MARIO CUOMO, 1932-2015.

You probably know, and there are lots of good writers talking now, about the career of Mario Cuomo -- about his early days as a ballplayer, "Hamlet on the Hudson," his Notre Dame address on abortion, and that barn-burning speech at the 1984 Democratic Convention that made him a national figure. A few things may be overlooked. Here, for example, is a nice story from Ladies and Gentlemen, The Bronx is Burning about Cuomo standing up for some Corona residents who were resisting eviction by real estate developers, and how that living-room campaign became his entree, thanks to the notice of Jimmy Breslin and John Lindsay, into politics. You might say he started out as a community organizer.

What I remember most clearly about Cuomo from my own years in New York is his first debate against Lew Lehrman in 1982. Lehrman at the time ran the Rite-Aid chain that's still all over New York. He was a rich, sleek avatar of the then-ascendant Reaganite movement whom the Christian Science Monitor described thus:

In [campaign] ads, as well as in person, Lehrman comes across as an affable, straightforward, well-meaning individual who wants to use his wide experience as a businessman for the public good... 

Lehrman esposes economic policies similiar to the proposals Ronald Reagan put forth in his 1980 presidential campaign... 

But as much as Cuomo tries to link Lehrman with Reaganomics, analysts point to a concern by many New York State voters that some of the state's economic woes -- including some of the highest taxes in the nation -- can be directly traced to overspending by state Democrats over the last two years of the administration of Gov. Hugh Carey and his lieutenant governor, Mario Cuomo...

He was also hot for bringing back the death penalty. Yeah, I know, he sounds like a nightmare, but you have to remember this kind of thing went over big with the yuppies and Reagan Democrats back then, and the race was close. When it came time to debate -- well, let Murray Rothbard, of all people, tell it:

Mario Cuomo, in contrast, proved to be a delightful candidate, a quintessential New Yorker: warm, fast, bright, and very funny. Even the fanatically pro-Lehrman New York Post admitted that Cuomo crushed Lehrman in their first and major TV debate -- a victory so blatant that the Cuomo forces actually worried about a sympathy backlash for Lehrman. In contrast, Lehrman came across as cold, serioso, monomaniacal.

Rothbard recalls some of the zingers Cuomo pulled on Lehrman -- including taking note of the fancy watch the Republican was wearing. I recall Lehrman was also wearing red suspenders that night, presumably to telegraph to the folks that he was a Wall Street honcho-type who would free-market them unto glory. At one point, Rothbard reports, "when Lehrman argued that businesses are fleeing New York because of its taxes and regulations, Cuomo riposted: 'Rite-Aid [Lehrman's drug chain] came to New York, and did very well, Lew.'" I remember this got big applause, and thereafter Lehrman spent a lot of time with his hands on his hips, perhaps to push back his jacket and show off those red suspenders, or to dissipate the considerable heat Cuomo put on him.

Cuomo managed to squeak into office then, and continued to stand up for the old-fashioned lunch-bucket Democratic values that pretty much everyone else in his Party was abandoning for third-way, neoliberal bullshit. He wasn't perfect, but he was one of a very few prominent, powerful liberals in the 80s and 90s who hung tough and held the line against the rapid sell-out of the poor and middle-class to the rich. Look at Jacob Weisberg marveling in 1994, "Nor has Cuomo gotten into the spirit of deregulation... Nor has he tried to get rid of rent control..." Weisberg meant these as criticisms, but after decades of asset-stripping by armies of Lehrmans, I see them as badges of honor. Oh, here's more Weisberg '94:

Cuomo has also often indulged, as in a speech he gave at Harvard in 1992, in old-fashioned liberal cant. Talking about the culture of dependency, he said, was blaming the victim. Welfare, he insisted, was a small part of the federal budget. Reform, he said, was “not the solution.” He has excused the rise in single-parent families by calling it “nothing new.” This is truly inexcusable. 

Cuomo's POV was certainly passing out of favor, and Weisberg's into it; very shortly thereafter, Clinton and Gingrich would make pauper-punching a bi-partisan sport, and their heirs are still trying to make poor people's lives more miserable and peddling marriage-makes-you-rich hokum. I'd say Cuomo will be missed, but I think we've been missing him a long time already.