly 50 per cent higher than officially reported.
The FBI and the US attorney for the Eastern District of New York has opened an inquiry into the alleged cover-up.
Read more: From presidential contender with an Emmy and a book deal to disgrace: The rise and fall of Andrew Cuomo
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