Former Cuomo aide talks NY COVID response, thoughts on Hochul in new memoir – North Country Public Radio

Former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and top aide Melissa DeRosa deliver a COVID-19 update in New York City in August 2020. File photo: Kevin P. Coughlin/Office of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo

Oct 26, 2023

A prominent figure from former Gov. Andrew Cuomo's administration is resurfacing with a new memoir.

Melissa DeRosa was Cuomos top aide for four years until he resigned in 2021 amidst multiple allegations of sexual harassment.

Her book, titled Whats Left Unsaid: My Life at the Center of Power, Politics and Crisis, covers her experiences leading the states management of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and the scandals that ultimately brought Cuomo down.

In an interview with Albany reporter Karen DeWitt, DeRosa defended a March 2020 nursing home policy decision. It required the facilities to take back COVID-positive patients from hospitals. Critics say it led to the unnecessary deaths of thousands of elderly New Yorkers.Their conversation has been lightly edited for clarity.

KAREN DeWITT: You present a defense of the March 25, 2020 nursing home policy. It became kind of an infamous decision to allow hospitalized COVID-positive nursing home residents to go back into the nursing homes. And you also talked about the report by Attorney General Tish James that said you undercounted the deaths by 50%. You present a defense of that, but I wonder, in retrospect, do you think that if you and the governor had maybe just apologized for that decision, instead of kind of doubling down on it, maybe it would have played out differently politically?

MELISSA DeROSA: I don't mean to try to present a defense of it in the book. My intention was to try to explain it to people: what it was, what happened, what was going on around us. I think that, particularly as it related to nursing homes, and the weaponization and the politicization of what happened around nursing homes, combined with the very real pain of the families who lost loved ones, it just became this political football that it never should have been. And looking back, if I knew then what I knew today, I would do a lot of things differently. But my heart goes out to people who lost loved ones in nursing homes. As I write in the book, you know, every decision that was being made was done with the best possible intent with the information that we had at the time.

In her book, DeRosa also harshly criticizes current Gov. Kathy Hochul, who was lieutenant governor when DeRosa was Cuomos top aide. Hochul finished out Cuomos term when he resigned in August 2021.

DeWITT: I wanted to get to your references to the current governor, Kathy Hochul, in the book. They're not exactly flattering. And you also mentioned in the book that someone gave you the "Mean Girl" moniker, which you didn't like, but you're pretty hard on a lot of people in the book and, I would have to say, yourself, too. But your references to Kathy Hochul are pretty negative. You say she's a character straight out of HBOs "Veep" central casting, you admit that you tried to get her off the ticket in 2018. And it seems like you're essentially blaming her for deaths in Hurricane Ida and the Buffalo snowstorm because she fired the head of emergency management. I mean, don't you feel any kinship I mean, you were a groundbreaking woman in your job to the first female governor in New York State?

DeROSA: You know, look, I think that Kathy Hochuls heart is in the right place. I really do...

DeWITT: You don't really say that in your book, though.

DeROSA: ...but, you know, I disagree strongly with how she's been governing the state for the last two years and the flipness in that moment, when I was calling her to say, you know, The governor is announcing he's resigning, it's going to be effective in 14 days, which, by the way, was such an emotional low. I mean, at that point, my mental health had deteriorated to a point where I wasn't sure I was going to get to the next day. And when I call to tell her that he's going to step down, it's the hardest decision of his life, not because he's conceding guilt on these things, but because we could count the numbers in the impeachment and because we knew we were on a losing track with the legislature, and because of what it was doing to all the people around us. I call and I have this moment with her, and her immediate response is, Lieutenant governors are prepared to take over at a moment's notice. And I was like, what? Like she hadn't been involved in a single substantive policy discussion in seven years that we were there, she wasn't a part of negotiating with legislature, she'd never dealt with a snowstorm, she'd never dealt with a hurricane, shed never dealt with a disaster or an emergency of any kind. And it was the flipness of that that grated on me and continues to grate on me to this day.

DeWitt reached out to Hochuls office for a response to DeRosas comments. A spokesperson said in a statement, "The State of New York has moved on, and we hope she is able to find a way to move on as well."

Click here for Karen DeWitt's full interview with Melissa DeRosa.

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Former Cuomo aide talks NY COVID response, thoughts on Hochul in new memoir - North Country Public Radio