Disillusioned staffers are abandoning embattled Gov. Cuomo, sources said.
“I hear that most people aren’t even coming into work, and the offices at the Capitol are empty,” said one well-placed insider in touch with staffers in recent days.
“He’ll fight and fight and fight, but the staffers I’ve talked to are ready for him to hang up the gloves. Everyone feels like there is an inevitable conclusion — I mean at some point will Biden call on him to step down? They [staffers] just want this torture to stop.”
Rebellion in the ranks deepened as Cuomo on Friday defiantly refused to step aside and blamed “cancel culture” for his downfall.
“I feel a level of rage toward this fake tough guy,” seethed a second source, an ex-aide. “The guy thinks he’s the toughest, the hardest working, he’s the smartest. The truth is, he’s anything but. He’s the weakest, he’s the dumbest, and he’s the most shallow of them all. He is genuinely a very small man who pretends to be big.”
The former aide said many staffers are not coming into the executive offices, but choosing to work remotely or at vaccine sites instead. They are increasingly worried their careers are in jeopardy, just as they were beginning to see light at the end of the tunnel after working around the clock for months during the pandemic.
“Sometimes you have an ability to claim to be out in the field,” the ex-aide said.
The ex-aide shared a text they received from a current staffer on Friday morning that read, “He has to resign now right? (I say for the 15th time this week).”
Sources said virtually all existing staffers they’ve spoken to are eager for the governor to step aside — and believe his seven accusers.
“There’s a deep sense within the governor’s staff that he is guilty of everything, and that is weighing on people,” the ex-aide said. “He had that conversation with Charlotte Bennett. Everyone knows that. Everyone believes that full stop and there’s not a single person who believes she’s telling a word that’s off.”
The 25-year-old former junior staffer claimed Cuomo, 63, was grooming her to sleep with him.
“If that were anyone else — that conversation has to happen once for you to be fired … and he doesn’t seem to understand why that was an evil conversation, emblematic of a methodical approach to take advantage of her.”
Staffers still at work and making calls from Cuomo’s office — about anything — are being met with vitriol.
“The nature of the calls in Cuomo world have changed. The leverage has completely shifted. It always felt like, when Cuomo’s people call, you must figure out how you are going to try to meet the demand in some form or fashion,” the former aide explained.
“Now, they call, and there’s almost an eagerness to say ‘F–k you’ without hesitation … and the staff has to say they get it.”
At least five aides have announced their resignations in the past two weeks.
Cuomo on Friday denied any wrongdoing, while refusing to step aside and blaming “cancel culture” for the growing calls for his ouster.
Cuomo spokesman Rich Azzopardi said Saturday the claims about a staff exodus are “greatly exaggerated.”
“There’s a budget to be done in two weeks, the largest vaccination effort is state history to stand up and the continued efforts to successfully fight this once in a century pandemic and that’s what the hard working members of this administration and the state workforce are focused on — period,” he said.