With Cuomo’s resignation, Democrats can refocus on 2022 messaging

Last week writing in The Hill, I called for Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York to “do the right thing” and step aside. One week to the day of that piece being published and the New York attorney general’s damning 165-page investigation into the 11 sexual harassment and assault claims against Cuomo being released publicly, the governor did just that.

Perhaps no figure in recent life has seen such a rapid and self-inflicted fall from grace in such a short timeframe. Back in March 2020, when COVID-19 was first ravaging the Empire State and later the entire country, 87 percent of New Yorkers approved of Cuomo’s handling of the budding pandemic. The governor’s daily COVID-19 briefings, in addition to winning him a national Emmy Award, became a staple for Americans across the country who saw Cuomo as a nearly-singular source of strength and competence during the first surge of pandemic cases. Last month in a similar Siena College poll, a majority of New Yorkers indicated their desire for the governor to either resign immediately or not seek a fourth term in 2022 — a total reversal of support from just one year ago.

One of the clearest indicators coming out of yesterday’s announcement is how much of an island unto himself the governor became in the wake of the attorney general’s report last week. Every leading Democrat, including President Joe Biden, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, (D-Calif.), Sens. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) as well as the entire New York Democratic congressional delegation immediately called for Cuomo to resign after the report became public.

That rapid and overwhelming show of solidarity by the entire Democratic establishment with the 11 accusers was not only the right thing to do, but also clearly a political necessity. Back in 2006, Pelosi first won the speaker’s gavel — to some degree — as a response to several GOP personal and professional ethical lapses, especially with regard to former U.S. Reps. Tom DeLay (R-Texas) and Mark Foley (R-Fla.). Widespread ethical issues can quickly turn a national election into a referendum on a party’s ability to campaign and lead effectively.

We are still over 450 days away from the midterm elections, which can be an eternity in terms of which political issues will motivate the voters to turn out. Despite the governor’s outsized role on the national stage during the COVID-19 crisis, the midterm electorate will almost certainly have moved on from the Cuomo scandal, especially outside of the Empire State.

In 2018, midterm voters delivered a clear rebuke to the Trump administration, propelling Democrats back into the majority and handing the gavel back to Pelosi. Despite former President Trump’s ethical issues during the 2016 campaign and the specter of the Mueller probe, exit polling from 2018 indicated that health care was the most important issue to voters. Democrats hammered home messages that they would beat back GOP attempts to reverse Obamacare and hold the line on Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare funding.

Four years earlier, 2014 midterm voters listed the state of the economy as the number one issue with regard to their vote. The great recession was still fresh in the minds of many Americans that year with seven in ten voters during that midterm election saying that the economy was in bad shape.

Both recent midterm examples should give Democrats some level of hope that voters in 2022 will be focused on key domestic issues facing Americans at the time of the election. Just minutes before Gov. Cuomo’s press conference, the U.S. Senate passed landmark bipartisan legislation, shepherded by the Biden administration, that will reinvigorate critical aspects of this nation’s physical and digital infrastructure. Judging from recent elections, it will be these kinds of advancements around infrastructure, health care, and the strength of the economy that will determine if Democrats hold both the House and Senate in 2022 — not the personal failings of Andrew Cuomo.

Kevin Walling (@kevinpwalling) is a Democratic strategist, vice president at HGCreative, co-founder of Celtic Strategies, and a regular guest on Fox News, Fox Business and Bloomberg TV and Radio.