Whether or not it's a fair criticism, Cuomo made the charge over and over in his brash style, which hurt him. Questions about Cuomo's personality issues may have been first voiced in April ago when, attempting to deflate Pataki's post-9/11 image and daunting personal approval ratings, he slammed the governor as having provided little leadership in the wake of the terrorist attacks compared to Giuliani. But Cuomo's slam that Pataki merely "held the leader's coat" ended up backfiring on him and became a gaffe with legs.

McCall pointed to a different episode in Cuomo's campaign as being the one that caused his challenger the most problems. During the state Democratic Convention in May it became clear that Cuomo's attempts to woo delegates had been relatively fruitless. He left the convention, saying that he would secure a spot on the primary ballot by obtaining 15,000 signatures rather than by earning the public support of 25 percent of the delegates. "I want to be the candidate placed on the ballot by the people, not the party," Cuomo said at the time.

"These were people who he had spent a year courting," McCall told me. "He'd been asking them for their support, telling them that their support was important, and then when he didn't get their support he decided something was wrong with the process, and said these people were hacks. Everybody saw through it. If I have a lead today it's because people saw the hypocrisy of his position."

Some say that Cuomo has his strengths but was just the completely wrong guy for this particular moment in the Empire State zeitgeist. "I think there might be some elements of this about our changing demands of our elected officials, maybe especially after 9/11," says Rep. Anthony Weiner, D-N.Y., a McCall supporter. "Maybe we wanted a bull in the china shop after [former New York City Mayor] David Dinkins. Maybe we wanted someone more conciliatory after Sept. 11, like Michael Bloomberg," who defeated the combative, arrogant-seeming Mark Green.

"I think Cuomo just misjudged the ethos right now," Weiner says. "He clearly thought we were more upset than we are."

A senior McCall advisor says that his campaign had run some of Cuomo's campaign themes by voters through polling and focus groups and they have consistently tested poorly. "This whole 'shake things up,' 'New ideas' pitch, there is absolutely no indication that's what people want," the advisor says. "They want a steady, mature leader. If anything, things have been shaken up enough in New York."

That spirit may end up biting McCall in the bum, too. While his supporters continually point out that when he was reelected comptroller in 1998 he won even more votes than did Pataki, Pataki still trounces him in hypothetical matchups. Though in a state with a flailing economy and 2 million more Democratic voters than Republican ones, it's difficult to assume that Pataki has it locked up.

Cuomo, meanwhile, was in a box -- behind in the polls for being perceived as too negative, he was, in a way, prohibited from attacking, the one thing that underdog candidates do in such situations. At a Thursday debate at a Rochester public television station, Cuomo -- who had been previously trying to portray a more subdued self because of these high negatives -- goes for it anyway, criticizing the culture of Albany. Of course Cuomo was part of the culture of Albany for quite some time himself as chief advisor to his father.

"Stop the excuses," Cuomo said directly to McCall. "Stop the reasons why you couldn't do anything for nine years. You were there."

Albany is a cesspool of quid pro quo sleaze, but perhaps if Cuomo were more of an actual outsider the charges would seem more credible. McCall told Salon after the debate that Cuomo's attempts to portray himself as "the ultimate outsider" were "amusing. Most people find it amusing."

Last Saturday, Cuomo released a new TV ad. The McCall team had expected it to be negative -- What else could he do to shrink the lead? But, caught in a campaign dynamic -- shaped, perhaps, by Mario's failure to slap his son upside the head a few more times when he was a young punk -- the ad was instead a positive one about protecting Social Security. Snore. The ad is notable in that Cuomo doesn't speak or address the camera at all. In its Tuesday analysis of the ad, the New York Times wrote that "Political analysts have said keeping Mr. Cuomo out of the way may help with the many voters who, polls suggest, are inclined to dislike him."

Cuomo's announcement Tuesday simply confirmed what many Democrats have been saying for weeks. "The race is over," the New York Democratic officeholder said Monday, before news of Cuomo's withdrawal. "The only question left is: How bad is Andrew hurting his future? The truth is, he's probably hurt it pretty bad already. But the question now is: Is he going to devastate his future by going very negative on McCall?"

Cuomo served as his father's senior advisor and often filled the role of backroom enforcer. In 1993, he was appointed an assistant secretary at HUD. When HUD Secretary Henry Cisneros announced his pending retirement, Cuomo campaigned aggressively to replace him -- so aggressively, in fact, he was told privately by White House officials to back off. Cuomo began speaking about returning to New York, but then the leading contender for the HUD job -- Seattle Mayor Norm Rice -- suddenly saw his chances shanked when a homeless advocacy group accused him of misrepresenting facts in an application for a $24.2 million loan guarantee from HUD. Cuomo had received a memo from a Seattle HUD official about this possible malfeasance in 1994. A HUD investigation ultimately cleared Rice of any wrongdoing, but by then Cuomo had the job.

He won't get this one, however. After last week's Rochester debate Cuomo told reporters that his lack of traction in the polls was because his "advertising has not communicated the message of the campaign well enough." But sometimes the reality is so clearly unattractive no amount of advertising is enough to cover it up. That's the lesson conveyed by the news that since last Sept. 11, the Saudis have spent more than $5 million in a U.S. public relations campaign but they've only seen American opinion turn against their al-Qaida-supporting country even further, its negatives increasing from 50 percent in May to 63 percent today.

The senior McCall advisor suggests that Cuomo did have a point about his ads. The McCall campaign has shown some of Cuomo's TV spots to focus groups and they've been put off by how he seems -- particularly in one ad running in upstate New York about jobs, "in which he's almost yelling," and another aimed at New York City about corporate accountability, "and he's got too much of an edge in that one, too."

"It's a cool medium," the advisor says. "People don't like it if you're too hot. You don't want to come across as a wiseguy, or too aggressive."

"There's a difference between being energetic and being aggressive," McCall told Salon. "I think I'm energetic on the stump and on the campaign. Yes, I am mellow and I am mature. But I can be tough and aggressive when I need to be."

With the nomination now effectively in hand, McCall says, he will be aggressively criticizing Pataki's record. "But I'm not going to do it in a nasty way, or in a way that turns people off. You need to show people a little balance."

Does Cuomo have that balance? "I haven't seen it yet," he says.

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