Cuomo for President?
Tucker, William
William Tucker CUOMO FOR PRESIDENT? What it will mean if this family man makes it official. It was a few days before the 1982 New York gubernatorial elections. Lieutenant governor Mario Cuomo...
...And so began, only five years ago, the successful electoral career of the man who is now, by all odds, the leading Democratic candidate for President of the United States...
...To him, the business world is just a clubby place where the rich pass wealth back and forth among themselves...
...Cuomo had made Lehrman look like a schoolboy...
...In the 1986 campaign, he ended up practically at war with the New York press corps even though he had a relatively unknown opponent and the unanimous support of the editorial pages...
...Wagon train after wagon train...
...Cuomo often expresses amazement at how "conservative" the people from his old neighborhood have become...
...A few days later, Cuomo squeaked through in a heavily Democratic state with 53 percent of the vote...
...After several years of negotiations, Cuomo saved nearly all the Corona homes...
...Then, in 1968, the City of New York tried to condemn thirty-eight houses in Corona, Queens, in order to build a new high school...
...The disintegration of the nuclear family—already the most ominous social trend in America—would proceed apace...
...Then in 1978, Krupsak challenged Carey for governor and lost...
...He has already taken some nice shots at George Bush ("I hear he was an ambassador at age 11") and even suggested to a Soviet official that the Soviets were rooting for Bush because "he'd be an easy guy for you to push around...
...With Carter, there was at least a modicum of respect for private enterprise...
...John's attending law school...
...The roomful of reporters cracked up...
...As organized-crime expert Nicholas Pileggi recently reported in an exhaustive investigation for New York magazine, there are no skeletons in the closet for Cuomo or any of his relatives...
...And how much we take, how much we give, under what circumstances, that we can argue about.' " Cuomo's whole concept of middle-class entitlements also seems to be rooted in personal experience...
...Finally, in exasperation, Lehrman strode across the podium, shoved his watch in front of Cuomo's face, and said: "Time...
...When Cuomo expands subsidies to dairy farmers or fattens the benefits of civil service unions (his first and most loyal supporters), he is only "taking care of family...
...In any case, this is the kind of soul-stirring populist rhetoric the Republicans are likely to be facing in 1988...
...Instead, Carey appointed him secretary of state, a mostly powerless office...
...But Carter also succeeded by making subtle appeals to ethnic minorities...
...We have more than once...
...John's Prep, Cuomo quickly won a reputation for matching a truculent temperament with hair-splitting logic...
...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JANUARY 1988 23 separate, conflicting agendas without embarrassment...
...This has threatened to ruin the utility's finances...
...But all his applications came back empty, a rejection that Cuomo attributed—almost certainly correctly—toethnic prejudice...
...This strange policy, which gives state and local governments the chance to overrule the federal agency, was recently modified by Congress...
...And anybody who tries to turn us into "one big family" is sure to destroy a lot of little families in the process...
...We Democrats believe that we can make it all the way with the whole family intact...
...He once punched a catcher in the face mask for an ethnic slur...
...Against Krupsak he was too wooden, against Koch in 1977 too "prosecutorial" (as he later characterized himself...
...Since he was 15 years old, Cuomo's main reference point was neither his old neighborhood nor his father's grocery store, but the relatively rarefied world of St...
...Under these circumstances, no one should have to ask what kind of economic policies Cuomo would pursue at a national level...
...But the vigor of Cuomo's campaign—its utter ruthlessness—has made the "hostile corporate takeovers" of the private sector look like child's play...
...Ever since Franklin Roosevelt lifted himself from his wheelchair to lift this nation from its knees...
...My, that's an expensive watch you're wearing," he said, and went right on talking...
...Everybody (except the rich, of course) can be united into "one big family...
...The principle problem for any Democrat, of course, is to unite all the hostile factions—blacks and Southerners, unions and environmentalists, welfare recipients and middle-class taxpayers—at least for the moment of the election...
...First, Cuomo blocked the opening of LILCO's Shoreham nuclear plant by refusing to draw up state plans for evacuation of the area, as required by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission...
...He married Matilda Raffa, a St...
...Even his own mother lectures him (in Italian) about his stance on the death penalty...
...And then there was this masterful, frontier-flavored evocation of "the American family": The Republicans believe the wagon train will not make it to the frontier unless some of our old, some of our young, and some of our weak are left behind by the side of the trail...
...The ebullient Koch—already widely popular in New York City—immediately took a 30-point lead in the polls...
...They have no place in "the family...
...First, Cuomo has a visceral dislikefor private enterprise...
...William Tacker is The American Spectator's New York correspondent...
...An encyclopedic intelligence, a trial lawyer's eloquence, a stand-up comic's sense of timing—plus a combativeness that probably hasn't yet been revved up to one-third of its potential...
...The building, part of New York's middle-income housing program, is owned by a friend of Cuomo's...
...By the 1977 elections, Mayor Abe Beame was a standing joke among city leaders and Bella Abzug was the early favorite to succeed him...
...Taking the setback in stride, Cuomo began to build a reputation as a silver-tongued battler with chutzpah...
...Immaculata is still living...
...At one end was his father's store—a place of drab, ceaseless labor that Bever seemed to lead anywhere...
...Cuomo's real love was the law, however, and soon he was back at St...
...Cuomo's appropriation of the word "family" to stand for the welfare state threatens to roll back whatever progress has been made in stemming the tide of family disintegration...
...The constant implications that Cuomo will somehow be tripped up by something in his personal background seems to be just what Cuomo says it is—a classic example of anti-Italian prejudice...
...As he told Commonweal in 1985, "I use the metaphor only to suggest to people: `Look, be honest with yourselves...
...He certainly wouldn't tolerate anything from Qaddafi and would be a tough, able negotiator with the Soviets...
...Until her recent marriage another daughter actually lived in subsidized housing in New York City—having mysteriously risen to the top of a long waiting list almost immediately after she graduated from college...
...Environmentalism—a genteel way of protecting the middle class from "uncontrolled growth"---is always a big part of this strategy...
...He tries to narrow trade circles, play beggar-thyneighbor, and hoard benefits among "the family...
...Yet Cuomo's ascendancy is no fluke...
...At full speed, Cuomo could be a very tough candidate indeed in 1988...
...Then came his narrow victory over Lehrman—a self-made millionaire who preached tax cuts and was making his first and only run for office...
...Cuomo tied for first in his class and won a clerkship on the New York Court of Appeals, the state's highest court...
...Andrea ran a 24-hour grocery store in Queens, where Mario helped out in the mornings, but spent much of his time reading in the back room...
...Everybody knew he had a great fastball—tremendous potential—but he couldn't put it all together...
...Their real arena is Congress —particularly the House of Representatives—where they can pursue their Watching Cuomo dwarf the entire field of Democratic candidates without even running, one is hard put to remember that this man once lost a primary to Mary Ann Krupsak...
...As a student at St...
...In fact, Cuomo's altar-boy, struggling-lawstudent past is the very antithesis of any "mobster...
...Although his may be an American success story, Cuomo's rise also has clear precedents among the thousands of poor European boys who were lifted into the priesthood...
...Almostovernight, Cuomo has turned into one of the most awesome candidates I've ever encountered...
...What does Cuomo have going for him...
...His famous remark about "preserving the ethnic purity of neighborhoods"--although dubbed a gaffe in the press—was actually a clear signal to the lower-middle class that he understood its concerns as well...
...By 1974, Cuomo was a public per- sona obviously ready for office...
...Second, Cuomo's appropriation of the word "family" to stand for the welfare state threatens to roll back whatever progress has been made in stemming the tide of family disintegration...
...While the Cuomos have given one of their daughters an elaborate debutante party, they also had to borrow heavily to send their children to college...
...Although batting a mediocre .244, he played aggressively, causing one scout to write: "Perhaps the best prospect on the team...
...He readily admits that he seldom talked with his father as a young man and never felt terribly close to him...
...Then suddenly it was all there...
...You had your chance...
...To him, there is no other way of improving the lot of the vast majority of people except through the work of the government...
...He supports Star Wars research and defends our presence in the Persian Gulf...
...Thomas More is his idol...
...Don't assume I'm walking just because you saw me wearing shoes...
...The whole concept of entrepreneurship as an opportunity for advancement to people of any ethnic background is completely lost on him...
...In addition, Cuomo has a notoriously thin skin...
...He and Matilda moved into a modest home that his father built with his own hands after retirement...
...Although Cuomo may look good sitting on the sidelines, things could be different if he finally enters the fray...
...Cuomo has no "mafia past," as so many people seem to suspect...
...His electoral record is not as successful as his reputation might indicate...
...You just saw me carrying a lighted cigarette...
...Indeed, Cuomo's encompassing vision has probably been too cramped by running for city and state offices...
...Cuomo's history, then, probably offers a clue to his current coyness about entering the national campaign...
...Now they were facing each other in a debate before more than a hundred newspaper reporters...
...In fact, to Cuomo, the term "welfare state" is a redundancy...
...Then New York City nearly went bankrupt...
...John's Prep and the Catholic university system...
...By 1959, with an outstanding academic record and a prestigious clerkship behind him, Cuomo expected to find a job at a major New York firm...
...After all, Abraham Lincoln (with whom Cuomo likes to compare himself) actually lost to Stephen Douglas for senator after their famous debates...
...Another idea was granting grocery stores licenses to sell wine coolers—but only those made with New York grapes...
...Finally, the Cuomo administration has run an ongoing advertising campaign against LILCO's management, often tracking their movements day-to-day during service interruptions, trying to prove they are "incompetent...
...In the process, Cuomo made good friends with Newfield and with Jimmy Breslin, two journalists who still-argue his case regularly...
...When Hugh Carey, an old St...
...Although Cuomo constantly emphasizes his ethnic roots, if there is anything notable about him it is how alienated he is from them...
...When Carey retired in 1982, Cuomo became the obvious man to succeed him—obvious, that is, until Ed Koch decided to enter the race...
...24 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JANUARY 1988...
...John's cohort, was nominated for governor, he chose Cuomo as his lieutenant governor...
...When reporters asked Cuomo if his efforts weren't driving LILCO toward bankruptcy, Cuomo sneered, "Let 'em go bankrupt...
...Blacks and Hispanics, people of every ethnic group, and native Americans—all those struggling to build their families and claim some small share of America...
...Thus, like Jimmy Carter and Richard Nixon before him, Cuomo's long political ascent has been bought at the price of a certain personal isolation...
...There is a bit of Thomas Wolfe in Cuomo—a man who has been educated out of his world and into the abstract world of the intelligentsia...
...Then, as the time wore down, Cuomo began to employ the old debater's trick of simply ignoring the clock and over-speaking his time...
...Cuomo looked like a bridesmaid again...
...On foreign policy, he would probably offer a clean break with the neo-isolationism of the Democrats...
...To him, the private sector is just an old-boy network where Ivy League graduates and used-car salesmen pursue "personal greed...
...He seeks to override the inherent conflict between the poor and the middle class by arguing that welfare programs should be extended into the middle classes as well...
...Anybody who talks about "one big family" is really talking about one big state...
...Some of us are in this room today only because this nation had that confidence...
...So long, Andy...
...T he keystone of Cuomo's vision is 1 his complete rejection of the possibilities of private enterprise...
...And so as an excellent prospect with an Italian last name, he was forced to settle for a small firm in Brooklyn...
...S why is there so much reason to 1, 3 worry about Cuomo...
...Pollster Pat Caddell has likened him to Sandy Koufax sitting on the Los Angeles Dodgers' bench during the early sixties...
...After Cuomo had refused to debate O'Rourke face-to-face for the entire campaign, O'Rourke surprised him two weeks before the election by calling in to a radio talk show on which the governor was appearing...
...We are a lot of little families...
...We all take, in one form or another...
...Combining all these constituencies into a national coalition, however, is a different story...
...At St...
...As President, he would undoubtedly initiate "buy-only-American" legislation and sponsor the kind of trade bills that are usually the prerogatives of union lobbyists and narrow-minded congressmen...
...When Cuomo argues that politics offers most people their only chance for advancement, he is essentially speaking from personal experience...
...His inaugural address of 1982 announced "the family of New York...
...Once again Cuomo hammered out a compromise and enhanced his reputation as a skilled negotiator...
...Carey asked Cuomo to run for mayor to "save New York City...
...But Cuomo was challenged in a primary by state senator Mary Ann Krupsak and suffered an embarrassing loss...
...He was an attorney long before he set foot in a law school classroom...
...I won't proceed with my argument until I have the undivided attention of this court," he said...
...Cuomo's defense won him a special reprimand in a school assembly...
...Cuomo's state racing commission has also required Belmont, Aqueduct, and Saratoga to run special "New York-bred" races open only to New York horses...
...To Cuomo, it is the whole concept of free trade that needs explaining...
...Watching Cuomo dwarf the entire field of Democratic candidates without even running, one is hard put to remember that this man once lost a primary to Mary Ann Krupsak...
...Matilda worked while Cuomo studied, took care of the kids, and baked bread...
...With Cuomo there is no such awareness...
...Cuomo became their lawyer...
...Nor will there be any cheap and easy shots to knock him off the track...
...On the other hand, the Family of America would be the newly burgeoning welfare state...
...John's classmate who found him "very serious-minded," and they started a growing family...
...After attending public schools through junior high, he won acceptance at St...
...The "family of New York'!-- if it has meant anything—has been an attempt to close New York's borders to interstate competition...
...The highly regulated utilities, of course, have always aroused the passions of populist politicians, just as tethered elephants bring out the sadistic impulses in small boys...
...Please allow me to skip the stories and the poetry and the temptation to deal in nice but vague rhetoric," Cuomo began, launching into an hour's worth of poetry and vague rhetoric...
...It was not until their confrontation reached the national level that Lincoln's broader vision prevailed...
...Even the New York Times criticized Cuomo for his "taste for endless, intricate, contentious argument...
...In fact, Cuomo's rise from poverty, his intelligence, and his eloquent invocation of so much of what is good in America would seem to make him a candidate with whom most conservatives could feel at least somewhat comfortable...
...Their differencesover the death penalty—Koch in favor, Cuomo against—became the key issue...
...Mario Matthew Cuomo was born in 1932 to Andrea and Immaculata Cuomo, Italian immigrants who spoke very little English most of their lives...
...His parents also helped with the babysitting...
...Did Reagan ever claim this...
...With two defeats under his belt, Cuomo was beginning to look like a political wallflower...
...An excellent student and outstanding athlete, Cuomo still found ways to antagonize school authorities...
...A Kennedyesque candidate attempts to unite the Democrats through youthful charisma and noblesse oblige...
...uomo's background offers some suggestions...
...John's, he was embarrassed to bring his parents on campus because of their limited English...
...Yet the legendary Cuomo is also the real one—a rapier wit, fearsome aggressiveness, plus a talent for purepolitical poetry...
...Such soaring rhetoric really needs the national stage...
...His 1984 keynote address (which he wrote himself) is a rhetorical masterpiece...
...Within these borders people subsidize each other and trade political favors...
...Meanwhile, Mayor John Lindsay asked him to mediate an even more difficult case—New York City's attempt to "scatter-site" four low-income, high-rise apartment buildings in middle-class Forest Hills...
...Your time is up...
...He believes in the welfare state with a passion that liberals like Gary Hart and Michael Dukakis might find embarrassing...
...Carter was, after all, a private farmer who, although heavily dependent on government subsidies, at least understood the contingencies of private undertaking...
...His brief career ended when he was beaned...
...That is why the Republicans—whose vision is narrower but more focused—have won the presidency so often in recent years...
...Lifting them up into the wagon on the way...
...The hope seems to be that the state's policies will drive down Lilco's stock to a price the Power Authority can reasonably afford...
...This is undoubtedly a major reason why Cuomo insists on calling every entity of government he enters a "family...
...Not until 1986, when he beat Westchester County Executive Andrew O'Rourke by the largest margin in state history, did Cuomo finally achieve a landslide...
...You didn't actually see me smoking, Father," he argued...
...Cuomo ran well, but was defeated by Congressman Ed Koch, who emerged as a new "Democratic conservative...
...We never really had a serious discussion until after he retired...
...That one was overturned in the courts...
...Constantly reaching out to extend and enlarge that family...
...Note the negative context for economic ambition.] Make the rich richer and what falls from their table will be enough for the middle class and those trying to make it into the middle class...
...The Republicans only want to "take care of the strong and hope that economic ambition and charity will do the rest...
...Andrea died in 1981...
...Cuomo replaced her as lieutenant governor...
...As a result, Cuomo's economic strategies are distinctly mercantile...
...John's Prep, an offshoot of St...
...Second, the state Public Service Commission—five of seven members now Cuomo appointees—has begun refusing to allow taco to incorporate the remaining $3.2 billion of Shoreham costs in its rate base...
...During the 1982 campaign, for example, Cuomo proposed that New York City's Metropolitan Transportation Authority be allowed to buy subway cars only from New York State manufacturers, regardless of higher prices or inferior quality...
...At St...
...His economics are distinctly medieval...
...While education and politics have been Cuorno's route to success, his encounters with private enterprise have been brief and dissatisfying...
...A less aristocratic candidate, on the other hand—a Carter or a Cuomo—must come up with a vision that overcomes the middle class's concerns about being pressed too closely by the poor...
...In a long portrait in the New Yorker a few years ago, Ken Auletta told the story of how a priest once caught Cuomo smoking in the halls...
...Cuomo is an exquisite debater and was besting Lehrman on the issues, but still hadn't managed to put him away...
...The last of four children (one of whom died young), Mario was the "smart one," much taken with argument and learning...
...You can't each be an individual who survives on his or her own...
...W ho is this man who now seems fated to reassemble the warring 22 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JANUARY 1988 factions of the Democratic party and bring the spirit of the 1930s into the 1980s...
...The problem is that we are not one big family...
...Cuomo responded by taunting O'Rourke and saying he would not debate the issues until O'Rourke promised to send him his income-tax returns...
...How did a man who perpetually praises his father for working nearly 24 hours a day in a small grocery store endup so completely alienated from private enterprise...
...Make no mistake, Cuomo plays a rough game—far rougher than anything that has been seen in Washington for some time...
...On and on he went, while Lehrman made fruitless appeals to the judges...
...The word "protectionist" doesn't even begin to describe him...
...Thus, Cuomo's concept of "family" doesn't really involve an ever-expanding wagon train so much as circling the wagons...
...Meanwhile, Cuomo has created the Long Island Power Authority, which is now studying a takeover...
...It is no surprise that St...
...Cuomo disputed the charge...
...Most current Democratic candidates are trying to become "another Kennedy," and the prospect of being labeled another Carter is hardly appealing...
...On crime, for example, he cracked down on a prison riot shortly after becoming governor in a way that could have taught Nelson Rockefeller a lesson...
...Both are urging Cuomo to run for President...
...The only way we can live is collectively...
...The experience of Lewis Lehrman, for example, who turned his father's small manufacturing firm into a cut-rate drugstore chain, lowering prices and creating hundreds of jobs, is not only alien to Cuomo—it is positively distasteful...
...But Cuomo's rhetoric will confuse the issue and may even help spread this social chaos into the middle class...
...Overnight, Koch plummeted and Cuomo beat him, winning heavily upstate...
...Why, then, would a Cuomo presidency be such a giant step backward...
...Yet, what Cuomo actually means by "family" is a world where the voluntary efforts people make to help themselves and their own families is replaced by the coercive, redistributive powers of the state...
...As Cuomo told the Democrats in his 1984 keynote address, the country is divided between "the royalty and the rabble...
...There are two major reasons...
...Most illustrative of Cuomo's relationship with private enterprise has been his two-year campaign to take over the Long Island Lighting Company (LiLco...
...No contest," they declared in the papers the next day...
...Then Koch gave an interview to Playboy in which he described the suburbs as "sterile" and called life in rural upstate New York "a joke...
...Thus, although Cuomo is sometimes described as a "conservative Democrat," he is no such thing...
...To new frontiers of education, housing, peace...
...We need speeches that will not just bring people to their feet but to their senses," he shouted to delegates who had been on their feet cheering for 45 minutes...
...At the other was the WASPish world of New York law firms that rejected him because he had an Italian name...
...He'll run right over you...
...Even liberals now recognize that the break-up of the nuclear family, particularly among blacks, has been a social disaster...
...Lieutenant governor Mario Cuomo and maverick Republican Lewis Lehrman were locked in a fierce election campaign...
...The Democrats are really a very diverse bunch of people who all expect the government to solve their problems...
...And so, Cuomo really takes Carter a step further...
...John's University, a Jesuit institution then in Brooklyn and now in Queens...
...To begin with, a Cuomo ascendancy in 1988 would essentially be a fulfillment of the Carter promise of 1976...
...Cuomo glanced at Lehrman's wrist...
...Illegitimacy, teenage motherhood, single-parent homes—all would be welcomed into the sheltering arms of the government...
...The homeowners—mostly Italian—fought the condemnation...
...But remember, Jimmy Carter is the only Democrat to win the presidency in the last twenty years...
...The whole family aboard...
...The story was picked up by Jack Newfield of the Village Voice and was soon a cause cêlebre...
...Once, while arguing before an appeals court, Cuomo scolded a judge for whispering to a colleague during Cuomo's oral argument...
...They're a private company, aren't they...
...The most resounding theme of his 1984 keynote address was "the family of America...
...Cuomo confronts the same problem in a slightly different way...
...John's College, Cuomo played center field and eventually spent a summer in the Pittsburgh Pirates' minor-league organization...
...He even accused President Reagan of being "born to the blood of kings...
Vol. 21 • January 1988 • No. 1
