Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s late dad would be dismayed by the “devastating” sexual harassment allegations against his son, a man who served as lieutenant governor under then-Gov. Mario Cuomo told The Post on Thursday.
“I feel sad. I’m sure Mario would be sad if he were alive and knew about these accusations about Andrew,” said Stan Lundine, who was New York’s lieutenant governor from 1987 through 1994.
“Mario was a person of high moral character.”
Lundine also described the evidence against Cuomo detailed in Tuesday’s 168-page report by Attorney General Letitia James as overwhelming.
“The report was devastating,” he said. “I feel bad for the whole Cuomo family.”
Lundine, 82, is a former US congressman and mayor of Jamestown, NY, who retired from politics after he and Mario Cuomo lost the 1994 election to George Pataki and running mate Betsy McCaughey.
He said he hadn’t discussed the scandal surrounding the younger Cuomo with anyone other than “my neighbors in remote Chautauqua County,” home to the lakeside resort town that shares its name.
Staten Island lawyer Allen Cappelli, who served in all three of Mario Cuomo’s administrations and volunteered for or ran his political campaigns, said, “Mario would be heartbroken at what’s happened to Andrew.”
“I never heard Mario say one thing untoward to a woman in my life,” he said.
Cappelli, a former MTA board member who now serves as a city planning commissioner and on the city Property Tax Reform Commission, called the scandal engulfing Andrew Cuomo “just so bizarre.”
“It’s an abuse of power,” he said.
Cappelli also called Andrew’s mom, Matilda, “one of the nicest people I’ve ever met” and his three sisters “wonderful people.”
“Andrew’s prolonging of this is creating real tragic circumstances for his family,” he said.
In a blistering column posted on the Medium website, another former government associate of Mario Cuomo’s recalled being hired for the post 37 years ago by Andrew Cuomo before blasting his “sordid, sexist, sophomoric, and potentially illegal actions.”
Steve Villano, who ran Mario Cuomo’s city press office, also accused the governor of “ignoring the ‘toxic’ harassment-filled workplace culture he created, and blaming [his behavior] instead on his own Italian-American culture and background.”
“No, Andrew; our loving, humanitarian Italian-American culture didn’t make you do it. You alone did it,” he wrote.
Villano warned that if Cuomo “doesn’t resign — whether he runs for re-election or not — he’ll put New York, and national Democrats at a disadvantage in 2022, when the self-inflicted wounds of a Democratic celebrity, could not only cost New York Democrats the Governorship, but House Democrats the majority.”
“If he stubbornly refuses, Andrew Cuomo will finally prove something he’s been striving to show for his entire life. He’s not his father,” Villano added.
