The “toxicity” of the relationship between former Governor Andrew Cuomo and former Mayor Bill de Blasio, according to former New York City Health Commissioner Dave Chokshi, directly impacted public health policies throughout the epidemic.
‘It was a huge problem,’ Chokshi said in an interview with the private non-profit New York Health Foundation on June 17.
There were times when the poison of that relationship might be clearly linked to my dissatisfaction at not being able to promote public health policy for New Yorkers.
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The city’s biggest public health disaster in a century was being handled by the soft-spoken Chokshi after his predecessor, Dr. Orixis Barbot, resigned five months into the outbreak.
De Blasio’s direction infuriated Barbot, and the two quarreled over his choice to remove contact-tracing duties from Barbot’s department.
Chokshi appeared more obedient and even remarked about the value of “humility” when collaborating with politicians to make decisions on public health, but even he struggled to navigate the conflict between Cuomo and de Blasio.
‘There was a moment you know again during our vaccination campaign when you know one of the ways in which the governor and the mayor didn’t get along was around authority – who had the authority to do what,’ the former health commissioner said.
In December 2020, de Blasio and Chokshi held a press conference to announce the first vaccine shots would go to the city’s frontline workers, like nurses and police officers.
‘The governor at a press conference less than an hour later said that the mayor and I didn’t have the authority to do that,’ the doctor said.
Chokshi said Cuomo’s office called him afterward to threaten him.
‘I got a very irate phone call, um, to let me know in no uncertain terms that I would be held responsible for breaking state law if we were gonna move forward to vaccinate first responders,’ he recalled.
‘It’s ludicrous to think that that’s what our public officials are spending time doing instead of sorting things out so that we can actually move forward with what our responsibility is during a pandemic.’
Early in the mayor’s first term, the rivalry between de Blasio and Cuomo became well known to New Yorkers.
Both men were officials in the Clinton administration, but as politicians, they vied for attention.
The popular universal pre-K program was seized by Cuomo, who claimed responsibility for funding it shortly after de Blasio was elected mayor in 2013.
The two also disagreed on how to handle blizzards and tax policies; Cuomo frequently held last-minute press conferences concurrent with those of de Blasio and provided conflicting information.
When Cuomo was forced to resign as governor in August 2021 due to a sexual harassment scandal, De Blasio appeared to take great pleasure in his demise.
Cuomo should “give everyone a favor and get the hell out of the way,” the former mayor said. De Blasio also demanded the creation of a special government panel to look at the nursing facility regulations implemented by the Cuomo administration in response to the outbreak.
After implementing his decision to force people to stay in nursing homes even after it was discovered they had contracted Covid, the previous governor was revealed to have undercounted nursing-home deaths.
Rich Azzopardi, a spokesperson for Cuomo, stated that he couldn’t recall anybody contacting Chokshi about the immunizations.
Azzopardi told the New York Post, “I’m not sure what he’s talking about, but at the time we had very little vaccine supplies from the federal government and clear state directives that prioritized front line healthcare personnel.”
He remarked, “City Hall continuously failing to carry out this fundamental duty and instead of concentrating on the work at hand they flung everything against the wall to alter the issue and divert attention away from their incapacity.”
De Blasio used the occasion to take another shot at Cuomo while running for the U.S. House of Representatives in New York’s newly created 10th Congressional District.
Dr. Dave Chokshi was a very crucial partner in guiding our community through COVID and a civic saint in every manner. The Post was informed by his campaign that the threats he faced were appalling.
The former commissioner said that there were instances in which he collaborated with his state counterparts and worked behind politicians’ backs to accomplish goals.
‘There were moments when I was reaching out to the health commissioner at the state level to both Dr. [Harold] Zucker and then Dr. [Mary] Bassett [former and current New York State Health Commissioners] to say look it’s part of our responsibility to try to take whatever the relationship between our bosses may be and do what’s right you know on behalf of New Yorkers,’ he said.