The first women elected Lt. Governor of NYS was one of my earliest mentors and inspirations to answer the call to public service. She died this week at 92, but her legacy lives on.
One of my early mentors and inspirations in government and politics, Mary Anne Krupsak, has died at the age of 92. Her death, coming just a few days after Jimmy Carter’s at age 100, underscores my belief that all the wrong people are dying.
Sam Roberts of The New York Times has written an elegant tribute to her, which took me back some 54 years when I first met Mary Anne as she campaigned for State Assembly in upstate New York, and I was a college Junior at the University at Albany, SUNY. My college friend Tim Palmer who worked for Mary Anne and was devoted to her, invited me to campaign with them, and we hammered up posters and handed out flyers across the Assembly District. Mary Anne, an original progressive populist, won in a landslide, despite opposition from Democratic Party bosses locally, and across the State..
Two year later, in 1972, Mary Anne also bucked party leaders (including Albany’s Mayor Erastus Corning, and NYS Dem Party Chairman Joe Crangle) when she backed my insurgent primary campaign for State Assembly in Albany County. Her endorsement called me “an articulate, effective fighter for reform of the Legislature, who will continue the momentum we’ve begun to open up our institutions of government…”
Tim Palmer chaired my campaign, and Carol Villano (then Carol Jacobson), was the largest contributor to my insurgent candidacy with a $75 donation. I had to deny that I was marrying her for her money, which I did on the steps of Albany City Hall.
We were all full of ourselves in those days, following our involvement in the anti-war movement, and the women’s rights movement in NYS, and Mary Anne Krupsak’s encouragement to run was the final push I needed. After all, she had introduced me to the legendary Allard Lowenstein–the man who led the ‘Dump Johnson’ movement– at a political event, so anything seemed possible.
“We need good people in government,” she said to me. And that, to the fearless Mary Anne Krupsak, was all that mattered, party bosses be damned. Even her mother Mamie, a life- force in her own right, gave me a $25 contribution and penned a handwritten letter saying that ” I hope you make it, since we need people like you in the Assembly.” Just in case I didn’t know who she was, Mamie followed her name with a parenthesis (“Mary Anne’s Mother.”)
I was 23-years old at the time, and the Chair of the Albany County, NY, New Democratic Coalition, a “reform” group of Kennedy/McCarthy Democrats from the 1968 Presidential campaigns which pushed President Lyndon Johnson out of the race over the War in Vietnam. We were a rag-tag bunch of feisty progressives, outnumbered Dems, those of us in the Albany County NDC, including Cindy Urbach, Reszin Adams, James Gallagher, Leon Cohen, Muriel Morgenstern, and a few other fellow political troublemakers.
Despite the fact that my opponent in the Democratic Primary was a conservative woman, who was a local Democratic Assistant DA, all of the State’s Women’s political groups–Women’s Political Caucus, Coalition for a Free Choice–endorsed me, since I was the only pro-choice candidate on the ballot. Having Mary Anne Krupsak, and the remarkable Sarah Kovner, in my corner helped a bit, as well. It was also the year before Roe v. Wade was decided by the US Supreme Court.
It was a fun adventure campaigning in the Republican towns of Colonie and Guilderland, and the heavily Old Democratic small cities of Cohoes and Watervliet, that hugged the Mohawk River. I loved going door to door in the ethnic neighborhoods of Cohoes, with plumbers piping serving as handrails for each working class, mill town home.
On one memorable afternoon, I met a family of registered voters who only spoke Italian. They saw my last name and welcomed me into their house, pumping me full of homemade wine, while Carol Villano and Tim Palmer were looking for me up and down the blocks outside. When I finally emerged from the old rowhouse, I could barely walk straight. Carol and Tim escorted me back to our car, and helped me home to sleep off a busy day of grassroots–or winegrape–campaigning.
I lost, of course, to the well established, well-funded, well-oiled Albany Political machine by a 2-1 margin, in the same June 20, 1972, Democratic primary where George McGovern ran against Vice President Hubert Humphrey. Corning and the Albany Democratic Machine backed HHH, making Albany County the ONLY county in New York State that McGovern didn’t carry. It was my one and only run for public office.
Two years later, in 1974, at the Statewide New Democratic Coalition convention (nicknamed “November Don’t Count,” by Mario Cuomo) I was a 25-year old “Youth” Vice-President, and supported Mary Anne for Lt. Governor against Manhattan City Councilmember Antonio Olivieri and some little-known lawyer from Queens named Mario Cuomo.
Cuomo gave a boring, plodding speech at the NDC nominating convention and came in a distant 3rd. Mary Anne went on to win the Democratic Primary and the election as the State’s first female Lt. Governor in NYS history.
Years later, when I worked with Mario Cuomo from 1985-1993, I would tease him about how ineffective he was at the NDC, and that if it wasn’t for Mary Anne Krupsak challenging Hugh Carey in 1978–and for Assemblywoman Jean Amatucci refusing Carey’s offer to her to replace Mary Anne on the ticket in 1974 (another upstate Democratic woman)– he’d never have been Governor. Cuomo’s rejoinder was always: “NDC: November Don’t Count.”
Politics was fun then, and human, without incessant polling or political consultants, or unrelenting social media, and you could stop and enjoy a glass of wine or two, when you campaigned door-to-door.
The emphasis then, as opposed to now, was making human connection, being as positive, people friendly and problem-solving as you could be, and for earning free media coverage for the good ideas you represented, not the number of terrible lies you could spread.
Mary Anne Krupsak, and later Mario Cuomo, were big parts of that, and of my life, and of the proud, honorable work of serving others, instead of just yourself.