Two grieving sons who blame then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s controversial nursing-home edict for the death of their father and scores of others from COVID-19 have endorsed rival Brad Lander for mayor.
Peter and Daniel Arbeeny’s dad, Norman, 89, died from COVID after a rehab stint in a nursing home in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn.
Under Cuomo’s policy, which was instituted in March 2020, patients who were infected with the coronavirus but stabilized were admitted or readmitted to nursing homes at a time when the facilities were not able to test for the deadly bug or provide adequate personal protective equipment to contain the infection, critics said.
Cuomo, who resigned as governor in 2021 amid a spate of sexual misconduct accusations he denies, is now the front-runner in the Democratic primary for New York City mayor.
The Arbeeny brothers’ endorsement of Lander was held outside the Cobble Hill Nursing Home, where their dad had been cared for.
“It is my honor to endorse Brad, because he answered our families’ call for help during the height of COVID in April of 2020 when the city shut down,” Peter said Monday of the current city comptroller and mayoral candidate.
“Five years ago, when no elected official would meet or stand up for us, Brad Lander was the one public official who fought alongside us to expose Andrew Cuomo‘s lies, and seek accountability for our father and so many other grieving New Yorkers,” the son said.
“Brad has empathy, is a decent, honest and tough person and is exactly what we need in a mayor.”
Lander invited Peter as a guest at last week’s mayoral debate. He urged the son to stand up and be recognized and demanded that Cuomo apologize to him and other nursing-home families for the disastrous policy, which was revoked six weeks later, after thousands of vulnerable sick New Yorkers had already been either admitted or readmitted into nursing homes.
“I have so much admiration for Peter and Daniel Arbeeny, who have bravely sought accountability from disgraced ex-Gov. Andrew Cuomo for five years and are still fighting to honor the legacy of their father, Norman. I’m deeply touched to receive their endorsement today,” Lander said.
During the debate, Cuomo did not apologize for his nursing-home directive.
“Mr. Arbeeny lost a father,” Cuomo said. “I am very, very sorry for that.”
But Cuomo said Lander and Arbeeny were wrong on the facts.
Cuomo noted Arbeeny sued the state and said legal papers in the case found that no COVID-positive person was sent from a hospital to the nursing home where his father was admitted.
“So it is factually impossible, Brad, that he got COVID, OK, from someone coming from a hospital,” Cuomo said.
Daniel Arbeeny led a class-action federal lawsuit against Cuomo, which was dismissed by a Brooklyn federal judge.
But the COVID-19 controversy continues to haunt Cuomo.
Last week, Cuomo said he not only saw a controversial report on nursing-home COVID deaths in the state while he was governor but may have altered the document before its release — a bombshell confession that contradicts his sworn congressional testimony.
“I did not recall seeing the report at the time. I did see the report, it turns out,” Cuomo told PIX11 News. “I’m sure if I read the report, I made language changes.”
The mea culpa comes after the Department of Justice earlier this year reportedly opened a criminal investigation into whether Cuomo lied on Capitol Hill when he adamantly denied that he drafted, reviewed, discussed or consulted on the nursing-home report.
Emails obtained by a congressional subcommittee show that Cuomo aides discussed his role in drafting the report and include the former governor’s own handwritten edits.
The report downplayed the consequences of Cuomo’s March 25, 2020, directive that forced recovering COVID patients into senior care facilities without mandated testing to see if they could still infect others.
The state also initially underreported the deaths of nursing home residents by nearly 50%.
Cuomo has long maintained his administration was following federal guidance when the state Health Department implemented the COVID-19 nursing-home directive and that all COVID deaths were reported.
During his grilling by the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic in June 2024, he denied accusations of mishandling the COVID response and pointed to federal guidance as having hampered his administration’s response.
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