Former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo dies at 82

Former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo, who championed the power of government and liberalism to advance society with eloquence and compassion, died Thursday. He was 82.

Cuomo died of natural causes due to heart failure at his home, the same day his son Andrew started his second term as New York’s governor, according to a statement released by the governor’s office. He was surrounded by his family.

Mario Cuomo’s last public appearance came in November, when Andrew was re-elected governor. The frail-looking patriarch and his son raised their arms together in victory at the election-night celebration. He didn’t attend Andrew Cuomo’s speech Thursday because he was not well, but the current governor spoke of his father.

“He is in the heart and mind of every person who is here. He is here and he is here, and his inspiration and his legacy and his experience is what has brought this state to this point,” Andrew Cuomo said. “So let’s give him a round of applause.”

Mario Cuomo, a Queens Democrat, served three terms as New York’s 52nd governor from 1983 to 1994 and for years was the choice of top Democratic operatives to run for president or, later, to join the U.S. Supreme Court. He rose to power during an era of New York politics in the 1970s through 1990s that his son, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, has called a time of giants, which included Gov. Hugh L. Carey and New York City Mayor Edward Koch.

Politically, Mario Cuomo began as a community organizer in Queens. He was assigned by Mayor John Lindsay in 1972 to quell a brewing racial flashpoint over a planned low-income housing project. Chosen for his temperament, Cuomo earned a reputation as a reasoned, deliberate problem-solver that would characterize his politics.

In 1975, he was appointed secretary of state by Carey. In 1978 Cuomo was elected lieutenant governor under Carey, and then governor in 1982.

Cuomo’s tenure as governor began with his successful negotiation to end a prison uprising at Sing Sing Correctional Facility eight days after taking office. But much of his time in Albany was dominated by New York’s economic problems and political fights reflecting deep divisions between upstate and downstate interests.

Though known nationally as a liberal, Cuomo presided over the largest expansion of prisons in state history. As New York City grappled with the crack epidemic, Cuomo and lawmakers opened 29 prisons and several youth correctional facilities, more than were built in the state’s history at the time.

Cuomo said he developed his perspective on life and politics through his parents’ small grocery in South Jamaica, Queens. He grew up in Briarwood and attended PS 50, then St. John’s Preparatory School and later St. John’s University and its law school.

As a public figure, he often spoke about those days growing up as the son of Italian immigrants. “I watched a small man with thick calluses on both his hands work 15 and 16 hours a day,” Cuomo recalled in one speech. “I saw him once literally bleed from the bottoms of his feet, a man who came here uneducated, alone, unable to speak the language, who taught me all I needed to know about faith and hard work by the simple eloquence of his example. I learned about our kind of democracy from my father. And I learned about our obligation to each other from him and from my mother.”

His love of baseball gave him decades of stories from a short stint in the minor leagues for the Pittsburgh Pirates organization. He often said he used his signing bonus to pay for an engagement ring for Matilda Raffa. They were married in 1954 and had five children: Margaret, Andrew, CNN news anchor Chris Cuomo, Maria and Madeline.

President Barack Obama praised Cuomo Thursday as “a determined champion of progressive values, and an unflinching voice for tolerance, inclusiveness, fairness, dignity, and opportunity.”

Cuomo was known for his humor, which he often used in debates or to soften his image as a fierce foe or out-of-touch liberal.

“An astrologist sent me a horoscope that said I was going to die on Election Day,” Cuomo wrote in his published campaign diary under an entry for the day before the 1982 election for governor. “I don’t know if she meant literally or figuratively. Just in case she means it literally, I think I’ll vote early.”

As governor, he worked with and battled Democrats in New York City, Republican Senate Majority Leader Warren Anderson of Binghamton, and President Ronald Reagan, whom he chided for “Darwinism” in governance.

It was his 1984 keynote address to the Democratic National Convention in San Francisco that fueled that speculation that he would be a presidential candidate.

He touted popular liberalism, which he said had been tarnished by the conservative surge under Reagan and his view of America as a “shining city on the hill.”

Two months later, his speech at the University of Notre Dame addressed abortion – a subject that remains a flashpoint for politicians and a dangerous topic for Roman Catholic politicians like Cuomo. He didn’t merely try to defend his support of abortion rights; he tried to recast the national argument.

His oratory, which would win him two spots in the top 100 American speeches compiled by the university research group American Rhetoric, gave him national recognition. But his repeated claims that he hadn’t made a decision on whether to seek the presidency earned him the nickname “Hamlet on the Hudson.”

In December 1991, Cuomo had two chartered planes ready to take him to New Hampshire as the deadline loomed to register for the that state’s 1992 presidential primary. He even had a site chosen for his first presidential campaign speech.

As the national press waited anxiously, he emerged from his office in Albany at 5 p.m., as the New Hampshire deadline was passing, to say he chose to stay in New York after all to contend with the latest state budget crisis.

In 1994, Cuomo suffered a crushing defeat by a little-known Republican state legislator, George Pataki, who was commonly referred to as running on an “ABC” ballot line, short for “anyone but Cuomo.”

Cuomo nurtured the political acumen of his son, Andrew, who had been one of his top advisers in Albany.

Mario Cuomo had given a young Democrat named Bill Clinton an important endorsement in his run for the presidency, and after Clinton’s victory in 1992, Andrew Cuomo joined Clinton’s White House and rose to housing secretary.

Back in New York, Andrew Cuomo was elected state attorney general in 2006 and governor in 2010.

In retirement from politics, Mario Cuomo continued to write scholarly books, memoirs and articles on government and the wisdom of President Abraham Lincoln. Cuomo became known as one of America’s liberal icons rather than a governor who had been weighed down by battles with Republicans and rivals in his own party back in Albany.

In the 20 years since he left office, he evolved from the hard-charging executive who rarely left Albany to a statesman – a role that perhaps best suited his eloquence.

He returned to practicing law, and his political commentary was sought by major news organizations. In interviews, he joked often. Sometimes he used humor as a skewer, such as when he described to reporters a legislative leader whom he didn’t respect intellectually as a “handsome man.”