NY Vaccine Czar Reportedly Called State Officials to ‘Gauge Their Loyalty’ to Cuomo
Governor Andrew Cuomo is facing calls for his resignation from many New York Democrats, and a new report says that an ally of his has been contacting state officials to “gauge their loyalty.”
New York “vaccine czar” Larry Schwartz — a longtime aide to Cuomo who served as secretary to the governor several years ago — apparently called New York county officials amid the growing scandal over allegations of sexual harassment.
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 Washington Post. The executive feared 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.”
Several officials spoke to the Post, and one said, “I didn’t feel that there was correlation between the answer I was going to give and my vaccine supply. But I could see how maybe someone else maybe got that impression.”
Schwartz told the Post he did make those calls, but said he “did nothing wrong” and vaccines did not come up in the calls.
“I did have conversations with a number of County Executives from across the State to ascertain if they were maintaining their public position that there is an ongoing investigation by the State Attorney General and that we should wait for the findings of that investigation before drawing any conclusions,” he said. “Nobody indicated that they were uncomfortable or that they did not want to talk to me.”
And the New York Times also dropped a report on those calls Sunday afternoon.
Some prominent New York Democrats, including Chuck Schumer, Kirsten Gillibrand, Bill de Blasio, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Jerrold Nadler, have said Cuomo should resign.
