Can US President Joe Biden stay on the sidelines of Andrew Cuomo saga?

So far, US President Joe Biden has made only a passing comment on the crises that have engulfed Governor Andrew Cuomo, and he seems to be hoping to avoid getting pulled in any further.

But as a longtime friend of the New York governor, Biden is one of the very few people in the nation with the potential to prevent a protracted standoff between an increasingly isolated Cuomo and the rest of the Democratic Party. That has strained Biden’s efforts to stay firmly on the sidelines as the governor faces a fusillade of calls to resign.

Cuomo is confronting a spiralling set of allegations and investigations involving sexual harassment, a toxic workplace, the manipulation of the number of deaths at New York nursing homes and perceived loyalty tests from the governor’s vaccine czar.

Biden and Cuomo have not spoken, people close to both men said. Asked on Sunday night whether Cuomo should resign, Biden said only, “I think the investigation is underway, and we should see what it brings us.”

The governor and his allies have urged people to wait for the results of the investigations to buy time, in the hope of stabilizing Cuomo’s support. And Biden appears inclined to give him that time — at least for now.

But a prolonged period of intraparty sparring over Cuomo’s future could be problematic for Biden. It threatens to distract from his early initiatives, including mass vaccination efforts and his party’s imperative to sell the public on the nearly $2 trillion stimulus package Biden signed into law last week.

The New York Times and Washington Post reported over the weekend that Larry Schwartz, the governor’s vaccine czar and a longtime lieutenant, had tried to assess the loyalty of county executives to Cuomo during phone calls about vaccine distribution — drawing particular attention at the White House on Monday.

Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, said that the reports were “concerning” and that Schwartz’s calls were “inappropriate reported behavior.”

The calls prompted one executive to file a preliminary complaint with the state attorney general office’s public integrity bureau. Schwartz denied that he discussed vaccines in a political context.

Psaki insisted there were “checks” in the system to prevent the vaccine from being distributed based on favoritism.

On Tuesday, the White House will hold its weekly call on the coronavirus with the National Governors Association, which Cuomo typically leads as chair of the group. Psaki said she expected Cuomo would join the call, adding, “We’ll leave that up to him.”

Both of New York’s senators, Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, called on Cuomo to resign Friday, along with most of the state’s Democratic congressional delegation. One factor in the timing for members of Congress who made their announcements in quick succession was the desire not to overshadow Biden’s signing of the pandemic relief package, according to people involved in the discussions.

Also read: Biden declines to call for Cuomo to resign, awaits probe

Cuomo was surprised by the statement from Gillibrand and Schumer; he had believed earlier that day that they would not join the calls against him, according to someone familiar with his thinking.

Still, the governor has flatly refused to contemplate resignation while questioning the motives of the women who have accused him of sexual harassment, invoking “cancel culture,” a favorite Republican talking point, as he dug in Friday.

“There’s a job to do, and New Yorkers elected the governor to do it,” Richard Azzopardi, a senior adviser to Cuomo, said Monday. “He remains focused on vaccine distribution and a state budget that’s due in two weeks, and we’re thankful for the help that the White House has provided on both those fronts.”

During the presidential campaign, Biden successfully avoided getting dragged into controversies that didn’t directly relate to him. But the bullying behavior Cuomo is accused of is contrary to the standard Biden has set for his own White House.

There are two investigations into the sexual harassment allegations against Cuomo, one overseen by the state attorney general’s office and another by the state Assembly.

Biden and Cuomo have taken different paths when accused of inappropriate conduct. When Biden in 2020 was accused of sexual assault by a woman who had worked in his Senate office decades earlier, he denied her allegation but did not impugn her motives. Cuomo has questioned the motivations of some of his accusers.

A senior administration official said Biden’s desire to stay away is driven partly by his personal relationship with Cuomo and partly by pragmatism.

Should he eventually become drawn into the issue, Biden’s options range from encouraging Cuomo to resign to asking him not to run for office again in 2022, as the governor has indicated he still plans to do.

“Biden has a long friendship with Cuomo, and I think he and [Nancy] Pelosi and others are clearly hoping the situation will resolve itself through this investigative process, and they’re giving him that much leash, but how tenable that will be over time is very questionable,” said David Axelrod, a former senior adviser to President Barack Obama.

While it would be an extraordinary move for Biden to intervene, there is precedent for a Democratic president wading into a messy situation involving a New York governor of his own party. In 2009, Obama delivered a message through intermediaries to then-Gov. David Paterson that he wanted him not to run for another term the following year.

Paterson, mired in constant controversy, had become an unwanted distraction for the Obama administration; he soon announced he would not run again, opening the way for Cuomo to run in 2010.

Read more: Top Democrats call on Andrew Cuomo to resign amid harassment allegations

But there was a significant difference between Paterson and Cuomo: Paterson’s poll numbers were dismal, at 21% approval in June 2009, and threatened the Democrats’ hold on a seat that a Republican, George Pataki, had held for three terms, until 2006.

Cuomo has much stronger support from his constituents. A new Siena College poll Monday showed that only 35% of New York voters want Cuomo to resign immediately (and only 25% of Democrats), though the survey was taken mostly before the wave of congressional demands for him to quit.

Still, support for Cuomo has eroded significantly from the highs of his coronavirus press briefings in the spring of 2020 — when he hit 71% approval — and even from February, when his approval among all voters was 56% in a Siena College poll.

His current approval rating, 43%, is lower than his disapproval rating, 45%. Among Democrats, however, his support remains high, at 59%, the survey showed, and 61% among Black voters.

Already, a majority of state legislators — and more than 40% of Democratic lawmakers in Albany — have called for Cuomo’s resignation. The state Assembly has launched an impeachment inquiry, and beyond Biden, the politician with the most control over Cuomo’s fate is the Assembly speaker, Carl E. Heastie, who will determine if and when to proceed.

Impeaching and removing a governor is a serious undertaking, and Cuomo can hope that it is too big a leap even for those who signed a letter urging his resignation.

“Calling the Legislature’s bluff on an impeachment vote, he recognizes casting a vote for impeachment is a heavy vote for many to make,” said Bakari Sellers, a former member of the South Carolina House of Representatives, who voted to impeach then-Gov. Mark Sanford in 2009. (Sanford was eventually censured.)

“The state is about to be flush with Covid-19 cash,” Sellers said. “Better days ahead for constituents. Hang on until you become everyone’s favorite bank.”

Some members of Congress and their aides were put off by a statement that the former senior member of the delegation, Rep. Nita Lowey, of Westchester, had made in defence of Cuomo, according to a person familiar with the matter. The members had the sense that Lowey was inappropriately “instrumentalized” as a shield for Cuomo, the person said, adding that while it wasn’t the precipitating event for other members to speak out Friday, it had left an impression.

A member of the Cuomo family had reached out to Lowey before her statement, according to another person familiar with the events.

“That’s ridiculous,” Lowey. “I don’t get used for things like that.” She said she’s known the Cuomos for decades, since they were neighbours in Queens.

Biden and Cuomo have been relatively close politically in recent years. In 2015, when Biden was considering a belated run for president, they met in New York; though Cuomo was formally backing Hillary Clinton at the time, he did not discourage Biden from a White House run.

In 2018, when Cuomo faced a primary challenge of his own from Cynthia Nixon, the actress and activist, Biden offered a full-throated endorsement of Cuomo at the New York Democratic Party convention.

Biden’s fondness for Cuomo does not necessarily extend to the staff level. The governor’s sharp-elbowed political operation has jabbed at many people in his path over the years.

Biden tapped Cuomo for a prime-time speech on the first night of the Democratic convention last year at the height of the governor’s popularity. The prerecorded address, which did not mention Biden by name until near the end, was thrust on convention organizers with little opportunity for revision, according to people involved in the process; they said the Cuomo team was among the most difficult to work within planning the entire four-day event.

Cuomo’s political operation also submitted a production bill that far exceeded other similar convention videos; convention officials declined to pay the full amount.