9 July 2022: Insider Describes When Cuomo Realized "It's Over"

‘This Is Disgusting’: An Insider’s Account on the Fall of Cuomo

Politico is featuring an excerpt from New York political consultant Lis Smith's upcoming memoir/money grab, Any Given Tuesday: A Political Love Story, scheduled to be published on 19 July 2022, in which she recounts when Andrew M. Cuomo realized his future as New York's governor was over. We've excerpted a portion of the book excerpt below:

"Governor. Stop. It’s over,” the voice broke through on the conference call line.

Six months earlier, it would have been inconceivable that anyone, let alone a mere political consultant, would cut off the most high-profile, fearsome, and feared state chief executive in the country.

It was Andrew Cuomo who was talking, after all. He was 11 years into his reign at the top of the Empire State, and just one year removed from becoming a national phenomenon for his masterful, made-for-TV COVID briefings, which offered comfort to people amidst the isolation, confusion and trauma of a global pandemic.

But on August 3, 2021 — whether he was willing to accept it or not — he was a dead man walking. That morning, the Attorney General of New York released a bombshell report that concluded that he’d broken state law by sexually harassing women staffers in his administration.

“What’s over?” Cuomo responded.

“This. All of this. This is over. There is no path forward for you,” the adviser responded.

“It’s over because I touched a woman on the back?” Cuomo shot back, his voice rising with a pitched tone of panic.

The adviser, someone not prone to hyperbole or challenging the governor unnecessarily, didn’t mince words.

“It was more than touching a woman on the back. Don’t bullshit yourself or us. If I, a man, were accused of doing any of the things you were, I would be out of a job by now.”

Silence.

“So, you’re telling me I don’t fight back? I don’t do a press conference? Why don’t I just resign then?”

Silence.

“Lis,” Cuomo started in his halting, Queens-inflected cadence, “what do you think?”

He was looking for a sympathetic voice, as he often did on calls. He had a knack for finding people who could agree with even his worst instincts. I paused before I answered....

“Governor, I’d like to disagree,” I told him. “But I just don’t see a way out of this.”

We excluded Smith's insertion of some of her personal background and her comments on the erosion of Andrew M. Cuomo's trustworthiness among members of his inner circle at the ellipses, so please do click through to Politico's substantially longer book excerpt if that's of interest to you. For her part, Smith is no stranger to either working or associating with ethically compromised politicians, most notably another former New York governor who also resigned in disgrace over their alleged misconduct, Eliot Spitzer.

Smith doesn't identify the adviser who delivered the "It's over" message to Cuomo. It's interesting that Cuomo never challenges their assessment that "it was more than touching a woman on the back". Since then, Cuomo has escaped facing criminal charges for his alleged sexual harassment misconduct with multiple women through legal technicalities. The women's allegations have described by multiple prosecutors in jurisdictions across New York state as "credible".

Cuomo still faces multiple civil litigation court cases related to their allegations.