Heidi Stevens: Andrew Cuomo sexual harassment allegations got a whole lot ickier when he threw the word ‘mentor’ in the mix

A life hack: If you’re 63 and she’s 25 and you’re her boss, the flirtation is always, every time, definitely unwanted.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, facing sexual harassment accusations from two former aides, released a statement Sunday acknowledging that his interactions at the office “may have been insensitive or too personal.”

“I acknowledge some of the things I have said have been misinterpreted as an unwanted flirtation,” his statement reads. “To the extent anyone felt that way, I am truly sorry about that.”

In a New York Times story published online Saturday and on the newspaper’s front page Sunday, Charlotte Bennett, 25, said the three-term, 63-year-old governor asked her questions about her sex life, whether she was monogamous in her relationships and if she had ever had sex with older men.

Bennett was an executive assistant and health policy adviser in Cuomo’s administration until November.

“He asked me if I believed if age made a difference in relationships, and he also asked me in the same conversation if I had ever been with an older man,” Bennett told the Times.

“At one juncture, Ms. Bennett said, the governor also noted that he felt ‘he’s fine with anyone above the age of 22,’” the Times reports.

Cuomo’s statement called for an “outside, independent review” to look at Bennett’s allegations, as well as allegations by former aide Lindsey Boylan, who accused the governor of proposing a game of strip poker on a government airplane and stopping her as she was leaving his office one day to kiss her on the lips.

Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, New York’s two U.S. senators, and U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have also called for an independent investigation.

It’s hard to imagine a bright political future for Cuomo at this point, especially with the FBI and U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York investigating his administration’s handling of COVID-19 in nursing homes. He may be toast. I don’t know. I’ve never been good at, or all that interested in, predicting the future.