When the Cuo-mobile Came to Kingsbridge Town

(Originally published 1/2/15)

It was the summer of 1977. I was fourteen years old at the time and keenly interested in politics. Not issues per se—what does a kid know about such things anyway—but the political theater, the game, the competition. I’d been collecting political buttons, too, since the acquisition of my very first—a small blue and red “Nixon for President” pin-back—when I was just six.

There was a hotly contested New York City mayoral race raging back then, and I was enthusiastically tuned in to the spectacle. After a rather unimpressive first term, including coming perilously close to the city under his charge declaring bankruptcy, Mayor Abe Beame had his sights set on a second term. A diverse roster of folks wanted the now underdog Beame’s job that summer. 

Congresswoman Bella Abzug was christened the early front-runner. She was nationally known and as vociferous as they come. Viscerally, the youthful me couldn’t stand her. In mayoral debates, which included the eventual winner, Ed Koch, and runner-up, Mario Cuomo, Bella lived up to her confrontational reputation. In one contentious encounter, she badgered Mario Cuomo for having already accepted the Liberal party nomination for the general election, while still contesting the Democratic party nomination. Bella wanted an answer as to how Cuomo—who had never been a member of the Liberal party—could be a player in such a backroom deal. (He was Governor Carey’s handpicked candidate to replace the diminutive, ineffectual, but industrious, well-intentioned Beame.) “You're not a member of the Liberal party, you never were, were you?" she scolded, badgering her opponent. "I’d like to have an answer,” Bella repeated, interrupting Cuomo as he attempted to do just that. “Well, when you close your mouth, I’ll answer!” Cuomo angrily exclaimed in exasperation. Appropriately shocked but nevertheless highly entertained, the debate's live audience gasped in unison

Politics was a whole lot more honest back then. And nobody was more genuine to me than Mario Cuomo that summer. When he visited my neighborhood—Kingsbridge in the Bronx—on his Cuo-mobile, I was Johnny-on-the-spot, hoping to at once see the candidate in person and gather some campaign spoils, which I did. And there the man was in the flesh, looking an awful lot like a relative from the old country on my father’s side of the family. With his shirtsleeves rolled up, Cuomo spoke of his plans for the city, which was in pretty bad shape all around, although I didn’t seem to notice. I loved the 1970s—high crime, graffiti, and dirty streets notwithstanding.

When a local took exception to the candidate’s stance on capital punishment—against it—and attempted to heckle Cuomo into submission, he got more than he bargained for. Mario Cuomo climbed down from his Cuo-mobile and spoke face-to-face with the heckler in question. Candidate and constituent were now reasoning with one another. Why, you ask, was the death penalty even an issue in an urban mayoral race? Because one of Cuomo’s opponents, Ed Koch, had made it so to win over as many crime-weary voters as possible.

Unfortunately, from my youthful perspective, the good guys lost in 1977. A couple of years later, Mario Cuomo—having been elected lieutenant governor of New York State—visited my high school in the East Bronx. Thoughtful and poetic in his remarks, he was nonetheless confronted with a tough question from a classmate of mine, an unkempt teen genius who sketched Rubik-type cubes to pass the time of day. Boy Einstein wondered how a devout Catholic politician could publicly support abortion on demand. He essentially accused this public servant of engaging in a form of sophistry—i.e., declaring that he accepted the church’s teaching that abortion was murder, but was unwilling to do anything about it in practical reality. Cuomo, as I recall, gave his usual eloquent, reasoned retort, a tribute to his intellect and, too, to the Catholic high school that I attended, which—back then certainly—celebrated differences of opinion and encouraged free-flowing give-and-takes.

In the end, Mario Cuomo may have been a better philosopher than politician, but he was a man of principle. Unlike the often-petty man who defeated him in the Democratic party primary for mayor in 1977—the same man whom Cuomo defeated in the Democratic party primary for governor of New York State in 1982—he exhibited both sophistication and heart, which are in short supply nowadays among the political ruling class. Mario Cuomo and Ed Koch too are sorely missed.