Gov. Cuomo and our broken politics
Andrew Cuomo might have become governor of New York on his own. He was already state attorney general after serving in Bill Clinton’s cabinet as secretary of Commerce. And his father, Mario Cuomo, had been a two-term governor and liberal torch carrier.
But as it happened, Andrew got a big push forward from President Barack Obama. This was back in 2009. Incumbent New York governor David Patterson was on the ropes, his approval rating at 24 percent owing to several scandals, when President Obama urged Patterson to step aside in favor of Cuomo.
In February 2010, Patterson swallowed hard and withdrew from the spring Democratic primary. Cuomo was elected that November for the first of three terms in Albany. He won with 63 percent of the vote in 2010; 54 percent in 2014; and 60 percent two years ago.
Cuomo is expected to run again in 2022.
If he should win, he would become the first four-term governor of the Empire State since Nelson Rockefeller in 1970.
The coronavirus pandemic has thrust Cuomo into the national spotlight. His daily press briefings have become must-see live TV. Both emphatic and empathetic, Cuomo has captured the public mood for strong, decisive, compassionate leadership.
Cuomo’s new-found national prominence has lead to speculation about his running for the White House in 2020. A hashtag is trending with that very thought in mind.
Cuomo has gathered support from the left. Katrina vanden Heuvel, publisher of The Nation magazine, had voiced interest. From the right — okay, from the Never Trump center-right – Kathleen Parker appears to be intrigued.
Of course, it would take either an act of God or some other cataclysmic occurrence for the Cuomo boomlet to blossom into something bigger. There’s absolutely no reason for Joe Biden to cede the nomination to Cuomo. Besides, the governor endorsed his friend the former vice president for the Democratic presidential nomination some time ago.
And even if such an unlikely event took place, Vermont senator Bernie Sanders, who remains stubbornly in the race, would scream his head off.
Without a primary vote cast on his behalf, Cuomo would splinter the party and all but assure Donald Trump’s reelection.
So it’s a non-starter. It ain’t going to happen. Which is not to say it shouldn’t happen.
For that matter, it might have happened, if this was an earlier time. So-called brokered conventions, in which the eventual nominee was not firmly known beforehand, were once the norm in American politics. Abraham Lincoln emerged from a brokered convention.
The last party nomination to go beyond one ballot took place in 1952, when Democrats chose Illinois governor Adlai E. Stevenson as their standard bearer.
(That year’s Republican nominee, future president Dwight Eisenhower, was only technically chosen on the first ballot. Initially short of the required number of first-ballot votes to capture the nomination, Eisenhower was vaulted over the top by switches in delegate sentiment before a second ballot could get underway.)
It’s a sign of the corrosion of our political institutions that Andrew Cuomo was hardly mentioned as a possible Democratic nominee in 2020, that is, prior to the pandemic and the recent speculation about his availability and future.
As a thrice-elected governor of New York, he was a natural. He combined two qualities that should have recommended him for the top spot. He had tons of experience in running the machinery of government. And he was highly electable, based on his performance in the briar patch of New York state politics.
In the absence of today’s primary-only, media-vetted, debate-driven, social media-heavy, experience-adverse primary process, Cuomo’s name would have emerged early, and emerged prominently.
Certainly, the drawbacks he faced would have been real, including a running feud with the fiery and feisty left wing of the party in New York state. Progressives despise the governor.
Yet, with the gatekeeper’s of old in place – party chieftains and bosses – who historically kept party nominations open to competent, competitive candidates, he might have prevailed.
Alas, Cuomo was a nomination afterthought.
For Democrats nervous about Joe Biden’s malaprops, spoonerisms, and memory-lapses, there is no turning back now. Even if Cuomo now wanted to run — and he’s made clear he doesn’t — the machinery is not in place to sweep him off the sidelines and put him center stage. The inflexibility and rigidity of the caucus and primary system has never been so glaring.
Richard Robbins lives in Uniontown. He can be reached at dick.l.robbins@gmail.com.