WASHINGTON — By announcing he would resign amid multiple allegations of sexual harassment, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo may have sought to avoid impeachment by the New York State Assembly. But inevitably it will be taken in many quarters as an admission of guilt, and state lawmakers retain the option of impeaching him and barring him from holding state office again.

Thus ends the saga of a proud Democratic family dedicated to public service, begun by his late father, former Gov. Mario Cuomo, who famously articulated politics as “campaigning in poetry and governing in prose.” Mario Cuomo’s sparkling address to the 1984 Democratic National Convention in San Francisco launched dreams of a presidential run, but he later walked away, to the disappointment of many party leaders.

Son Andrew seemed to many others this year to be on course to seek what his father avoided then. While lacking Mario’s warmth and lyrical speaking style, Andrew caught national attention during the earliest, dark days of the emerging coronavirus pandemic with a series of nationally televised seminars on how best to cope with it.

He effectively undertook the role in a vacuum of public concern and candor, presenting a sharp contrast to the reckless and heedless pronouncements of President Donald Trump. Before long there was talk of an Andrew Cuomo presidential candidacy down the road.

But he also demonstrated a certain brash cockiness that rubbed many New Yorkers and others the wrong way. When 11 women in his office came forward with specific allegations of unwanted physical harassment by him, many members of the Assembly in Albany took notice and expressed concern.

Now any talk of a future Cuomo presidency is gone, with his sudden decision to leave office in two weeks’ time and pass on the governorship to Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul of Buffalo.

Cuomo’s resignation followed weeks of repeated denials of the allegations against him. Some had expected him to fight the charges and try to thwart the state legislature’s efforts to impeach him. But the breadth of the calls for him to resign, even from within his own political cadre, apparently persuaded him to step aside.

Even then, however, he chose to cast that decision in terms of public service. “Wasting energy on distractions is the last thing that state government should be doing,” he insisted. “Given the circumstances, the best way I can help now is to step aside and let government get back to governing.” But part of doing so may well be the impeachment he hopes to avoid.

Cuomo’s political downfall came years after the #MeToo movement gained momentum, targeting politicians and business executives who had used their positions of power to harass and sexually assault women in the workplace. Until the movement succeeded in raising awareness, many such aggressors had avoided responsibility for their acts and many victims had suffered as their complaints were routinely dismissed.

In light of this, Cuomo’s defense was lame: He insisted that he hadn’t understood how public views of proper sexual behavior had changed over recent years. “In my mind,” he said, “I’ve never crossed the line with anyone, but I didn’t realize the extent to which the line has been drawn. There are general and cultural shifts that I just didn’t fully appreciate and I should have no excuses.”

Whether this tardy awakening of the man accused by multiple women of “unwanted touching and grabbing of their most intimate body parts” can save him from that pending impeachment by the state Assembly is the question now. What seems certain is that he has no realistic prospect for future public office.