On Monday, Andrew Cuomo announced all health care workers in the state of New York must be vaccinated by Sept. 27.
The announcement came six days after Cuomo announced he was resigning as governor, and eight days before he said he would depart the governorship.
Smack dab in the middle of packing, he simply imposed a mandate on 450,000 people that will take effect a month after his departure from the governor’s mansion. Cuomo is the lamest duck in the history of lame ducks. But he ain’t acting like one.
As a moral matter, the guy has no business making unilateral rules that are to take effect 32 days after he’s gone. But then, the guy really had no business unilaterally deciding he was going to remain governor for two weeks after his resignation.
Robert Bentley, who resigned as governor of Alabama in 2017 as part of a deal to avoid charges, was out the minute he made his announcement. Eric Greitens, who resigned as governor of Missouri in 2018 in the midst of a scandal, quit on a Tuesday and was out by Friday.
Not our Andrew. He gave the state two weeks’ notice, like he was our cleaning lady.
Or did he?
Has anyone seen a formal resignation letter from Cuomo with a signature at the bottom? Surely such a formal document is legally necessary, given the nature of the powers Cuomo holds as chief executive of the state of New York. He must forswear his office as a matter of functional law so that it can be vacated before his successor, Kathy Hochul, is sworn in.
His resignation is supposed to take effect in eight days. Where is the letter?
Might it be that Cuomo has a scheme to stick around? Could this whole resignation business be a kind of trial balloon — to see whether things might change so dramatically due to unforeseen circumstances that he might have grounds to rescind his resignation?
David Paterson, whom Cuomo succeeded as governor, said it last week: “It was just a little puzzling that they wanted to have that amount of time … It’s suspicious, I’ll put it that way.”
This obviously outrageous idea may have seemed a tad less outrageous on Friday, when Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie unilaterally suspended the impeachment proceeding against Cuomo.
Heastie was doing so based on the theory that Cuomo’s departure made any such investigation unnecessary. But imagine how Cuomo, who often seems merely delusional when he doesn’t seem psychopathic, might have taken it. He might have thought: “Look, a bullet dodged. Maybe I’ll dodge a few more, and then I’ll just stick around.”
Again, try to think like Cuomo. The tide conclusively turned against him when President Biden said he should resign. Now Biden is in a nearly unprecedented crisis himself with his horrible Afghanistan disaster. If Biden loses the confidence of the public in the next week, might Cuomo not have it in his Machiavellian head that he might have a case to make for staying?
Could the vaccination order be Cuomo’s way of trying to reassert himself as the COVID hero he had made himself out to be last year?
Could he be thinking about Al Franken’s resignation from the Senate in 2018 and how Democrats almost immediately came to regret that they had insisted upon it?
Sure he could. Absolutely he could.
And even if he isn’t, even if he knows he’s going to be gone in a week, could he spend the next week doing things he will try to use next year when he seeks the governorship again?
Sure he could. Absolutely he could.
Missouri’s Greitens, who left his office in disgrace in 2018, is running for the Senate in his home state in 2022. Why should Greitens have all the fun? Cuomo is sitting on $18.5 million in campaign contribution cash. You know he’s going to spend it. On himself. Sometime.
We may be done with Andrew Cuomo, but he’s not done with us yet.