Miami Radio: WLRN Reporter Latest To Accuse Cuomo

Jessica Bakeman

A South Florida woman is the seventh to step forward to accuse New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo of sexual harassment. 

The Miami Herald reports her allegation comes amid a growing call from several high-profile Democrats demanding that Cuomo resign — an action the governor steadfastly refuses to do — as women have come forward with their stories.

In a frank essay written for New York magazine, “Cuomo never let me forget I was a woman,” Jessica Bakeman, who is currently a K-12 and higher education reporter for WLRN, South Florida’s NPR affiliate and a Miami Herald news partner, recounts a series of improprieties she alleges happened over a period between 2012 and 2014.

Bakeman was 25 and working as a statehouse reporter for what is now Politico New York, she says in the article. This gave her close proximity to Cuomo, who has denied touching anyone inappropriately, the Associated Press reported.

Cuomo

“I never meant to make anyone feel any uncomfortable,” Cuomo has said.

But Bakeman, who has previously written for the Star Tribune, The Wall Street Journal and Gannett, according to MEAWW News, recounts a different experience in the New York Intelligencer feature.

“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,” her essay opens.

But it was her job as a reporter to attend, she said.

At the event, at the Capitol, she said Cuomo, a Democrat now in his third term as New York governor, took her hand, “as if to shake it,” but would not let go and put his other arm around Bakeman’s back, his other hand on her waist and held her firmly, and indicated to a photographer he wanted a posed photo with her.