Cuomo demurs on higher ambition
In new book, he writes he wants to stay governor, not run for president
Albany Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo writes in his new book that he intends to run for re-election as governor “as long as the people will have me."
When he’s done with that, the 62-year-old Cuomo said, he wants to buy a boat and spend his free time fishing.
Cuomo's stock as a future presidential contender is peaking — he’s already topping polls of potential 2024 candidates — due to his highly watched COVID -19 response, including daily briefings for months, beginning in March, that were broadcast by national cable television outlets. There was much speculation over the summer that he would even mount a last-minute White House bid this year.
But his eight years in Washington, D.C., steering the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development are more than enough, he writes.
A few pages of Cuomo’s upcoming book detailing his handling of the COVID -19 pandemic in the state were provided to the Times Union by Richard Azzopardi, a senior adviser to the governor. The book, “American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the COVID -19 Pandemic,” is due out this week.
Cuomo and his office have aggressively sought to garner a posi
tive public perception of his leadership amid much criticism of the state's high number of nursing home deaths attributed to coronavirus.
Some critics have questioned the quick release of the new book, which touts what they say is a victory lap for a crisis that is far from over. New York’s COVID -19 numbers have climbed in recent weeks, pushed by outbreaks in the New York City area. There were also about 350 more hospitalizations reported on Sunday than there were a month ago.
At the center of Cuomo’s connection to politics is his relationship with his father, he writes in the book. Mario Cuomo served three terms as New York governor and lost re-election to a fourth term when he was defeated by Republican challenger George E. Pataki. The elder Cuomo, much like the younger, was the subject of a great deal of public scrutiny over a potential presidential run, although he also never ran.
Mario Cuomo’s fame as a politician came from his political speechmaking. For instance, his “Tale of Two Cities” speech at the 1984 Democratic Convention has become legendary. The elder Cuomo, however, had attracted criticism that for all his soaring rhetoric, his deeds never quite matched his words. That criticism clearly got to him: When his most famous political speeches were compiled into a book, Mario titled it “More than Words.”
The younger Cuomo writes in his new book that he and his father sat together after Andrew Cuomo’s failed 2002 bid for governor, which Cuomo refers to in his new book as “a political death.”
In those times, spent reflecting on their careers, the two men agreed that if they had the chance to spend a career in government again, they would be far more aggressive about producing outcomes and far less accommodating of slowmoving bureaucrats or an “overly cautious Legislature.”
“Dead politicians don’t usually come back to life. I had a second chance, and I would do it right this time,” Cuomo writes of being elected governor in 2010. “For myself and for my father.”
Since then, Cuomo has become one of the most powerful New York governors in modern history, arguably marginalizing the Legislature with his dominance of the budget-making process.
The legacy he is building is the inverse of his father's — an ability to coax landmark legislation through Albany that has not been seen since the time of Nelson Rockefeller.
Cuomo writes in the book that he views the characterization of his father’s legacy for being unable to deliver more deeds than words as untrue and unfair.
“But welcome to politics in New York," he writes. "My father was interested in the articulation of government principles, but not to the exclusion of government implementation. I am committed to highlight both.”
If Cuomo runs for reelection in 2022, as he says he intends to do, he could achieve the fourth term that his father failed to win.
“Some people will do anything to earn the praise of their father,” he said wryly at the beginning of his 2013 eulogy for his father, drawing laughs from the crowd.