Jessica Bakeman is now the seventh woman to accuse Cuomo of sexual harassment. The story of what Cuomo did to Jessica Bakeman is especially gross.
Andrew Cuomo’s hands had been on my body — on my arms, my shoulders, the small of my back, my waist — often enough by late 2014 that I didn’t want to go to the holiday party he was hosting for the Albany press corps at the executive mansion.
I was 25 years old and working as a statehouse reporter for what is now Politico New York. I had been on the Capitol beat for a couple years by then, but I was still among the youngest reporters in the press corps, and one of the few women in the group whose job it was to report on the governor’s every move. Everyone else was going, and some had been covering state government for decades. I thought if I skipped the event, I might miss out on some intangible opportunity to cement myself as a part of that community. I ignored my instincts and went anyway, walking over from the New York State Capitol Building with several colleagues.
I never thought the governor wanted to have sex with me. It wasn’t about sex. It was about power. He wanted me to know that I was powerless, that I was small and weak, that I did not deserve what relative power I had: a platform to hold him accountable for his words and actions. He wanted me to know that he could take my dignity away at any moment with an inappropriate comment or a hand on my waist. (The Cuomo administration has declined to comment.)