By Jewelle Mills
It's no secret that 2021 was a rough year for New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. Last year he was dubbed “America’s Governor” for the effective way that he handled the Covid 19 pandemic in New York, but this year he has been talked about for more controversial reasons. Earlier this year Andrew Cuomo was accused of sexual assault and harassment by 11 different women which eventually led to his resignation as governor of New York in August 2021.
Then his young brother, CNN journalist Chris Cuomo was fired from, his long-time gig at CNN after being accused of sexual harassment by his former boss at ABC News and advising Andrew on how to deal with the sexual harassment allegations. According to the New York Times Cuomo’s former boss at ABC from nearly 2 decades ago accuses him of groping her at a New York bar in 2005 after his going away party when he was leaving the network. Shelley Ross (accuser) claims that he said “I can do this now that you're no longer my boss.” This caused Ross to leave the bar immediately with her husband. According to Ross Cuomo did reach out to apologize to her over email after the incident but she views his apology as insincere.
The Cuomo brothers have yet to recover from these allegations. Chris was given a new show recently but it has not seen the same amount of success that he received on CNN. Jim Bernfield, former professor of Media and Society at NY Tech, was an interested observer of this and thinks that “at this point, Chris Cuomo is blaming everybody from his crew to his time slot for his dismal ratings on a small-time network Newsnation, while Andrew has kept his political contributions and started a podcast to summarize his position as a victim in his own demise”. The questions remaining are: Will this open the floodgates for more allegations against the younger Cuomo brother? And will the brothers ever reclaim the glory they once had?