Mario Cuomo

by O'Shaughnessy, William;

  I want to thank President Clinton for being here, and Senator Clinton. They both meant so much to my father for so long and we are all so proud, not only that you’re here, but that you’re New Yorkers. President Obama sent his remarks. Vice President Biden was here last night. Senator [Kirsten] Gillibrand is here. Attorney General Eric Holder; U.S. Attorney Loretta Lynch, who soon we hope will be attorney general of the United States. Mayor Bill de Blasio, whom my father and I were with the other day. Mayor [Michael R.] Bloomberg, whom my father had tremendous respect for; Mayor [David N.] Dinkins, who served with my father when the city and the state were in a very difficult time.

  And the literally thousands of New Yorkers who showed up yesterday to pay tribute to my father at the wake—it was an amazing outpouring of support. Thousands of people standing outside in the cold. My father hasn’t been in public service in twenty years. And he had gotten very quiet after public service. But people remembered to show up twenty years later. People from all walks of life, all across the state, whom he touched.

  One day when I was at HUD I was talking to my father on the phone. He had given a big speech that day, and I called to ask how it went: did he do it from notes, did he do it on cards, did he do it off-the-cuff? He said it was a very important speech so he wrote it out and read every word. He went on to explain his theory that you can’t possibly deliver a speech extemporaneously that is as well done as a written speech. He then invoked Winston Churchill as a proponent of the reading-word-for-word theory of speech making.

  Now you must understand the rules of engagement in debate with Mario Cuomo. Invoking an historical figure as a source—in this context—was more of a metaphor than a literal interpretation. It really meant Winston Churchill could have said, or should have said, or would have said, that reading was best. But my father’s invoking the gravitas of Churchill meant he was truly serious about this point.

  I explained I was uncomfortable reading a speech word for word because I needed to see the audience’s reaction and adjust accordingly. He summarily dismissed my point and said that was all unnecessary. And he said who cares about what the audience wants to hear. It’s not about what they want to hear, it’s about what you need to say.

  And that, my friends, was the essence of Mario Cuomo.

  He was not interested in pleasing the audience: not in a speech, not in life. He believed what he believed, and the reaction of the audience or the powers that be or the popularity of his belief was irrelevant to him.

  Mario Cuomo was at peace with who he was and how he saw the world. This gave him great strength and made him anything but a typical politician.

  But then again, he wasn’t really a politician at all. Mario Cuomo’s politics were more a personal belief system than a traditional theory. It was who he was. Not what he did. In his early life, my father was never interested in politics. In general, he disrespected politicians and the political system. He never studied politics or joined a political club. He never campaigned for anyone, and his early life, until his late thirties, was all about becoming a lawyer and practicing law. Once in practice, he became quickly bored with the typical corporate practice. My father was a humanist. He had strong feelings of right and wrong based on his religion, philosophy, and life experiences. He was very concerned with how people were treated, and that was the arena that drew him in. The bridge from law to politics arrived for him when he took on the representation of the homeowners in Corona, Queens, whose homes were being condemned by the city to build a ball field. They were poor, working families and couldn’t possibly fight City Hall. Poor, working-family ethnics. He took on their cause to right the injustice he saw. Central to understanding Mario Cuomo is that Mario Cuomo was from Queens.

  For those not from New York: Queens is an “outer” borough, like Brooklyn, the Bronx, Staten Island. Interestingly, there is no borough referred to as the “inner borough,” only outer boroughs: and that’s probably the point. There are insiders and outsiders, and one defines the other. There are those from the other side of the tracks; there are those from the other side of town. An outer borough is where the working families lived: the tradesmen, the civil servants, the poor. Mario Cuomo was the son of Italian immigrants who were part of the unwashed masses, who came with great dreams but also with great needs. Who struggled but ultimately succeeded due to the support they received in this great state of New York.

  Mario Cuomo’s birthmark from the outer borough was deep, and he wore it with pride. He had a natural connection with the outsider looking in, the person fighting for inclusion, the underdog, the minority, the disenfranchised, the poor. He was always the son of an immigrant. He was always an outsider, and that was his edge.

  His early days in politics were not awe-inspiring. He had an early aborted run for mayor in 1973. In 1974 he lost the Democratic primary [for lieutenant governor] to Mary Anne Krupsak. He ran for mayor in 1977, losing to Ed Koch. In 1978 he was elected lieutenant governor to Governor [Hugh L.] Carey.

  While it is different now, the job of lieutenant governor was not all that taxing. Governor David Paterson said it best when describing his role as lieutenant governor. David said he would wake up, call the governor, and if the governor answered the phone, he would hang up and go back to sleep.

  My father was living in the Hotel Wellington in Albany at the time, and I started law school there, and we were roommates. The typical schedule was my father was in Albany Monday, Monday night, Tuesday, Tuesday night, and would leave on Wednesday during session. Our third roommate was Fabian Palomino, my father’s lifelong, dear friend, whom he clerked with in the Court of Appeals. Fabian was from mixed origins. He called himself a “Heinz 57,” part Italian, part Native American, part African American, part anything else. He was truly a unique and powerful man, and we would have dinner together on the nights they were in town.

  My mother would send up care packages with my father on Monday, and all we had to do was warm up the prepared meals. My father insisted we sample every wine made in the state of New York, and we were soon connoisseurs of New York’s best wines. Fabian, who was a portly fellow, wore a shirt with no sleeves, stretched over his belly tighter than a drumskin. He wore boxer shorts with dark dress socks over the calf. I assumed he had chronically cold calf muscles. My father, who was modest and always formal in attire, was perpetually frustrated with Fabian’s dress. And he would say to Fabian, “Why can’t you dress for dinner, Fabian?” And Fabian would say, “Out of respect for you, I have.” He would say, “I wore my fancy boxers out of respect for you. I respect that you are the lieutenant governor and one heart attack away from having a real job.” And then Fabian would laugh, and the laugh would make his belly shake, and my father, not loving being mocked, would smile, but slowly.

  After dinner they would turn on the TV, and we would sit on the couch and watch television. We would watch a ballgame or the news, but it didn’t really matter. The function of the TV was just to introduce a topic they could debate. And they could debate anything. An item on the news or a soap commercial, it didn’t really matter. They debated to debate. They just loved it, and they were great at it. Eventually, the debate invariably turned to politics and government, and I could see my father refining and honing his own personal philosophy.

  In 1982 my father ran against Ed Koch for governor. It was the impossible race that couldn’t be won, but my father was ready and believed he was better suited to be governor than Ed Koch. The pollsters, with their charts demonstrating the impossibility of his pursuit, were unpersuasive. If my father thought he was fighting the right fight, it didn’t matter whether we were going to win or lose. It was “the right thing to do.” And there is one rule to live by, which is you always do the right thing.

  Mario Cuomo did not fit neatly into any political category. He believed government had an affirmative obligation to help the excluded join the mainstream. He believed it was the country’s founding premise and that more inclusion made the country a stronger country. B
etter education, better health care, economic opportunity, and mobility helped the new immigrants progress and made the community stronger. Not to invest in the progress of others was a disservice to the whole. He believed in compassion for the sick and the needy. This was also the essence of Christianity and Jesus’s teachings. But there were no giveaways. Responsibility and hard work were expected from all. He was not a spendthrift and came from a culture of fiscal responsibility. He was an executive and needed to balance a budget. He cut taxes and the workforce. When he took office the top tax rate in New York was 14 percent. When he left office twelve years later, it was 7 percent. The state workforce twelve years later was smaller than when he took office.

  Mario Cuomo, intellectually, was all about subtlety and nuance. He was called The Great Liberal. He resisted the label. His philosophy defied a label, especially an undefined and nebulous one. My father called himself a “progressive pragmatist.” Progressive values, but a pragmatic approach. He believed he needed to separate the two components, the goals and the means. His goal was progressive, but his means were pragmatic. I told him it was too complicated to communicate and no one would understand what he was saying. Frankly, I still don’t understand what he was saying. But he said he didn’t care and wouldn’t be reduced by the shortcomings of others, including mine. My father was skeptical of people and organizations that profited from government, to whom government was a business, rather than an avocation. And he always focused on the goal of government rather than the means—the product, not the process—to help the people, the student, the parent, the citizens.

  The truth is he didn’t love the day-to-day management of government; the tedium and absurdity of the bureaucracy [were] mind-numbing for him. Nor did he appreciate the political back-and-forth with the posturing legislature. As governor, he was criticized by the right. As the icon of the left, he was criticized by the zealots on the left because his lofty rhetoric couldn’t match the reality of his government programs.

  At his core he was a philosopher and he was a poet, an advocate, and a crusader. Mario Cuomo was the keynote speaker for our better angels. He was there to make the case, to argue and convince, and in that purist mindset he could be a ferocious opponent and powerful ally.

  And he was beautiful.

  A speech never started with the words—it was about the principle, the idea and the passion, the righteousness, the injustice—and then came the words, arranged like fine pearls, each chosen for its individual beauty but also placed perfectly, fitting just so with the one that came before and the one that followed so there was a seamless flow, in logic and emotion, leading one ultimately to the inevitable conclusion—his conclusion—which was the point of the speech in the first place.

  He was a religious man, and his relationship with the Church was important and complicated. His famous and influential speech at Notre Dame was done more for himself, to explain how he separated his personal views from his professional responsibilities. The public official fulfilling a constitutional responsibility was different but consistent with laymen following Christ’s teachings. He believed Jesus’s teachings could be reduced to one word. And the word was love. And love means acceptance, compassion, and support to help people. To do good. And that’s what he wanted government to be. A force for good. His love was not a passive love, but an active love. Not tough love, but a strong love. The good fight was a fight for love, and it was a fight he was ready to wage.

  In many ways my father’s view on the Church was ahead of his time.

  He was excited about our new Pope Francis and his enlightened perspective on Catholicism with an emphasis on inclusion and understanding. My father thought Pope Francis would agree that Jesus himself was probably from an outer borough.

  My father loved Teilhard de Chardin, a French Jesuit who modeled service and a dedication to sustainable community as a way of life.

  My father was a Lincoln scholar attracted by Lincoln’s example of government as the pursuit of the great principles. He also appreciated that Lincoln was the triumph of substance over style and that his life exemplified the relative isolation of people in power.

  We were a working-class family and proud of it. No fancy trips, no country clubs for us. He was the workingman’s governor and remained loyal to the old neighborhood values always.

  His grandchildren, my children, will speak of Grandpa’s sweetness. My father always had a “sweetness,” but it grew over the years, much as a fine wine turns into a brandy.

  I, however, remember his younger years, and sweetness is not the first word that comes to mind. Make no mistake, Mario Cuomo was a tenacious, competitive, incredibly strong man. He was impatient with the bureaucracy, unrelenting in the face of bigotry, uncompromising in remedying injustice. And he was really, really tough. It would have been malpractice not to be. These battles were for real consequences and made a difference to real people. And he was also competitive by nature. Whether in a campaign, fighting the legislature, or on a basketball court, you opposed him at your own risk and peril. I have the scars to prove it.

  The basketball court remained the one place he could allow himself to be his fully aggressive self. Governors, you see, are supposed to comport themselves with dignity and decorum. The basketball court was his liberation. We had epic battles. He hated few things as much as a timid opponent on the court because you cheated him of a real contest.

  We played in the State Police gym in Albany. He liked to play one-on-one because it was the purest form of competition. He was a solid 240 pounds and fast for a big man.

  He would make faces at you, taunt you, talk constantly in a distracting and maddening banter designed to unnerve you. He would hit you in places the human body did not have anatomical defenses. The issue of calling fouls plagued us. We tried using state troopers as referees, but they were afraid of angering my father. With one wrong call they would wind up on a weigh station somewhere up on the Northway. We tried letting the trooper be anonymous so there was no fear of retaliation.

  After I left Albany, the basketball competition became more institutionalized. My father started a basketball league with a number of teams. They had professional referees, and any disputes were settled by the commissioner. And my father served as the commissioner, and also captain of one of the teams. At the end of the season there would be draft selections depending on the results. Some people accused my father of hiring state employees only for their basketball talents. He denied it. Well, at least let’s say it didn’t happen often. Basketball was my father’s outlet, and it was always in good humor and always with good sportsmanship.

  My father also loved to battle the press. They were like the opposing counsel in a courtroom. He thought if they could judge his actions and communicate that to the public then he had the right to challenge their facts and judgment. He was unmoved by his staff’s passionate arguments that this was counterproductive. You don’t fight with people who buy ink by the barrel, as the old saying goes. My father was undeterred. The press was too important to tolerate sloppiness or misinterpretation. The public deserved the truth, and the press did not have the right to distort it, certainly not with impunity. He railed against ivory tower pundits and reporters with an agenda. He had no problem calling a reporter at 7 A.M. to give them a critique of their article. Most often, it was fair to say the critique was not overly positive. I have evolved, and I would never call a reporter at 7 A.M. I wait until at least 9 A.M. But he also admired journalism done well, and he respected Jimmy Breslin, Pete Hamill, Jack Newfield, Murray Kempton and Mike Lupica, Mary McGrory, Marcia Kramer, all stars in the constellation of lives well lived.

  He was humbled to be in public service and had disdain for those who demeaned it, with scandals or corruption, or cheap public relation stunts. It was a position of trust and deserved to be honored. Mario Cuomo served twelve years as governor with integrity. You can disagree with Mario Cuomo over those twelve years, but he never dishonored the state and he never dishonored his po
sition.

  In his private life he was exactly as he appeared in public life. He had a sixty-year love affair with his wife, Matilda. Not a storybook romance—no late-night kissing in the park, at least as far as we knew—but a real life partnership built on a foundation of mutual respect and tolerance. Commitment to Mario Cuomo was sacrosanct.

  His children were everything to him. Although I may look the oldest, Margaret is actually the oldest and a source of great pride. He beamed when he said, “My daughter is a doctor.” Maria, his artistic, altruistic delight. With Maria, he had the purest loving relationship. Madeline made him proud as a great mother and a tenacious attorney. Chris, talented, facile and funny, could always make him laugh.

  He loved his daughters-in-law, Sandy and Cristina, and his sons-in-law, with whom he had a special relationship: Kenneth, Howard, and Brian. They enjoyed a true father–son relationship with him. It was mutual, and they were adored.

  He had a small group of friends: Jimmy Breslin, Vincent Tese, Fabian Palomino, Mike DelGiudice, Sandy Frucher, and Joe Percoco were his intimate world.

  Over the years the press would love to give their dime-store psychoanalysis of our “complex” father and son relationship. It was all a lot of hooey. It is this simple: I was devoted to my father, from the time I was fifteen, joining him in every crusade. My dad was my hero, my best friend, my confidante, my mentor. We spoke almost every day, and his wisdom grew as I grew older. When it works, having a working partnership with your father adds an entirely new dimension to the father–son relationship. And for us, it worked. Politics is not an easy business. It shouldn’t be. But we carried the same banner. I helped him become a success, and he helped me become a success, and we enjoyed deeply each other’s victories, and we suffered the pain of each other’s losses. My only regret is that I didn’t return from Washington to help in his 1994 race. Whether or not I could have helped, I should have been there. It was the right thing to do, and I didn’t do it.