New York's vaccine czar called county officials to gauge their loyalty to Cuomo amid sexual harassme
Source: WaPo
New York’s “vaccine czar” — a longtime adviser to Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo — phoned county officials in the past two weeks in attempts to gauge their loyalty to the embattled governor amid an ongoing sexual harassment investigation, according to multiple officials.
One Democratic county executive was so unsettled by the outreach from Larry Schwartz, head of the state’s vaccine rollout, that the executive on Friday filed notice of an impending ethics complaint with the public integrity unit of the state Attorney General’s office, the official told The Post. The executive feared that the county’s vaccine supply could suffer if Schwartz was not pleased with the executive’s response to his questions about support of the governor.
“At best, it was inappropriate,” said the executive, who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear that the Cuomo administration would retaliate against the county’s residents. “At worst, it was clearly over the ethical line.”
Larry Schwartz, who is working in a volunteer capacity to run New York’s vaccine distribution, acknowledged making the calls in response to an inquiry by The Washington Post, but said he did so as a 30-year friend of Cuomo and did not discuss vaccines in the conversations.
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/cuomo-schwartz-vaccine-calls/2021/03/14/18f2e320-8448-11eb-9ca6-54e187ee4939_story.html
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....this is a ludicrous story and highly questionable.
First, there are 62 counties in New York State. There are only 19 County Executives. I don't know what the title of the heads of most of the other counties, but the five "counties" that make up New York City, which is 42% of the population of the state, are led by Borough Presidents, but the overriding political office is Mayor.
So, according to this "unnamed" County Executive, the call went to some, or all, of the 19 counties, less than one-third of all the counties in the state. Plus, if one looks at the map of those with County Executives, most of them are upstate and western NY, mostly republican areas, so chances are this "unnamed" County Executive is a republican.
