Two Democrat governors are facing the fights of their political lives. Yet one is being offered every resource of the party and the other is being thrown under the proverbial bus.
Two Democrat governors are facing the fights of their political lives. Yet one is being offered every resource of the party and the other is being thrown under the proverbial bus.
A recall effort against California Democrat Governor Gavin Newsom has submitted a petition with more than the 2 million signatures needed to get the measure on the ballot this fall.
Those who want Newsom gone cite his onerous, COVID-inspired lockdown policies, which Newsom timed the lift of to sync up with the Joe Biden's inauguration as president. Newsom's lockdown order were some of the most restrictive in the country, inspiring Mayor Eric Garcetti to one point instruct Angelinos to "cancel everything."
California restaurants and wineries sued Newsom over the in-person dining restrictions that the governor himself broke more than one occasion. He is also alleged to have awarded state contracts to businesses and people who donated to to help with the pandemic. He also released a convicted killer from prison.
In response to the recall effort, the Democratic National Committee said they would donate $250,000 to the Stop the Republican Recall campaign and dispatched their heavy hitters to rush in to Newsom's aid.
Senators Elizabeth Warren, (D-MA), Cory Booker, (D-NJ), Alex Padilla, (D-CA), Bernie Sanders, (I-VT), as well as Reps. Katie Porter, (D-CA), and Ro Khanna, (D-CA) have all signed-on to help Newsom fight back against the recall. Stacey Abrams, a voting rights advocate and failed Georgia gubernatorial candidate, was also listed as a supporter of the campaign.
To defend his seat in power, Newsom has hired political consultant Juan Rodriguez. Rodriguez served as Vice President Kamala Harris' campaign manager during her bid for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.
On the other side of the country, the Democrats have clearly abandoned New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) demanded the Governor's resignation, as has Senator Kristin Gillibrand (D-NY). President Biden weighed in with his take this week, saying that Cuomo should resign if the allegations against him are true.
"If the investigation confirms the claims of the women, should he resign?" George Stephanopoulos of ABC News asked Biden.
"Yes," Biden said. "I think he'll probably end up being prosecuted, too."
Cuomo faces two simultaneous scandals. On one end, the governor has been accused of sexually harassing and assaulting at least seven women, with an investigation under way that continues to drag more accusers out of the woodwork. Most of the women are former aides of his, with many of the alleged incidents taking place in state offices and one in the governor's mansion.
Cuomo also faces another investigation from the New York Attorney General's office. The findings, released by AG Letitia James, found that administration both undercounted the deaths in nursing homes by up to 50 percent, and then intentionally suppressed that the undercount occurred. The administration then suppressed that undercount intentionally to prevent the issue from becoming a political football for the Republicans during the 2020 presidential election.
Cuomo had been heavily criticized by Republicans for forcing elderly coronavirus patients back into nursing homes after they had tested positive, which many believe contributed to the high death toll in the homes. Democrats have primarily slammed him for the sexual harassment allegations, with some notable exceptions, such as Assemblyman Ron Kim, taking issue with his handling of New York's public nursing homes.
Two Congressional Representatives from the state of New York, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rep. Jamaal Bowman, demanded Cuomo's resignation. Both Ocasio-Cortez and Bowman defeated the Democrat incumbents who were supported by Cuomo in the primary elections for their seats.
More than half of state lawmakers in New York have called on Cuomo to resign or suggested impeachment in the wake of these scandals, and many other politicians in the state, such as known Cuomo-foe New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio have joined the calls.
So why is Cuomo being skewered by his own party while Newsom is getting their full backing and support?
Feeding Cuomo to the wolves solves multiple problems for the Democrats.
It turns out that multiple Democrat governors including New Jersey's Phil Murphy, Tom Wolf in Pennsylvania, Michigan's Gretchen Whitmer, Jay Inslee in Washington state, New Mexico's Tim Waltz, and yes, even Newsom, have all been alleged to have sent COVID positive patients to nursing homes just as Cuomo did. CDC guidelines at the time suggested it was the right move.
Which is why, by making Cuomo's scandal primarily about sexual harassment allegations, many, including the media are not focusing on Cuomo's order to send the COVID positive patients to the elderly care facilities—and they hope no one else will either, nor look at this pattern of excessive elder-care deaths across so many blue states.
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If Cuomo goes down for sexual harassment, these governors could avoid the inevitable fallout of angry constituents holding them responsible because the stories just won't come out. The revelation of these other governor's nursing home misdeeds would cast doubt on the Democrat's narrative that they had the perfect response to the pandemic while former President Trump and the Republicans failed.
This narrative that is already being shattered by the performance of Florida and its Governor Ron DeSantis, who refused to succumb to the temptation to imprison his citizens in their homes over exaggerated health concerns. Florida, it should be noted, has the most geriatric population in the country.
Cuomo was also seen by many Democrats as too moderate and mainstream for a Democratic establishment members of a party that is swinging wildly to the left. Some see AG James, who outed Cuomo with regard to the true nursing home death count and is investigating the sexual harassment allegations, as a radical activist and a likely successor to Cuomo and would have the support of the far left of the party.
Cuomo is also known as a bully in Democrat circles. Aside from threatening comments and phone calls to other Democrat politicians, he has been in politics so long that he knows where "all the bodies are buried."
Newsom's hard left policies in California are in sync with those of Democrat leftists and their donor base. Additionally, a Newsom loss to a Republican in a recall election, in a state as blue as California, could have a ripple effect on other elections and could create an opening for the narrative that the Democrat's COVID policies were flawed.
However, for many this mishandling by authoritarian, far-left Democrats is fact, and that opinion is gaining more traction with mainstream media, which is beginning to run stories comparing Newsom's approach to that of DeSantis. It's no surprise that DeSantis is coming out on top.
Newsom and the Democrats are trying to paint all 2 million Californian residents who signed the recall as QAnon, Trump supporting, white supremacist, racists because that narrative is one that distracts from their failed policies.
The salacious sexual harassment scandals implicating Cuomo create excellent cover for failed Democrat COVID policies and an avenue to maintain power and continue to control the national conversation.