The LAST thing Kamala Harris needs–and Barack Obama proved this clearly–is to be saddled with the double albatrosses of Bill & Hillary Clinton around her neck and HER story.
On the eve of the 2024 Democratic National Convention in Chicago this week, I cannot stop thinking of Mario Cuomo, especially considering the DNC’s tone-deaf decision to put the spotlight back on Hillary and Bill Clinton as keynote convention speakers. I thought the Harris/Walz ticket was pointing forward, to the future, not going back and getting mired in the exhausting Clintonian quagmires of the past.
If there’s an Achilles Heel in this moment—which should be all about Kamala Harris and our future—it is dregging up the ghosts of Clintons’ past, which, I suppose, was inevitable with the presence of John Podesta and Neera Tandem, lurking among Biden’s team, and the Zelig-like, power-sniffing appearance of Gene Sperling on the new Harris crew.
I’m sure some of the old Clintonistas on the DNC and involved with the convention planning who cannot escape the narrow-box thinking that gave us Donald Trump, argued that Bill “must” be featured as a former President, and Hillary must also speak because she almost broke the glass ceiling 8 years ago—although the visual of Podesta delivering Hillary’s campaign eulogy under the still-intact glass roof of NYC’s Javits Center still gives me night terrors.
I’d rather hear from Liz Cheney instead of Hillary—who ran an abominable campaign for President in 2016, utterly ignoring the Midwest, and enabling Trump to get elected—and from Laura or George W. Bush on the night when Bill Clinton is slated to bring his wax-museum presence to the podium. A double-dose of the Clintons is hardly the way to appeal to undecided voters in 2024 who only voted for Trump eight years earlier because they found the alternative not “like-able enough” as Barack Obama hoped Hillary would be.
I’ve been thinking of Mario Cuomo, not just because so many of my former Cuomo Administration colleagues are in Chicago at the DNC this week, all-in for Kamala, and representing the very best public service has to offer. I was with Cuomo at the 1992 Democratic National Convention when he delivered the nominating speech for Bill Clinton.
Admittedly, I was never a Bill Clinton fan, from his days of leading the Neo-Con wing of the Democratic Party against progressive initiatives and ideas, to his ethnic slur against Mario Cuomo’s, and my, Italian-heritage when he was campaigning for the Democratic Nomination in early 1992. My distaste for Clinton grew even stronger during his Presidency when he caved in to stigmatize the LBGTQ community with “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell,” pushed and signed the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which banned same-sex marriages, sabotaged genuine Welfare Reform to appear more conservative, and vetoed the Needle-Exchange Program, costing hundreds of thousands of Americans with HIV/AIDS their lives. But, I digress.
Only five weeks after Mario Cuomo announced in December, 1991, that he would not seek the Democratic Nomination for the presidency for 1992, he was the subject of a widely publicized, tape-recorded conversation between Democratic Presidential candidate Bill Clinton and Gennifer Flowers, a cabaret singer from Arkansas who claimed to be one of Clinton’s mistresses. The transcript of the Bill Clinton/Jennifer Flowers exchange was faxed to Fabian Palomino—a top aide and long time friend of Mario Cuomo’s— from Jimmy Breslin on January 27, 1992, the day Flowers held a press conference in New York City. The conversations between the two were taped before Cuomo withdrew his name as a potential candidate in the Democratic Party’s New Hampshire Presidential primary:
CLINTON: Well, no…Most people think, you know, that except for Cuomo, I’m doing the best right now, and uh…we’re leading in the polls in Florida, without Cuomo in there, but Cuomo’s at 87% name recognition, and I have 54%, so, I mean, I ‘m at a terrible disadvantage in name recognition still, but, we’re coming up, and well…so I…we’re moving pretty well; I’m really pleased about it…”
FLOWERS: Well, I don’t particularly care for Cuomo’s, uh, demeanor…
CLINTON: Boy, he is so aggressive.
FLOWERS: Well, he seems like he could get real mean (laughs).
CLINTON: (garbled)
FLOWERS: Yeah…I wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t have some Mafioso major connections.
CLINTON: Well, he acts like one (laughs).
FLOWERS: Yeah.
The revelation of the Bill Clinton/Gennifer Flowers’ “Love Tapes,” exploded on the front pages of newspapers around the nation and topped all major television network newscasts. I flew into a rage when I heard the Governor’s name and the word “Mafioso” spoken in the same sentence. Cuomo went ballistic, as was accurately reported, and immediately phoned reporters at the New York Post, New York Daily News, New York Newsday, and the New York Times. Clinton’s attempt at an apology, as Cuomo described to Mike McAlary, of the New York Post, was “worse than the original insult.” Clinton’s apology read:
“If the remarks on the tape left anyone with the impression that I was disrespectful to either Governor Cuomo or Italian-Americans, then I deeply regret it. At the time the conversation was held, there had been some political give and take between myself and the Governor and I meant simply to imply that Governor Cuomo is a tough and worthy competitor.”
New York’s tabloids feasted on the clash of the two Democratic titans. The New York Post stacked photos of Cuomo and Clinton on its front page with the bold headline: “ CUOMO SAYS CLINTON TALKS LIKE BIGOT.” The New York Daily News ran a photo of Cuomo dominating the front page, with the banner headline: “CUOMO TO CLINTON: SHAME ON YOU.” The News Frank Lombardi’s story (“Cuomo Scalds Clinton, January 29, 1992), pulled no punches, reflecting Cuomo’s anger:
“A fuming Gov. Cuomo yesterday slammed Bill Clinton as insensitive to ethnic stereotyping for saying Cuomo “acts like” a Mafioso.
“If you say it this casually about Italian-Americans,” Cuomo bristled, “what do you say about blacks, what do you say about Jews, what do you say about women, what do you say about poor people, what do you say about all the other groups who traditionally become the scapegoats?…
“Cuomo was clearly seething, particularly when first told that Clinton expressed regrets “if the remarks left anyone with the impression that I was disrespectful to either Governor Cuomo or Italian-Americans.”
“What do you mean “IF?” Cuomo snapped to reporters in Albany. ‘If you’re not capable of understanding what was said, than don’t try to apologize.”
As a member of the Governor’s staff who did have Mob connections, and was working with Mario Cuomo because he didn’t, and he revered the rule of law, I was furious over Clinton’s defamatory slur and negative group stereotype.
I pounded out an Op-Ed piece for either the New York Times or Newsday, and was emboldened to submit under my own name. I wrote:
“Bill Clinton simply doesn’t get it. His flippant comparison of Mario Cuomo to a ‘Mafioso’ demonstrates that he understands neither what the most prominent Italian-American politician in the nation’s history means to us, nor how his acceptance of the word ‘Mafioso’ in connection with Cuomo’s name is like a dagger thrust into our chest.”
I immediately sent my draft to Cuomo, and within the hour he sent it back with his comments written across the top in dark, felt-tip marker: “Steve—I am concerned people will think this is something I influenced because of our relationship. What do you think? M—“.
Of course, Mario Cuomo was correct. I re-tooled my tirade and sent it over to the National Italian American Foundation (NIAF) for them to use anyway they wanted to express maximum outrage on behalf of our entire community. Still, I wanted to scream from the stoops and rooftops of New York telling the press that I grew up with real life ‘Mafioso’, and that Cuomo was as far from them as anyone could be.
But Cuomo had a vowel at the end of his name, and that was all the tabloids needed as truth, particularly since it was casually accepted by the soon-to-be Democratic nominee for President.
A few months later, in April, 1992, Bill Clinton won the New York State Democratic Presidential Primary with 41% of the vote, beating Massachusetts Senator Paul Tsongas (29%) and California’s Jerry Brown (26%). Only 27% of New York’s registered Democrats bothered to vote in the Primary, and one-third of those who did, said they would have preferred to vote for Mario Cuomo.
That was no consolation at all for Mario Cuomo, who called me the morning after the primary to discuss Bill Clinton’s victory. Cuomo knew I held a grudge against Clinton for using the “Mafioso” slur against him.
I told Cuomo I cast my vote for Jerry Brown, and did not know if I could ever forgive Clinton, even if he became the Democratic nominee.
“A superficial candidate for a superficial age,” Mario Cuomo said to me about Clinton. Struck by the power of the Governor’s condemnation of Clinton, I wrote it down.
His caustic comment about Clinton made it all the more remarkable how Cuomo, three short months later, was able to keep his feelings contained and accept the responsibility of nominating Bill Clinton at the Democratic National Convention in New York in mid-July. The issues at stake in the national election mattered more to Mario Cuomo than the insults made by Bill Clinton at his expense months earlier.
I accompanied Mario Cuomo to Madison Square Garden on the morning of July 15, 1992, one month after his 60th birthday. Cuomo was scheduled to deliver a practice presentation of his nominating speech before a room full of members of Clinton’s campaign team, including Gene Sperling, who worked for Cuomo briefly in hopes of riding him into the White House, and Robert Boorstin, the nephew of historian Danial Boorstin. Mario Cuomo was relaxed, dressed casually, with a sport jacket over a dark, open-neck sport shirt. He was in good spirits, teaching all of us by example how to overlook personal slights to achieve a larger purpose.
We entered the small practice room at the Garden and Luciano Siracusano, one of the Governor’s speechwriters, handed a copy of Cuomo’s draft speech to Clinton’s staff for insertion into the teleprompter. Cuomo made it clear to Boorstin, who was in charge of the practice session, he did not want to see any of the speech released ahead of time. It was simply the way Mario Cuomo operated with his speeches, since he often improvised as he went along. Boorstin acknowledged and agreed to the Governor’s request.
Cuomo mounted a makeshift platform which simulated the platform out on the main stage of Madison Square Garden, and read through the speech using the practice teleprompters available and stopping occasionally, when he thought changes needed to be made. Following the first run-through, a handful of Cuomo and Clinton staff members, retreated into a small room to review the speech, making suggestions for changes. Cuomo agreed to include a few more explicit references to Bill Clinton and to draw a stronger analogy between growing up poor in New York, and growing up in poverty in Arkansas.
We left the Garden and walked to the Sheraton Hotel on West 53rd Street and 7th Avenue, where the New York State Delegation was staying. Mario Cuomo’s nominating speech for Bill Clinton would be reworked there. Less than an hour after arriving at the Sheraton, I received a message from the New York Post’s Fred Dicker: Cuomo’s nominating speech for Clinton was already on the newswires. Not trusting Dicker nor the Post to tell us the truth, I reached out to Newsday’s Albany Bureau Chief Nick Goldberg (now, with the Los Angeles Times) who was supervising my son as a high school intern covering the convention for Long Island Newsday’s “Student Briefing Page.” Goldberg confirmed that the speech—Cuomo’s first draft which we specifically told Clinton’s people not to release—was already out on the Convention wire.
Mario Cuomo let his displeasure be known later that afternoon, when we came back into the Madison Square Garden practice room for a final 4:00 pm rehearsal, before the main event that evening. We invited Daily News sportswriter Mike Lupica and columnist Mike McAlary to join us for the speech rehearsal. Both watched as Cuomo mounted the makeshift podium and pointed straight at Clinton’s staff member, Boorstin.
“You broke your word to me on the speech, “ Cuomo said, glowering at him.
Boorstin began to stammer in response, but Cuomo ignored him, going right to the speech, reading it straight through without a pause and abruptly exiting the room the moment he was finished. Mario Cuomo had put up with the last indignity he would tolerate from Clinton and his people, and wanted them to be nervous about what he might say when he spoke before millions of Americans that night, placing Bill Clinton’s name into nomination for President of the United States, something, Lupica later wrote, someone should have been doing for Cuomo.
Despite the insults and slights from Clinton and his team, Mario Cuomo was brilliant that evening, as I knew he would be. His voice rang out with emotion when he spoke about the “quiet catastophes that every day oppress the lives of thousands,” and how some children were “more familiar with the sound of gunfire before they’ve even heard an orchestra.”
His passionate indictment of the Reagan and Bush Administrations and their war against working people and the poor, rallied Progressives and the country, behind Bill Clinton, making the fascinating backstory of the 1992 Democratic Convention how Mario Cuomo buried his personal and political differences with the Democratic nominee for the good of the country.
I trust the Clintons will do the same thing to elect Kamala Harris as the first woman President of the United States.