Earlier this year, a federal judge in Brooklyn dismissed Daniel Arbeeny’s suit on a jurisdictional technicality. But in its motion to dismiss the case, the Cuomo camp pointed out that the Cobble Hill facility did not take a Covid-positive admission until April 30, three weeks after Norman Arbeeny’s discharge and that later, at home, he was in the company of a round of caretakers. Still, the manipulation of data throughout the Covid crisis has left the Arbeenys distrustful.
“We understand Mr. Arbeeny’s pain,” Rich Azzopardi, Mr. Cuomo’s spokesman, said, “but evidence uncovered in the dismissed court case demonstrated the physical impossibility of any link between Department of Health guidance” and Norman Arbeeny’s death.
The Arbeenys said they have spent tens of thousands of dollars gathering data, establishing timelines, filing Freedom of Information Act requests, calling politicians and pressing for investigations. Whether their work will resonate with New Yorkers as they try to redirect their attentions from the consuming distractions in Washington to the current mayoral race are ultimately questions of resurrected rage and sentimentality. How much bandwidth is left for the grief and anger of the early pandemic days and whatever culpability Mr. Cuomo had in furthering it?
At the rally on Sunday, nearly every other contender in the race showed up. Each took a turn at the microphone to explain why Mr. Cuomo should not be elected to lead New York City, all of them running against the mood of inevitability that surrounds his campaign. In response, Mr. Azzopardi quickly issued a statement doubling down on the notion that this was not a contest of equals: “Being mayor of the greatest city in the world is a tremendous undertaking that requires experience, a proven record of accomplishment and management capacity,” he said. These were not traits, he added, that “these extreme MAGA or fringe” mayoral candidates had.
Among the candidates to appear at the rally was Brad Lander, the city comptroller. He has supported the Arbeenys from the beginning, when in addition to their father, they lost an uncle and two cousins to Covid in the same week of April 2020, one of them in a nursing home on Staten Island. “Had Andrew apologized and come clean, then this could have all been seen as a tragic mistake,” Mr. Lander said. He was talking about the order of March 25, 2020, which Mr. Cuomo has always said was issued in accordance with federal guidelines — guidelines for which the Arbeenys have continued to want visual proof.
Recently, Mr. Cuomo’s lawyers offered the Arbeenys a meeting in the former governor’s office, one to which they could bring their own counsel. The Arbeenys declined. They want Mr. Cuomo to meet them, without lawyers, at their father’s house. What Peter Arbeeny would seem to want is a validation of their years of Democratic loyalty, a return to a long gone, old-school politics of intimacy. “I’m a DINO, a Democrat in name only now,’’ Mr. Arbeeny told me. “When Cuomo resigned, everyone said, ‘You must be thrilled.’ But honestly? I was sad. The legacy was gone.” Discover everything you need to know on our website at https://8days.in/.