New York vaccine coordinator Larry Schwartz called county executives to gauge support for Andrew Cuomo
battling for his political life amid myriad sexual harassment allegations.
Schwartz’ lobbying for Cuomo, while at the same time having a major role in how life-saving vaccines are distributed, drew concern from local leaders and a rebuke from the president of the state Association of Counties and County Executives Association.
“There just can be no blurring of this line, and clearly they overstepped,” said Dutchess County Executive Marc Molinaro, a Republican who ran against Cuomo in 2018.
“It is a very dangerous thing that they allowed to occur. There are members of the County Executives Association that feel quite clearly that the two were linked and are very, very alarmed. We all are.”
One unnamed county executive told The Washington Post on Sunday that the call was so unsettling that the executive filed a preliminary notice to file an ethics complaint with the Attorney General’s Office.
Another county executive, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to The New York Times, said Schwartz, a former deputy Westchester County executive, had discussed the governor’s political situation, and then pivoted to talk about vaccine distribution.
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Schwartz says characterizations are untrue
Schwartz, who left the Cuomo administration in 2015, has been working as a volunteer to help the vaccine program and stressed there was no quid pro quo, saying he never linked vaccines to politics.
“Vaccines and the administration of vaccines is above politics,” he said in an email.
“The distribution and the administration of vaccines in New York state is based on a clear formula.”
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Schwartz role in Cuomo administration
Molinaro said the calls have had a “chilling effect” not just on those who did receive one, but those who did not and still worry their vaccine dosages could be harmed by criticism of the governor in his time of political peril.
That fear is bolstered by a vaccine distribution process in which counties have seen their dosages increase and decrease week to week.
The state Department of Health has refused repeated requests by the USA TODAY Network to detail where it is distributing its doses on a week to week basis.
Cuomo brought Schwartz back in a volunteer capacity in March at the height of the pandemic in New York.
Schwartz served as Cuomo’s top aide from 2011 through 2014 and is now chief strategy officer for airport concessions firm OTG. He was given a major role in overseeing hospital capacity and later put in charge of running the state’s vaccination program.
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