Cuomo Came of Age in Albany’s Sexual Harassment Cesspool
Assemblywoman Yuh-Line Niou first came to Albany as a staffer to Ron Kim, the only Korean American member of New York state’s legislature.
“We were alone up there. Alone,” she recalls, describing the setting for the harassment she faced: having her body groped by legislators, being told she and her boss would make a “hot duo” and should have sex, and being sized up for a “hot or not list.”
Niou, who is Taiwanese American and who won her own seat in 2016, has been heralded as one of a group of young female legislators challenging the culture of the state capitol that’s been defined for decades by corruption and sexual predation. Now, that group has been taking aim at a fellow Democrat in New York’s three-term governor, Andrew Cuomo, after three women—former executive chamber staffers Lindsey Boylan and Charlotte Bennet, and Anna Ruch, a guest at a wedding at which Cuomo officiated—have come out with detailed accounts of their harassment by him in the last week.