Nadler, AOC Join Growing Chorus of NY Dems Calling on Cuomo to Resign

Representatives Jerry Nadler, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Jamaal Bowman on Friday joined the majority of their fellow New York Democrats in calling on Governor Andrew Cuomo to resign.

“Governor Cuomo has lost the confidence of the people of New York. Governor Cuomo must resign,” Nadler wrote in a statement. Nadler is the chairman of the powerful House Judiciary Committee.

“After two accounts of sexual assault, four accounts of harassment, the Attorney General’s investigation finding the Governor’s [administration] hid nursing home data from the legislature & public, we agree with the 55+ members of the New York State legislature that the Governor must resign,” Ocasio-Cortez wrote on Twitter, in a joint statement with Bowman.

Calls for resignation also came from Representatives Grace Meng, Mondaire Jones, Sean Patrick Maloney, Yvette Clarke, Adriano Espaillat, Antonia Delgado, and Nydia Velazquez. Representative Kathleen Rice backed Cuomo’s resignation on March 1.

On Thursday evening, New York State Assembly speaker Carl Heastie, a Democrat from the Bronx, announced that the body’s judiciary committee would open an impeachment inquiry into the governor’s conduct.

Cuomo has received scrutiny over a March 25, 2020, executive order mandating that nursing homes coronavirus patients discharged from hospitals, even if those patients tested positive for the pathogen. A study by Albany-based think tank the Empire Center concluded that the order likely resulted in between several hundred and one thousand additional deaths in nursing homes.

Additionally, six women have come forward to accuse Cuomo of sexual harassment. The latest woman alleges that Cuomo groped her under her blouse at the Executive Mansion last year, the Times Union reported earlier this week.