Cuomo's Week Goes from Bad to Worse as New Poll Shows Overwhelming Number of New Yorkers Have Seen Enough
Democratic New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s week just got worse as a new poll shows that a majority of New Yorkers think he should resign.
A Marist Poll found 59 percent of New Yorkers, including 52 percent of Democrats, think Cuomo should resign from office after an official investigation concluded Cuomo sexually harassed 11 women.
Fifty-nine percent of New Yorkers said Cuomo should be impeached if he does not resign.
Only 32 percent of poll respondents said the governor should finish the rest of his term.
“The court of public opinion believes the allegations against Governor Cuomo warrant his removal from office,” Dr. Lee Miringoff, director of the Marist Poll, said.
“If he does not resign, nearly six in 10 New Yorkers believe he should be impeached.”
“Even if he survives this scandal, his reelection prospects are rock bottom with even his Democratic base deserting him,” he added.
New York state Attorney General Letitia James’ office released a long-awaited report Tuesday on an independent investigation into sexual harassment allegations directed at Cuomo, who is in his third term as New York’s governor.
“Upon completion of our independent investigation into allegations of sexual harassment brought against Governor Andrew Cuomo and the surrounding circumstances, we have reached the conclusion that the Governor sexually harassed a number of State employees,” the report said.
Cuomo, according to the findings by James’ office, engaged in “unwelcome and unwanted touching,” and “making numerous offensive and sexually suggestive comments.”
Such behavior by the governor “was part of a pattern of behavior that extended to his interactions with others outside of State government,” according to the report.
Cuomo has denied the allegations and indicated after the report’s release that he had no plans to step down, saying the “facts are much different from what has been portrayed.”
Forty-four percent of New Yorkers polled said they believed the governor did something illegal and 29 percent thought he did something unethical but not illegal, according to the Marist Poll.
Only seven percent of poll respondents thought Cuomo did nothing wrong, six percent said they hadn’t heard enough about the allegations and 13 percent were unsure.
Other lawmakers, including President Joe Biden, have called for the Democratic governor to step down after the report’s release.
“I think he should resign,” Biden said, according to The Washington Post. “Look, I’m not going to flyspeck this. I’m sure there are some embraces that were totally innocent. But apparently the attorney general decided there were things that weren’t.”
Marist’s poll of 614 New York adults was conducted on Aug. 3 via telephone with a margin of error of +/- 5.1 percentage points.
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