Family members of COVID-19 nursing home victims vowed to fight former Gov. Cuomo’s mayoral candidacy “every step of the way” — saying his handling of the pandemic “disqualified” him from mounting a political comeback.
“When you fail the most vulnerable who need the most help and are counting on the leadership to be top notch, he already disqualified himself from this race,” Vivian Rivera-Zayas, whose mother, Ana, died after contracting COVID-19 at a Long Island nursing home, told The Post.
“We’re going to continue to fight him every step of the way, hoping that he will not be elected our mayor.”
On March 25, 2020, the Cuomo administration issued a controversial directive forcing nursing homes take in COVID-19 patients who were discharged from hospitals, which some experts said contributed to thousands of deaths.
The three-term Democrat, who officially announced his mayoral bid Saturday after months of public hemming and hawing, also has been accused of significantly undercounting the true number of COVID nursing deaths — while penning a $5 million pandemic memoir detailing how he and his administration confronted the pandemic.
“While our parents were dying, he was worried about hiding stuff to protect his book deal and his image before the media,” said Zayas, 54, a co-founder of the 5,000-member advocacy group Voices for Seniors.
“It was always about him, and I believe in my heart that it’s still about him.”
Peter Arbeeny, who believes his father, Norman, contracted the virus at a Brooklyn nursing home in March 2020 and died the following month, ripped Cuomo’s callous attitude.
“His most famous term was, ‘Who cares where they died?’” said Arbeeny, 58, referring to Cuomo’s gripe at a 2021 press conference after a state attorney general’s report found he downplayed the number of nursing home residents killed by the bug. Cuomo repeated the question during a House committee hearing last year.
“As governor, his first job [was] to care. As mayor, his first job is to care.”
Cuomo spokesman Rich Azzopardi defended the former governor against the blistering criticism over his administration’s nursing home scandal.
He said that several civil court lawsuits over the nursing home issues had been dismissed and three US Department of Justice probes and an investigation by the Manhattan DA’s office were closed without finding any evidence of wrongdoing. He added that an investigation by the DOJ watchdog found his administration’s nursing home policy “was consistent with federal guidance” and that “no credible study has ever linked nursing home admissions guidance to an increase in deaths.”
Azzopardi also noted that Arbeeny filed a lawsuit against the state that was dismissed, but “the facts that came out of that clearly show” his father’s nursing home did not admit any COVID-positive patients until three weeks after he had been discharged.