BY LARRY MCSHANE , KENNETH LOVETT NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Published: Thursday, January 1, 2015, 7:41 PM Updated: Thursday, January 1, 2015, 8:11 PM
Ever-eloquent Mario Cuomo, a son of Queens who rode his rhetorical gifts to three terms as New York governor and tantalized Democrats by flirting with a run for President, died Thursday, two sources close to the family said. He was 82.
Cuomo passed away six hours after his oldest son, Gov. Andrew Cuomo, was formally sworn-in to a second term in Manhattan. The elder Cuomo was too ill with a serious heart condition to attend.
"He couldn't be here physically today ... but my father is in this room," Andrew Cuomo said in his inaugural address.
"He's in the heart and mind of every person who is here. His inspiration and his legacy and his spirit is what has brought this day to this point."
At age of 42, a relatively late start for a politician, Cuomo made his first run for office, losing the Democratic primary for lieutenant governor. He entered government the following year when Gov. Hugh Carey named him secretary of state.
Two years later, at Carey's behest, Cuomo joined the crowded and chaotic Democratic field challenging incumbent Mayor Abe Beame. Koch emerged from the primary as the Democratic nominee - only to find Cuomo running on the Liberal Party line in the November election.
An incident in that race created an enduring rift between the two Democrats: Signs mysteriously were posted in Queens that read, "Vote for Cuomo, Not the Homo." Cuomo always denied any role, but Koch held a grudge for decades.
"That matter has affected our relationship from '77 through this year," Koch told the New York Times in a 2007 interview that was released upon his death, in 2013.
"I also held it against his son, Andy Cuomo... Social relationships, when we meet, are good. Underneath - he knows, I know, what I'm really thinking: 'You pr*ck.'"
Cuomo was elected lieutenant governor in 1978 as Carey's running mate. In 1982 he got some revenge against Koch, beating him in the Democratic primary for governor, and then winning the general election to become the state's 52nd governor.
Cuomo was reelected in 1986 and 1990 by towering margins, with his son Andrew emerging as his most trusted adviser.
The Cuomo inner circle also included Tim Russert, who later went on to fame as a political reporter and host of NBC's "Meet the Press."
Cuomo's speech at the 1984 convention is ranked as one of the great political addresses of the 20th Century. Some in the crowd were reduced to tears.
Cuomo, who received two curtain calls, passionately illustrated the distinction between the haves and the have nots in his "Two Cities" address.
"A shining city is perhaps all the president sees from the portico of the White House and the veranda of his ranch, where everyone seems to be doing well," Cuomo said.
As governor, Mario Cuomo wrestled with two recessions and presided over a massive expansion of the state prison system. A liberal, he bucked the political winds by wielding his veto pen year after year to block the restoration of the state death penalty.
It was his oratory, however, that made Mario Cuomo a national figure.
In July 1984, he delivered the keynote speech at the Democratic National Convention, a barnburner that amounted to a rebuttal of President Ronald Reagan's stirring vision of America as a "Shining city on a hill."
Facing a packed arena of Democrats in San Francisco, and a prime time national television audience, Cuomo said, "This nation is more a 'Tale of Two Cities.'"
Two months later, Cuomo delivered a second spellbinder, an address at Notre Dame University in Indiana on abortion, religion and politics.
The two addresses, which would be ranked among the top speeches of the 20th century, vaulted Cuomo into the ranks of potential presidential contenders.
For years Cuomo toyed with the idea of a White House run, first in 1988 and then in 1992, solidifying his nickname, Hamlet on the Hudson. He decided not to enter the '92 campaign at the last minute - and a plane that was to whisk the necessary paperwork to New Hampshire was left idling on an Albany runway.
Eighteen months later, Cuomo turned down another legacy-making opportunity when he asked President Bill Clinton to take him off the short list of potential replacements for Supreme Court Justice Byron White.
Another New Yorker, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, was nominated instead.
"He was probably during his time the most eloquent public official in the nation. ... He certainly carried the torch for progressive ideas," said veteran political consultant George Arzt.
"The plane on the tarmac has always been a symbol for many Democrats - people really expected him to take that flight and to run."
Mario Matthew Cuomo was born on June 15, 1932, in Jamaica, Queens, the third and final child of immigrants from a small village near Naples, Italy. His parents, Andrea and Immaculata Cuomo, owned a family grocery store in South Jamaica during the Great Depression.
Cuomo became a product of the outer borough's Catholic schools and a pretty fair athlete: He excelled in baseball and basketball.
A center fielder, Cuomo even signed a contract with the Pittsburgh Pirates organization when he was 19. Cuomo was hitting .244 with one homer in 81 games in his one season in the Georgia-Florida League when he was beaned by a fastball. He was blinded for a week and never played professionally again.
He went home and enrolled at St. John's University and then its law school, where he tied for first in his graduating class. In 1952 he married another St. John's student, Matilda Raffa, a union that would last 62 years until his death.
Cuomo ignored the advice of a law school dean to adopt a less-ethnic last name in the interest of landing a better job. The vowel at the end of his surname stayed - and Cuomo thrived.
His early legal career included representing a pair of defendants sentenced to the electric chair - an experience that shaped his unbending opposition to the death penalty.
Cuomo gained notice in the late 1960s when he successfully represented 69 families fighting a urban renewal plan that would have condemned their homes in Corona, Queens, to make way for a school.
His big break came in 1972, when Mayor John Lindsay asked him to mediate a bitter dispute in Forest Hills, Queens, where middle-class residents opposed the building of three, 24-story towers for low-income tenants on 108th St. near the Long Island Expressway.
"There's another part of the city, the part where people can't pay their mortgages ... and middle-class parents watch the dreams they hold for their children evaporate."
Cuomo's New York support surged after the speech: A survey showed 21.9% of his constituents rated his performance as excellent in September 1984, up from 8.3% in June.
Then, in his Notre Dame address, Cuomo discussed the issue of abortion and condemned the concept of religion for political promotion as "frightening."
"The American people need no course in philosophy or political science of church history to know that God should not be made into a celestial party chairman," he declared.
The devout Roman Catholic wound up feuding with future Cardinal John O'Connor that same year over his support of abortion.
The "draft Cuomo" movement picked up steam during Reagan's second term. But Cuomo ended the speculation by pulling his name out of the presidential race in February 1987. The clamor for Cuomo soon began again, leading to the famous Albany runway incident.
The jet returned to its hangar, and Cuomo later acknowledged his White House aspirations ended for good when Clinton was elected President in 1992.
As governor, Cuomo was tested just days after taking office, by an inmate uprising at Sing Sing prison in Westchester County in which 17 guards were held hostage for two days.
Cuomo helped negotiate an end to the standoff with none of the hostages suffering serious injury.
During his three terms, Cuomo oversaw New York through two separate recessions. In 1991, he raised needed revenue with a fiscal gimmick still referenced today-the state sold Attica prison to itself for $200 million in borrowed money that was used to help close a budget shortfall.
Cuomo also successfully pushed for a transportation bond act in 1988 that allowed the state to borrow billions of dollars for needed road and bridge projects and was behind the largest prison boom in state history - something he has since said he regretted.
It was his oratory, however, that made Mario Cuomo a national figure.
ROB KIM/GETTY IMAGES
It was his oratory, however, that made Mario Cuomo a national figure.
Ironically, his son since taking office in 2011 has closed a number of the prisons built during his father's watch.
After a dozen years in Albany, Mario mania had morphed into Cuomo fatigue.
With "Anyone but Cuomo" sentiment running strong, Cuomo's bid for a fourth term failed. He was defeated by a little-known Republican state Sen. George Pataki of Peekskill in 1994.
His relationship with Clinton became strained after it was revealed that Clinton was recorded by a mistress suggesting that Cuomo "acted like" a Mafiosi and was a "mean son of a b**ch."
Cuomo initially refused to accept Clinton's apology before the pair mended fences. After his 1996 reelection, Clinton helped to propel Andrew's political career, naming him as head of the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
The former governor eventually became an adviser to a subsequent governor: Andrew, who was elected in November 2010 and re-elected last Nov. 4.
Mario Cuomo became an author, writing an inspirational kids' book "The Blue Spruce" and an appreciation of our 16th President, "Why Lincoln Matters: Today More Than Ever."
His most famous speeches were collected for a book titled "More Than Words."
And the veteran of the political wars was summoned to serve as a mediator in one final Queens dispute: The 2011 battle between the Wilpon family, owner of the Mets, and investment guru turned felon Bernard Madoff.
In addition to his wife and his son the governor, Mario Cuomo is survived by four other children, including Chris Cuomo, an anchor on CNN.
lmcshane@nydailynews.com |
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