Gov. Andrew Cuomo wanted to play strip poker, according to one of his sex harass accusers — now he’s the one being stripped.
New York state lawmakers moved Friday to rescind the emergency powers they granted to the Democratic to handle the coronavirus pandemic as outrage over his sexual harassment and nursing home cover-up scandals continues to mount.
The New York state Senate backed the new restrictions on Cuomo’s executive authority by a party-line vote of 43-20 on Friday afternoon.
Lawmakers in the Assembly followed suit, voting 107-43 later Friday to strip Cuomo of the emergency powers.
Both chambers are dominated by Democrats.
“The public deserves to have checks and balances,” Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins (D-Westchester) said. “This legislation creates a system with increased input while at the same time ensuring New Yorkers continue to be protected.”
The bill must be signed by Cuomo, who signaled Wednesday he will accept the new restrictions.
It would bar him from creating any new directives without the Legislature’s approval and he would be unable to extend any existing directives unless they are deemed “critical” to public health.
Republicans — long critical of Cuomo — opposed the legislation, complaining it did not rein in his powers enough.
“This bill only furthers the governor’s executive emergency powers and allows the directives that have been ruling our state for a year to continue,” Assemblyman Michael Lawler (R-Rockland) told The Post.
Cuomo’s travails were never far from either the Assembly or Senate debates.
“As reports continued to come out about the mishandling of nursing home data and allegations of sexual harassment surface, I along with so many other New Yorkers are deeply embarrassed and disgusted,” said state Sen. Jessica Ramos (D-Queens). “This Governor’s inability to see outside of his own ego cannot continue to go unchecked, not when the lives of New Yorkers are at stake.”
Another lawmaker, Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani (D-Queens) read from the open letter posted by Lindsey Boylan — a former Cuomo staffer-turned-Manhattan Borough President hopeful — where she detailed the harassment she said she endured working the governor.
The Friday votes took place just hours after the Governor’s Mansion was rocked yet again by new disclosures in the harassment and nursing home scandals that have beset Cuomo and his administration.
CBS News broadcast a wrenching interview with Charlotte Bennett — the second of the three women accusing Cuomo of sexual harassment — Thursday night, in which she accused the governor of attempting to groom her for sex.
Later that night, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times both published new reporting that said top figures in his administration manipulated a July report from the state Health Department to downplay the number of coronavirus deaths linked to nursing homes.
Both scandals have yielded probes that could last for months.
Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn are now investigating the Cuomo administration’s handling of the nursing homes during the early days of the pandemic.
Meanwhile, state Attorney General Letitia James is examining Cuomo’s behavior and his office following the harassment allegations.
The tsunami of allegations has already significant damage to Cuomo’s political fortunes, new polling revealed this week.
A new survey from Quinnipiac showed that his approval rating among registered New York voters has dropped nearly 30 points over the last several months to just 45 percent — down from a high of 72 percent in May 2020.
And three-in-five registered voters told the survey that the sexual harassment allegations against Cuomo were “serious.”
Even before the scandals, Democrats were beginning to face pressure to curtail Cuomo’s powers as frustrations grew with the state’s vaccine rollout plan and complaints of state micromanagement from local officials, including Mayor Bill de Blasio.
Hizzoner renewed those calls again Friday.
“I do appreciate the action the Legislature is taking. I think it will help us, but it is not full local control,” de Blasio said on WNYC. “It’s not normal governance and we need to get back to it as quickly as possible.”