I never much cared for Andrew Cuomo. Even though, like most New Yorkers, I voted for him three times to be governor of New York, I just didn’t fall in love with the guy. He wasn’t anyone’s dream politician, from his ham-handed, tone-deaf #MeToo joke made on the day when the first female majority leader in New York's state Senate was sworn in to his habit of referring to himself as a “big tough Italian guy.”
One of his Albany supporters said of him in New York Magazine in 2014, “Is he a son of a bitch at times? Yeah. He is a mechanic; he works on cars as a hobby, fixes engines. And in politics he moves the process forward. You don’t love Andrew Cuomo. But there hasn’t been a better governor, not in the last 50 years.”
I wanted to like Cuomo, but I was troubled by his work with the sketchy IDC, a group of supposed Democrats who helped the Republicans control the New York State Senate for many years. Cuomo just didn’t speak to me, or rather, he spoke to me in a gruff, gravelly, overly emphatic and slightly obnoxious way about obscure bureaucratic infighting. He felt joyless, not exciting. I liked him but I didn’t like him like him. He was no Sherrod Brown, no Chris Murphy, no Val Deming, no Tammy Duckworth.
But what a difference a pandemic makes. All of a sudden, I love Governor Cuomo, his soothing Queens accent, his stories about his dad Mario (himself a three-time governor of New York) and his 88-year-old mother Matilda. And then there’s Andrew the dad, embarrassing his kids with stories of their upbringing after his divorce, when he was a single father, and bringing his 22-year-old daughter Michaela to one of his coronavirus press briefings, suggesting it was "cooler" to be with him there than to be on the spring break vacation she had just wisely cancelled.
She deadpanned, “So cool.” You know, it’s kind of comforting to watch a normal father-daughter relationship and not the weird, slightly North Korea-seeming stuff between Ivanka Trump and her dad.
And then there’s Andrew bantering with his brother Chris on CNN about which son wasn't calling their mother enough right now or which one was held in higher standing back home. "I just called Mom, right before coming on this show," Andrew informed Chris, "and by the way, she told me I was her favorite. The good news is, she said you were her second-favorite, her second-favorite son." (Chris's response: "She never said that.") Andrew’s stories about dealing with his elderly mother Matilda and sibling rivalry between two men decades removed from their childhood are both relatable and delightfully normal, and in a time like this normal is good, normal is comforting. Those of us who are trapped in our apartments for the foreseeable future need normal.
Also, Andrew named an executive order to protect New Yorkers over 70 -- one that requires this group of New Yorkers to stay home and limit home visitation to immediate family members or close friends in need of emergency assistance -- after his mother, calling it "Matilda's Law," because he's a good son.
I am not the only one weirdly fascinated by our governor. In a piece for Jezebel headlined, "Help, I Think I'm in Love With Andrew Cuomo??," Rebecca Fishbein wrote “It seems I’ve fallen victim to Stockholm Syndrome, which Merriam-Webster defines as 'the psychological tendency of a hostage to bond with, identify with, or sympathize with his or her captor.'” Explained Fishbein: "Cuomo isn’t holding me hostage so much as coronavirus is, but he is the only one telling me what to do, where I can and cannot go (anywhere), who I can and cannot see (everyone), who I can and cannot listen to (President Trump, Bill de Blasio), what I can and cannot eat (anything but pasta)."
And after her piece came out, Cuomo called her! (As Fishbein wrote in a follow-up: "I did not ask a single substantive policy question. I did not ask about the hand sanitizer. I did not ask him to go on a FaceTime date with me. Somewhere in there, I thanked him for his leadership. I may have blacked out.")
You know what? Even though I’m married and have three children and a fabulous husband I adore, I felt a pang of jealousy. He was MY competent governor/imaginary boyfriend. Rebecca can have the horrible, self-congratulatory mayor (and failed presidential candidate) who is always screaming at me through the TV. Yes, you may remember our mayor, Bill de Blasio. While the rest of were staying at home, our mayor was at the gym on Monday, March 16. Yes, while Cuomo is “the control freak we need right now” as The New York Times media columnist Ben Smith put it recently, Bill de Blasio is the overly emotional, notorious groundhog killer whom no one needs right now.
While Cuomo is soothing, telling us that we don’t need a hundred rolls of toilet paper and that no one is going to be locked in the city, Bill de Blasio is panicked, telling residences get ready to shelter in place and that this is all Trump’s fault. We know this is all Trump’s fault, but until November we need our state leaders to pretend to get along with Trump so that our state can get the funding it desperately needs.
That said, Andrew can be still Andrew, the cranky, petty, grudge-holding scold, even using the coronavirus crisis to get the occasional dig against his favorite enemy Cynthia Nixon, the Sex and the City actress who challenged him in the Democratic primary in the last election and managed to get a third of the vote.
During a recent interview on the WAMC radio station, Cuomo said, “How about if we had Governor Cynthia Nixon today?" And on another instance he said, “Government is about real capacity and real consequences and really knowing what you’re doing and real leadership. Elect the people who know what they’re doing, because you elect somebody because they are a celebrity, or because they have a great slogan, and then you ask them to perform. What do they say? ‘I never told you I could perform. I told you I was good looking. I told you I tweeted a lot.'"
As the pandemic rages, and my city is decimated and I watch the empty streets from my window, I’m comforted by Andrew Cuomo’s 11 a.m. press conferences, which both the local news and national networks are showing. It’s nice to know that someone is governing, that someone is keeping track of the hospital beds and the ventilators and the masks, and keeping the pressure on the federal government.
Look, we’re in uncharted territory. We don’t know how long this will last or how this will end or what this will look like, but we do know that someone out there is looking out for New York State. It’s a stark contrast to Trump with his insane press conferences where he hypes experimental drugs and tells us the virus will wash right through, and that reporters are nasty or terrible for doing their job and asking him questions. (The Washington Post columnist has called for the media to stop televising them live because of the "dangerous" misinformation being doled out each day.)
There's something nice about having someone in government whom you can actually trust. Yes, Andrew Cuomo may be imperfect, but he's still the closest thing we have to an FDR for our time.