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Friday, Jul 10, 2009
He was supposed to be the Democrats' best chance to defeat New York Gov. George Pataki in November, except for one small problem -- people just didn't like him.
Sep 3, 2002 | "While it's harder for me to step back than step forward, today I step back," Andrew Cuomo, former U.S. secretary of housing and urban development and New York gubernatorial wannabe said Tuesday afternoon as he announced that he was dropping out of the race one week before the primary. "We need healing now, maybe more than ever before," Cuomo said. "I'm not going to start dividing now."
But the only division Cuomo seemed able to create was one between himself and the electorate.
Empirically, it is nothing short of remarkable that Cuomo -- the 44-year-old son of and enforcer for three-term Gov. Mario Cuomo, President Bill Clinton's secretary of housing and urban development for three years, and husband of former New York Sen. Robert Kennedy's daughter Kerry Kennedy Cuomo -- was well on his way to being trounced in the primary on Sept. 10, despite having entered the race ahead in the polls and having raised more money than his opponent, the state comptroller, Carl McCall. An Aug. 26-Sept. 1 poll released Monday by the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute indicated that, including those voters leaning in one direction or another, McCall leads Cuomo 53 percent to 31 percent among likely primary voters and was only widening his margin of likely victory.
On its face, the news that Cuomo was withdrawing from the race might take non-New Yorkers by surprise. But to those who have come in contact with Cuomo and seen how his grating personality has sullied what could have been a promising campaign, his withdrawal was surprising only in that it was a rare moment of grace. Characteristically, amid what could have been a dignified exit, came reports that in exchange for his taking leave, Cuomo was acting up again, blaring his obnoxiousness for all to suffer.
In exchange for his exit and endorsement, Cuomo demanded that McCall give him a high-profile role in his campaign, that former President Clinton be presented as the "broker" of the peace between the two Democrats, and that McCall endorse Cuomo's gubernatorial run in 2006 -- a request that assumes McCall will lose to Republican Gov. George Pataki this November.
According to a source close to McCall, the comptroller's response to the three requests was: "No, no, no."
The tacit threat was that if McCall didn't acquiesce to Cuomo's demands, he would spend the $3 million he has in his campaign coffers on negative ads against McCall. In his speech, however, Cuomo tried to play the statesman. "We still have an open wound that we are dealing with from last year's Democratic mayoral election," Cuomo said in his farewell address, referring to last fall's bruising and divisive primary match between former New York City Public Advocate Mark Green -- another obnoxious Democrat -- and Bronx Borough President Fernando Ferrer. Green won the nomination but in doing so alienated key parts of the electorate, helping Republican Mike Bloomberg to win the election. "If we were to now spend $2 million this week on an acrimonious campaign, we would only guarantee a bloody and broke nominee, whoever won, and the ultimate success for Governor Pataki in November would be assured."
"When you try to communicate too many ideas, sometimes you wind up communicating nothing," Cuomo said, Clinton by his side. But in the end all Cuomo seemed to communicate was that he is a very unpleasant person.
