Mario Cuomo, 1932-2015

I can't believe Mario Cuomo is gone. I also can't believe I'm typing "2015" as a date. The "future" year in Back to the Future Part II. I'm old enough to not only remember Mario as Governor, but to think of 1990 as "the future."

Mario Matthew Cuomo was born June 15, 1932, in the Jamaica section of New York City's Borough of Queens. His parents, Andrea and Immaculata Cuomo, were immigrants from a village near Naples, Italy, running a grocery store in adjacent South Jamaica. Mario was the 3rd and last of their children.

According to my mother, whose own mother was already growing up in South Jamaica (as would, decades later, rapper Curtis Jackson, a.k.a. 50 Cent), most "Italians" in America are actually from descended from immigrants from Sicily.

However, according to When Pride Still Mattered, David Maraniss' superb biography of Vince Lombardi, that's only partly true. A large amount of Italian immigration to America came from Naples on south, from the "heel" and "toe" of "the boot of Italy." This included the Lombardis and the Torres (both of whom, Vince's parents and Joe's grandparents, settled in Brooklyn) and the Cuomos.

Italian-Americans -- and New York's were, to use a Latin expression, the ne plus ultra of this -- have always clung to both halves of their identity, the Old Country and the New World. This is not unique to them, of course: Another Democratic giant of the 1980s, House Speaker Thomas "Tip" O'Neill of Cambridge, Massachusetts (definitely "town, not gown"), told people, "I knew I was Irish before I knew I was American."

Sometimes, this dual identity has helped; sometimes, not. In Cuomo's case, it reminded him of where he came from, no matter how far he went in his life's work. Which was rather far, considering he was born in a lower-middle-class neighborhood near the depth of the Great Depression. It was also far, considering that, while he was a fantastic public speaker, he had, as the old expression goes, "a face made for radio."

(Face it, if George H.W. Bush, who was not a natural politician but looked like a President and knew how to smile and sound friendly, could beat the short, homely son of Greek immigrants Michael Dukakis in 1988, he might have been able to pull out a win against Mario Cuomo in 1992, the way he never really had a chance to do against Bill Clinton.)

But Mario had 2 things going for him: Parents whose belief in the American Dream, and in their children, was unshakable; and one of the keenest minds ever to enter American public life.

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In 1952, having starred in baseball and basketball in high school, and having attracted attention for his play at St. John's University in Queens, he was signed by the Pittsburgh Pirates for $20,000. Mickey Mantle liked to say that the Yankees got him for $11,000, while the Pirates got Cuomo for $20,000. How'd that work out? Well, unlike Cuomo, Mantle reached the top of his profession, the Hall of Fame... but the Pirates (sans Cuomo) beat the Yankees in the 1960 World Series, the most devastating defeat of Mantle's career.

For all his life, Mario loved baseball. He was interviewed by Ken Burns for his miniseries Baseball, calling it a fair game. "I love the bunt," he said. "I love the idea of the bunt. I love the idea of the sacrifice."

How good was he? At the age of 20, a Pirates scout wrote this in his report: "A below average hitter with plus power. He uppercuts and needs instruction. Has an average arm and is a graceful plus fielder... Potentially the best prospect on the club in my opinion and could go all the way if he improves his hitting to the point of a respectable batting average... From a standpoint of proportion and body symmetry, he is one of the best built boys in our organization."

"A below average hitter" was "Potentially the best prospect on the club"? Really? It's worth noting that, in 1952, the Pirates were horrible. They lost 112 games, most of any major league team between the 1935 Boston Braves and the 1962 Mets. Joe Garagiola was a catcher on that team, and in the 62 seasons since, has told anyone willing to listen that they were worse than the '62 Mets.

Ralph Kiner was the left fielder, and Branch Rickey the general manager, and still they lost 112. Rickey traded Kiner, saying, "We finished 8th with you, we can finish 8th without you" -- with the implication of " ...and your high salary."

A pitcher deep in their minor league system, Ron Neccai, did something no other pitcher has ever done in professional baseball: He struck out 27 batters in a single game. Every single out was a strikeout. The game was also a no-hitter. Desperate, and hoping that calling him up would generate publicity and increase attendance, the Pirates brought Neccai up. He wasn't ready: He went 1-5, and never appeared in the majors again. The '52 Pirates were that kind of team.

A retroactive card. He never actually

appeared on one during his career.

The Pirates assigned Mario to the Brunswick Pirates, of Brunswick, Georgia -- what a culture shock that must have been -- in the Georgia-Florida League, Class D (roughly equivalent to day's Rookie Leagues). He played 81 games for them, batting just .244, with 10 doubles, 2 triples and a home run -- RBIs appear not to be recorded for that league -- and surviving accounts suggest that he couldn't hit a curveball. Then he was beaned. Although he recovered, he never played another professional game.

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Later, another man who would represent New York State in politics, Jack Kemp, would say, "I sustained 11 concussions while playing football. Nothing left to do but to go into politics!"

Mario Cuomo went back to St. John's, and studied law. He married a fellow St. John's student, Matilda Raffa, and the marriage lasted for the rest of his life, 62 years. And, like Frank Sinatra, he rejected advice that he adopt a less-ethnic-sounding surname. He would make it as Mario Cuomo or not at all. (Even if he never quite tested a line from a song Sinatra would eventually record: He made it there, but he never found out if he could "make it anywhere.")

Matilda & Mario

Up until 1967, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the death penalty unconstitutional (a decision reversed a few years later), the State of New York executed its Death Row prisoners via the electric chair, a device nicknamed Old Sparky. Twice, Cuomo defended men sentenced to such an execution. This, combined with the Catholic Church's opposition, turned him against the death penalty forever.

However, when abortion became an issue as the 1970s arrived (it became legal in New York State in 1970, 3 years before it did so nationally), Cuomo split with the Church and supported reproductive rights. This dichotomy -- pro-choice but anti-death penalty -- would endear him to liberals and cause blood-spitting fury among conservatives.

He grew up among people often overlooked, or outright oppressed by the wealthy, including real-estate developers, such as Queens natives Fred and Donald Trump. In the late 1960s, he took up the cause of families in danger of losing their homes in the Queens neighborhood of Corona, near Shea Stadium, to make way for a school. He won, and became a hero in his home Borough.

In 1972, Mayor John Lindsay asked him to mediate a dispute in another Queens neighborhood, Forest Hills. Middle-class residents, proud of their neighborhood being an oasis from the pit of poverty and crime that The City was becoming, opposed the building of low-income housing there. He settled that issue as well.

That led to his first run for office, in 1974. He entered the Democratic Primary for Lieutenant Governor, but lost. But that got the attention of Congressman Hugh Carey of Brooklyn, who was elected Governor at that time, and the following January, Carey appointed Cuomo Secretary of State for the State of New York.

In 1977, with The City's finances still in the process of being settled (largely thanks to Carey), but crime seemingly out of control, the school system a mess, and poverty implacable, Mayor Abe Beame was under siege as he ran for a 2nd term.

There were many candidates for Mayor. Carey asked Cuomo to be his candidate, to run as both a thinking man's candidate and a man of the people, the guys and gals on the streets, especially of the Outer Boroughs. Manhattan Borough President Percy Sutton ran as The Black Candidate. Herman Badillo of The Bronx, the 1st Puerto Rican elected to Congress, ran as The Hispanic Candidate.

Former Manhattan Congresswoman Bella Abzug, who had lost the previous year's Senate Primary to Pat Moynihan, thought she had it made, since she was The Feminist Candidate, The Jewish Candidate and The Liberal Candidate. She thought that all these constituencies would win her the election.

Somebody forgot to tell any of this to Ed Koch, who also represented a Manhattan district in Congress. He also ran as The Jewish Candidate. But he also ran as The Tough Guy, promising to fight crime and to bring the death penalty back to New York -- which, constitutionally, the Mayor couldn't do, but Koch figured some people would let their anger overcome their thinking. Koch certainly didn't look like a tough guy; he looked more like a glad-handing Jewish lawyer, which he certainly was.

Beame, every bit as Jewish as Koch and Abzug, just 5-foot-4 and seeming to shrink with every headline -- including the riot following the blackout of July 13 and the fear of the serial killer calling himself the Son of Sam, who was caught on August 10 -- was left as the candidate of the old bosses and The City's old Democratic Party machine.

That was not something that the people wanted. He was abandoned by the electorate. Sutton and Badillo, the minority candidates, didn't really have a chance, especially after the blackout. That also killed Abzug's chances, which, despite her reputation as something of a flake, had been considered at least good enough to force a runoff election.

Koch was all over the map, politically speaking. His stances on crime and Israel (never mind that foreign policy isn't the responsibility of the Mayor) made him look conservative, and allowed him to appeal to Jews and ethnics in Queens, Brooklyn and Staten Island in ways that Cuomo couldn't, or wouldn't. But his support of civil rights, feminism and gay rights made him look liberal to many voters. When he first ran for Congress in 1972, he called himself "Just a plain liberal." In 1977, running for Mayor, he called himself "a liberal with sanity."

His stance on gay rights could have cost him: He was 52 and had never been married. And someone -- we still don't know who, but both Mario and his son Andrew always denied having anything to do with it -- made up fliers to hand out at political events, saying, "Vote for Cuomo, not the homo." Koch held a grudge against both father and son for the rest of his life.

But he was also smart: He started appearing in public with Bess Myerson, a civil rights activist and, in 1945, the 1st Jewish Miss America. Signs began to appear at Koch rallies: "Bess for First Lady." Speculation began of a wedding at Gracie Mansion. (Bess, who is still alive at age 90, was twice divorced. She never married Koch or anyone else after that, and Koch never married.)

(UPDATE: It was revealed on January 5, 2015 that Bess had died on December 14, 2014, in Santa Monica, California, where she had retired to be close to her daughter. But the general public didn't know this when I wrote this essay.)

As time went by, and his refusal to address the AIDS crisis made gay activists discount his previous support, Koch was "outed" several times, but he always denied that he was gay. Maybe being seen in public with Bess defused the issue, but Koch also said many times that most voters didn't care one way or the other. Or maybe, in liberal New York City, the number of people driven away by the possibility was simply canceled out by the number of people who considered it a bonus.

In the Democratic Primary on September 8, Koch got 19.8 percent of the vote, and Cuomo 18.7, but that was enough to make them the top 2. Beame got 18.0, Abzug 16.6, Sutton 14.4 and Badillo 11.0. Since no candidate got 40 percent, Koch and Cuomo went into a runoff, set for September 19.

Koch won the runoff with 55 percent, and got the Democratic nomination. But the race wasn't over: While State Senator Roy Goodman had defeated radio talk show host Barry Farber for the Republican nomination, New York's four-party system meant that the defeated runners-up could stay in the race: Cuomo was nominated by the Liberal Party, Farber by the Conservative Party.

And then came a deep indignity for Cuomo: Governor Carey, who'd asked him to enter the race in the first place, asked him to drop out for the sake of party unity, and endorse Koch. Cuomo refused. Carey then endorsed Koch, and that settled it: The big argument in Cuomo's favor was that he was Carey's man. Now, Koch was Carey's man. In the general election on November 8, Koch got just under 50 percent of the vote, Cuomo 41, and Goodman and Farber got 4 percent each.

(With the recent deaths of Goodman, Badillo and Cuomo, the only candidate from this epic Mayoralty race still alive is Farber, who's still got a radio show at age 84.)

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Unlike Koch, however, Cuomo and Carey did not hold grudges. In 1978, Carey ran for a 2nd term, and Cuomo was his running mate, and they were elected Governor and Lieutenant Governor. Carey stepped aside for 1982, and everyone presumed the Governor's Mansion was Cuomo's to lose.

But Koch, overwhelmingly re-elected Mayor in 1981, ran what was essentially a spite campaign for the office. Koch knew The City cold: Within it, he could be brilliant. But, outside The City, he had the tinniest of tin ears imaginable, calling the State capital of Albany "a small town" and the suburbs of New York City "sterile."

He had a point: Albany's population, then as now, was about 100,000, and he was neither the first person nor the last to think of suburbia as boring. But you can't say those things and get elected Governor.

Cuomo won the Primary in a landslide. If Koch was bothered by to whom he lost, he wasn't bothered by what he lost: In his concession speech, he said, "It's not so bad," and, with the silence of the crowd being deafening, went back into full "How'm I doin'?" mode by saying, "And I'm still the Mayor!" The crowd cheered. Cuomo would later say, "New York is the only city in America where the Mayor wants to be Governor, and the Governor wants to be Mayor."

In the fall, in a close race, Cuomo won 50.9 percent of the vote, to beat the Republican nominee, businessman Lew Lehrman, who got 47.5 percent. Stan Lundine, a Congressman from Western New York (to balance the ticket geographically), was elected Lieutenant Governor.

Cuomo never ran for Mayor again -- Koch won a 3rd term in 1985, but was denied a 4th in 1989 -- but was easily re-elected Governor in 1986, against Westchester County Executive Andrew O'Rourke (64 percent to 32), and in 1990 against businessman Pierre Rinfret (51 to 23, with a 3rd-party Conservative getting 20). Lundine remained on his ticket.

Mario's inner circle included 2 names that would have far-reaching political impact: His son, Andrew, who followed his father's lead in becoming a lawyer fighting for poverty and housing issues; and Tim Russert, who would later become a reporter with NBC News and serve as moderator of its Sunday morning news show Meet the Press.

Russert was a native of Buffalo, and a proud fan of the city's football team, the Buffalo Bills. Knowing that everyone knew him as a native of The City, but also that he had to appeal to the entire State, Cuomo learned how to pander to the old industrial towns of Western New York: Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, et al.

With the Giants having moved to the Meadowlands of New Jersey in 1976 (before he was Governor) and the Jets having followed them in 1984 (during his 1st term), he frequently referred to the Bills as "the only pro football team in the State of New York." He remained popular in Western New York.

He was popular through most of the State because of his fights for education and environmental issues, and because he fought the policies of President Ronald Reagan that hit the State's industrial North and West hard. This set up the most famous of his renowned speeches, the keynote address at the 1984 Democratic National Convention, at the George Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco. (Moscone was that city's Mayor in 1978, when he and openly gay Supervisor Harvey Milk were assassinated by another Supervisor -- think "City Councilman" -- Dan White.)

Reagan, the foremost Republican President since Theodore Roosevelt, liked to speak of America as what John Winthrop, the 1st colonial Governor of Massachusetts, wanted Boston to be: "A shining city on a hill." Cuomo's response was epic, and proved that Reagan's "Morning Again In America" included a whopping hangover as a result of his pro-rich, anti-everybody-else policies:

A "shining city" is perhaps all the President sees from the portico of the White House and the veranda of his ranch, where everyone seems to be doing well. There’s another part of the city, the part where people can’t pay their mortgages... and middle-class parents watch the dreams they hold for their children evaporate.

This nation is more a tale of two cities than it is just a shining city on a hill. There is despair, Mr. President, in the faces you don't see, in the places you don't visit in your shining city...

We believe we must be the family of America, recognizing that at the heart of the matter, we are bound one to another; that the problems of a retired schoolteacher in Duluth are our problems; that the future of the child — that the future of the child in Buffalo is our future; that the struggle of a disabled man in Boston to survive and live decently is our struggle; that the hunger of a woman in Little Rock is our hunger; that the failure anywhere to provide what reasonably we might, to avoid pain, is our failure...

We Democrats still have a dream... We believe in only the government we need, but we insist upon all the government we need.

Thirty years ago, that speech convinced many Democrats, inside the Convention hall and outside, hoping to see former Vice President Walter Mondale defeat Reagan, instead believe that they nominated the wrong guy, that the right guy wasn't even running. His profile was raised to the point where Brooklyn-born talk show host Larry King made him his first guest on CNN's Larry King Live the next year. I can't say for sure that Cuomo was King's most frequent guest, but he was a regular guest up to the end of his life.

Governors of New York, once the largest State of the Union and still the 3rd-largest, historically have been considered for President: Martin Van Buren in 1836 (by then the Vice President), William Seward in 1860 (by then a Senator), Horatio Seymour in 1868, Samuel Tilden in 1876, Grover Cleveland in 1884, Theodore Roosevelt in 1900, Charles Evans Hughes in 1916 (by then a Justice of the Supreme Court), Alfred E. Smith in 1928, Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932, Thomas E. Dewey in 1944 and '48 (nominated twice), Averell Harriman in 1956, and Nelson Rockefeller in all 3 elections of the 1960s.

But it's worth noting that only Van Buren, Cleveland and the Roosevelts won. (And even TR didn't actually run for President: He was nominated for Vice President, and assumed the office when William McKinley was assassinated. Tilden won, too, but was cheated out of his victory.)

So as Reagan's 2nd term wound down, and none of the potential Democratic candidates for 1988 looked all that appetizing, many people wanted Cuomo. But early in 1987, he took himself out of the running. After former Senator Gary Hart of Colorado had to drop out due to a sex scandal in May 1987, the clamor for Cuomo returned. Again, he refused.

There was a former college baseball star elected President in 1988, but it was the sitting Vice President, George H.W. Bush, a 1st baseman who had helped Yale reach the Final of the College World Series in 1947 and '48 (but lost both times).

In the wake of the Persian Gulf War, Bush's approval rating was 91 percent, and big-name Democrats announced they weren't running, including basketball star turned Senator from New Jersey, Bill Bradley. As the weeks and months of 1991 went by, and the nasty recession caused Bush's poll numbers to plummet, Cuomo made no announcement, other than to say, "I have no plans, and no plans to make plans."

As the year drew to a close, one national poll had him easily leading the Democratic field, and trailing Bush just 48 percent to 43. And it was rumored that he was considering a run. He was mocked as "Hamlet on the Hudson" for this indecisiveness.

But the State legislature, with the Democrats controlling the Assembly and the Republicans the Senate, was deadlocked over the State budget. The filing deadline for the New Hampshire primary was December 20, 1991, and the law said that a candidate was required to hand in a ballot application in person.

Cuomo kept an airplane waiting on the tarmac in Albany as he decided whether to fly to New Hampshire to enter the race. He worked to find a budget agreement -- New York State was long notorious for not getting its budget done on time, and still is -- and, at 3:30 PM, Mario announced, "I cannot turn my attention to New Hampshire while this threat hangs over the head of the New Yorkers I have sworn to put first."

The new frontrunner was Governor Bill Clinton of Arkansas. But a sex scandal hung over him, and many Democratic activists encouraged New Hampshire Democrats to write Cuomo's name in. He ended up getting 4 percent of the vote, while former Senator Paul Tsongas, whose home of Lowell, Massachusetts was just over the State Line from New Hampshire, edged Clinton. It was seen as a victory by Clinton over the "local" candidate.

With Cuomo's support, Clinton won the New York Primary, which ended doubts among Democrats that he could weather the sex, draft and marijuana-use scandals that, in retrospect, were ridiculous as far as judging his fitness for the office. Cuomo even gave Clinton's nominating speech at the Convention, held at Madison Square Garden.

Cuomo did the math, and knew that, in 2000, after 2 terms for Clinton, he'd be 68, and unlikely to win due to his age. While he did get the budget finished, he knew he had missed his best opportunity for the Presidency, and he never ran. He asked Clinton to not consider him for the Vice Presidency. As was widely rumored, Clinton did offer him a seat on the Supreme Court, but he turned it down, recommending instead a fellow New Yorker, Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Clinton and Cuomo's friendship broke down in 1994, but was repaired in 1997 when Clinton appointed Andrew Cuomo to be U.S. Secretary of Housing & Urban Development. That would lead to Andrew's election as the State's Attorney General in 2006, and as Governor in 2010 and again this past November, making the Cuomos the only father-son pair ever to serve as Governor of New York.

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But the political tide turned. A nationwide conservative reaction to Clinton's liberal policies -- which were proven successful, but that was not yet obvious in November 1994 -- led to a Republican landslide that swept away several liberal icons, including House Speaker Tom Foley of Washington State. Mario Cuomo's bid for a 4th term as Governor ended with his defeat to State Senator George Pataki, 49 percent to 45.

Pataki ended up serving 3 terms, before realizing that his own 4th term, were he to seek one in 2006, might end at the hands of the son of the man he beat.

Instead, Andrew ran for Attorney General, and it was the holder of that office, Eliot Spitzer, who won the Governorship. But Spitzer had to resign, and Lieutenant Governor David Paterson realized he couldn't get re-elected, opening the door for Andrew, and for the completion of Mario's vindication, which had been moved forward by the successes of Presidents Clinton and Barack Obama, and by the State's voters finally waking up to the realization that, while a nice guy, Pataki had proven himself to not be up to the job.

Andrew and Mario

Mario Cuomo died yesterday afternoon, mere hours after Andrew was sworn in for his 2nd term, after dealing with heart trouble for 2 months. He was 82. He is survived by Matilda and their 5 children.

Andrew became a member of a 2nd great political family, as he married Kerry Kennedy, daughter of RFK and niece of JFK. That marriage produced 3 daughters -- 2 named Mariah and Cara, for New York-born singer Mariah Carey, and 1 named Michaela. But it ended in divorce, with Kerry becoming the 1st female Kennedy involved in a sex scandal. He now lives with chef and Food Network show host Sandra Lee, although due to his faith, which would not allow him to remarry in a Catholic church, he has not married her.

However, in spite of his re-election, many New Yorkers have soured on Andrew, and his chances of becoming President someday are, for the moment, not good. Though I am curious to see what people would think of a potential President whose potential First Lady was not actually married to him.

Mario's other son, Chris Cuomo, is a journalist, formerly with ABC, and now with CNN. Daughter Maria runs HELP USA, a charitable foundation founded by Matilda, and is married to fashion designer Kenneth Cole. Daughter Margaret Cuomo Maier is a physician, radiologist, and activist in the fight against cancer. And daughter Madeline Cuomo O'Donoghue is an attorney, specializing in family law.

Mario Cuomo was the Governor of the State of New York from the time I was 13 to the time I was 25. Ed Koch was the Mayor of the City of New York from the time I was 8 to the time I was 20. As a result of living in the New York Tri-State Area, I saw them on television just about every day, and I continued to see them on TV long after they left office. They were iconic figures, in ways that the Governors of New Jersey in my childhood -- Brendan Byrne and Tom Kean -- simply weren't, no matter how many times I may have seen them on TV. So it's hard for me to imagine them gone.

They were both great communicators, but in very different ways. Mario Cuomo spoke from the mind and the heart, while Ed Koch spoke from the gut. Each had his way of doing things, and each made his way work -- though not always. When they worked together, it was often a beautiful thing. When they opposed each other, it got ugly.

Ed Koch died a little less than 2 years ago. Now, Mario Cuomo is dead. Life, especially in the New York Tri-State Area, will be a little less inspiring, and a little less fun, without them.

UPDATE: Mario Cuomo was buried at Saint John Cemetery in Middle Village, Queens.

Ed Koch, 1924-2013

Edward Irving Koch was a New Yorker. He'd want us to say that.

I don't think there was ever a man who more loved being a New Yorker -- not Peter Stuyvesant, not Alexander Hamilton, not DeWitt Clinton, not Walt Whitman, not O. Henry, not John McGraw, not Babe Ruth, not Jimmy Walker, not Fiorello LaGuardia, not Nelson Rockefeller, not Dion DiMucci, not Paul Simon, not Lou Reed, not Joey Ramone, not Billy Joel, not Mario Cuomo, not Donald Trump, not Regis Philbin, not Rudy Giuliani, not Joe Torre, not Jay-Z -- not even legendary disc jockey Bruce "Cousin Brucie" Morrow.

He knew enough to know that saying, "He was a New Yorker" didn't mean all good stuff. He'd want us to tell it like it is, and to tell it like it was -- even if telling how we think it was, how it appeared to have been to us, meant disagreeing with him.

In 1994, I was listening to his talk show on radio station WABC 770, and he said something that's stuck with me: "If you agree with me on 9 out of 12 issues, that's good. If you agree with me on 12 out of 12, that's bad. It means you're not thinking for yourself."

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Born in The Bronx on December 12, 1924, his family moved to Newark, New Jersey when he was a boy. At the time, if you were a Jewish kid, going from New York City to New Jersey, even to hardscrabble Newark, was "moving to the country." Well, it does have big parks, Branch Brook and Weequahic.

He graduated from South Side High School, which also produced another controversial longtime Mayor, Newark's Sharpe James. It also produced Home Depot cofounder Bernard Marcus and, after the South Side went from a Jewish neighborhood to a black one, singers Madeline Bell and Cissy Houston, the latter being the leader of the Sweet Inspirations and Whitney's mom. In 1972, the school was renamed Malcolm X Shabazz High School. I don't know what Koch thought about his alma mater being renamed for Malcolm X, but the school's teams, officially still the Bulldogs, are often still called "the Sunnysiders" by the Newark-based Star-Ledger.

Koch served in combat in the U.S. Army during World War II, and went to college and law school on the G.I. Bill. In 1963, running as a reformer, Koch ran for Democratic Party leader in a district that included Greenwich Village, and defeated Carmine DeSapio, the last big leader of New York City's Tammany Hall political organization, ending Tammany's longtime stranglehold on Democratic politics in both the City of New York and the State of New York. In 1968, he got elected to Congress.

In 1977, the City needed help. There was no money to pay for anything. Crime was rampant, and the police didn't have the manpower or the resources to properly fight it. (The shock isn't that it took over a year from the first killing to catch the Son of Sam, it's that they got him at all, and it took a lucky break.) The Subway system was a mess (although that was under the jurisdiction of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, and the MTA is a State agency, not a City agency, something a lot of people still don't realize). The City's business climate was bad.

Everybody, from Wall Street to 42nd Street, from Riverdale to Coney Island, felt as if they were under siege. And Abe Beame, elected in 1973 as a financial whiz who could bail the City out, seemed unable to do anything, a good man in way over his head (and that's not just a reference to him being only 5-foot-2).

The 1977 Mayoral election was a fantastic story, and was detailed in Jonathan Mahler's book Ladies and Gentlemen, The Bronx Is Burning -- as was the Son of Sam case, the Yankees' turbulent Pennant race, and the City's pop culture scene, including disco, punk rock, art, and the struggles of women, racial minorities and gays.

There were 7 candidates on the Democratic side. In addition to Koch and the Brooklynite Beame, they were:

* Mario Cuomo, the crusading Queens lawyer who was then Secretary of State for the State under Governor Hugh Carey.

* Bella Abzug, a Bronx lawyer who'd become the 1st woman elected to Congress from the City.

* Percy Sutton, who had been Malcolm X's lawyer and was elected in Manhattan to become the 1st black Borough President in the City.

* Herman Badillo, a Bronx lawyer who was the 1st Hispanic elected to Congress from the City and the 1st Puerto Rican elected to Congress from anywhere.

* And Joel Hartnett, a Brooklyn advertising executive (the only non-lawyer in the race aside from former accountant Beame) who chaired a "watchdog group" that had accused the Beame Administration of corruption.

Sutton and Badillo pretty much split the minority vote in early polling, meaning that neither blacks nor Hispanics were going to decide the race unless there was a runoff. They and Hartnett never really had a chance.

The rest all went after the City's liberal vote, and all had reason to think they could get it: Beame because he'd been seen working hard, if not well, on their behalf; Koch because he'd been anti-war, pro-civil rights, and on President Richard Nixon's infamous Enemies List; Cuomo because he'd made his name fighting for fair housing and because he was the only candidate who seemed able to appear to the "Outer Boroughs" (The Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn and Staten Island); and Abzug because she was even more anti-war than Koch (the Vietnam War was over but the memory was still fresh), had proposed the first gay-rights bill ever brought before Congress, and because she was sure, as the biggest feminist ever elected to Congress, she could get the women's vote. (With 3 Jewish candidates in the race -- Beame, Koch and Abzug -- the Jewish vote figured to be pretty much split.)

But on July 13, there was a blackout, and the resulting riot put the City's crime and racial problems front and center. And Koch, figuring he'd already made his case that "Abe Beame is an incompetent Mayor," was smart enough to figure out that Beame should no longer be the target: The arch-liberals Cuomo and Abzug should be, as they were the strongest remaining candidates aside from himself.

Without really mentioning them by name, he got tough. He realized that he could be all things to all people. The race was full of brains, but only Koch's brain seemed to figure out that this election would not be won with brains. He knew it would be won in people's hearts.

And if those hearts were cold in the middle of the biggest heat wave New York City had seen in recent memory, so be it. He knew that the winner of the election would need the votes of the Archie Bunkers, as well as those of the Mike Stivics.

And he was not afraid to be the one candidate in the race to call for bringing back the death penalty (which isn't the call of the Mayor at all, but a lot of people were glad he was saying it), or the one candidate in the race to suggest that, if elected, he would crack down on the City's welfare fraud. Translation: "I'm not just the middle-class candidate, I'm the white man's candidate." Or, as the great columnist Jimmy Breslin put it in the Daily News: "Koch got the job as mayor because he promised whites that he could keep the blacks under control."

Once he began suggesting that, he was able to bring liberal-but-scared Jews away from Beame and Abzug, and angry Italians and other Catholics away from Cuomo, whom they might have supported simply because he was the only Italian in the race, and, with Badillo reduced to a fringe candidate, the only Catholic who had a chance.

When the primary was held on September 8, it was very close. Less than 30,000 votes separated 1st place from 4th: Koch got just under 20 percent of the vote, Cuomo nearly 19, Beame 18, and Abzug 16 1/2. Since the winner did not get 40 percent, a runoff between the top 2 would be held 10 days later, and it was between Koch and Cuomo. Beame, one of the City's leading politicians for a long time, just missed the runoff, and saw his career come to a sad end.

The runoff got ugly. Koch's appeals to working-class and middle-class whites were seen as terribly cynical. And someone in the Cuomo camp (it's still not clear who) dropped a public suggestion that Koch was gay. Signs appeared a Cuomo events saying "VOTE FOR CUOMO NOT THE HOMO."

Koch blunted this by appearing at events with Bess Myerson, who in 1945 became the 1st New Yorker and the 1st Jewish woman to be named Miss America, and later became a game show panelist and chaired the City's Commission on Consumer Affairs. Signs saying "BESS FOR FIRST LADY" began appearing.

Looking back, years later, Koch said most of the voters didn't care whether or not he was gay. In perhaps no other city, not even San Francisco (where Harvey Milk was about to be elected to the Board of Supervisors, the 1st openly gay candidate to win election to any American public office), could that statement have been made. He never married (not Bess nor anyone else), but he never came out, either, and did once publicly deny that he was gay.

The race was decided when Badillo went to see Cuomo, and heard Cuomo talk for an hour, basically saying nothing; then went to see Koch, and heard Koch tell him that Hispanics would be represented in his administration.

Koch was smart enough to know that it was no longer enough to appeal to angry whites: He knew that now, with Sutton and Badillo no longer running, whoever won the minority vote would win the election. Cuomo was smart enough to know that, too, but he wasn't practical enough to get enough of those votes. Beame also threw the last of the old machine vote Koch's way, and even Governor Carey, who seemed to be supportive of Cuomo, endorsed Koch.

Koch won the runoff with 55 percent of the vote. Cuomo still ended up getting the Liberal Party nomination, but when the general election was held, Koch got just under 50 percent, Cuomo 41, and State Senator Roy Goodman, the Republican nominee, and radio talk-show host Barry Farber, nominated by the Conservative Party, got just 4 percent each.

Cuomo's career, of course, was not finished, or even seriously damaged. In 1978, when Carey ran for re-election, he ran with Cuomo as Lieutenant Governor. In 1982, Koch opposed Cuomo in the primary for Governor, but made ill-advised comments about the State's rural areas. Cuomo easily won the primary, and then won a close-fought general election against Republican investment banker Lew Lehrman.

Mario Cuomo would serve 3 terms, and his son Andrew is now Governor. Mario once said that New York is the only City in the country where the Mayor wants to be Governor, and the Governor wants to be Mayor. But who's kidding who? Ed Koch never wanted to be Governor. He just liked the attention.

After losing the primary, Koch told his supporters gathered in the hotel ballroom, "It's not the end of the world." Dead silence. Then he gave a big grin and said, "And I'm still the Mayor!" Big cheers.

*

He was still the Mayor because no one could lay a glove on him. In 1980, the City's transit workers went on strike. Knowing that a strike that began the day John Lindsay became Mayor, January 1, 1966, pretty much poisoned the political atmosphere and made Lindsay a lame duck literally from Day One, Koch decided that he had to be seen as a strong Mayor.

So he told New Yorkers to walk to work. And, much like that other outsized New York boss of that time, George Steinbrenner, he wasn't asking anyone to do anything he wouldn't do: He led a group of commuters in walking over the Brooklyn Bridge to City Hall. Every day, as long as the strike went on, he would walk from City Hall to the Bridge and shake hands with people and thank them for going to work in spite of the strike.

The message to the union was, "We need you, but you need us more." The strike lasted 11 days, and the union caved in.

He was still the Mayor because he was King of the Schmoozers. He cultivated relationships with all ethnic groups in the City. No one would have expected the Mayor of New York to make public speeches on behalf of the state of Israel, but Ed Koch not only saw that as a duty, he saw it as a pleasure. He became friends with the City's Archbishops, first Terence Cooke until his death in 1983, and then John O'Connor, writing a book with the latter: Hizzoner and His Eminence: A Candid Exchange.

Every March 17, he would march in the St. Patrick's Day Parade, and would tell the TV reporters, "Today, my name is Edward O'Koch." Every 2nd Sunday in June, he would march in the Puerto Rican Day Parade, and tell the reporters, "Today, my name is Eduardo Kooch."

Despite the cynicism of his 1st campaign for Mayor, he loved people. He loved meeting New Yorkers of all races, ethnicities and religions, and asking them his catchphrase: "How'm I doin'?"

He was still the Mayor because he was the City's most ebullient spokesman -- ever, more than even LaGuardia before him or Giuliani after him. Conservatives now joke about Brooklynite Senator Chuck Schumer never meeting a TV camera he didn't like, but Koch was on another level. He loved the spotlight, partly out of ego, partly out of wanting New York to shine in it. Three times, he played himself on Saturday Night Live. In Ghostbusters and Ghostbusters II, David Margulies played a Mayor whose name was only mentioned as "Lenny," but everyone knew it was a sendup of Koch.

He was still the Mayor because, while his ego was huge, it wasn't fragile. He didn't seem to mind when people lampooned him. He didn't mind when, uh, people, uh, mocked his, uh, speaking style. He didn't mind when people used "How'm I doin'?" He didn't mind when people called him a publicity hound. How could he mind when they said that? He knew it was the truth.

And he was still the Mayor because he could still be all things to all people. Conservatives loved him because he was anti-crime, pro-police, anti-welfare and pro-Israel. Liberals loved him because, in spite of his talk of crime and welfare, he did seem to be looking out for minorities, and women, and gays, and because he was pro-Israel (which, again, had little to do with how Jews living in the City lived, but it was still a major concern of theirs).

In 1981, he ran for a 2nd term, and in 1985 for a 3rd.  Each time, he got the nominations of both the Democratic and the Republican Party. New York State has a weird four-party system. In 1944, anti-Tammany Democrats were not happy with the American Labor Party, a party with Communist ties, being the only existing left-of-center alternative, so they founded the Liberal Party. In 1962, conservative author and magazine publisher William F. Buckley Jr. was unhappy with the softness of the State's Republican Party, and founded the Conservative Party, and ran on its ticket for Mayor in 1965 (even though he openly stated he not only didn't want to be Mayor, but didn't even want to live in the City).

Koch's biggest challenges were from the ideologues. He got 75 percent of the vote against "Unity Party" candidate Frank Barbaro in 1981, and 78 percent against City Council President Carol Bellamy in 1985. (Bellamy still got closer to becoming Mayor than Abzug ever did, and later was appointed by President Bill Clinton to become the 1st former Peace Corps worker to be the agency's Director.)

*

Now, you may be asking, "But, Mike, this is a sports-themed blog. What did Koch have to do with sports?"

Not much. In spite of being quite tall, and undeniably tough (as I said, he was a World War II combat veteran), he was never an athlete.  In 2004, together with his sister, Pat Koch Thaler, he wrote a children's book: Eddie, Harold's Little Brother. It told the story of his own childhood, when he tried unsuccessfully to emulate his older brother's baseball talents, before realizing that he should instead focus on what he was already good at, which was telling stories and speaking in public.

But he was a big booster of the New York teams. When the Mets celebrated their 25th Anniversary in 1986, he closed out their anniversary video by saying they were a classic New York institution. (Yeah, so is Bellevue Hospital.) When they subsequently won the World Series, he threw them a ticker-tape parade up lower Broadway. He had also done so for the Yankees in 1978 (as Mayor Beame had when they won it the year before).

In January 1987, as the Giants prepared to play in the Super Bowl for the 1st time, at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California, Koch was asked if he'd throw them a ticker-tape parade if they won. He said no, citing the fact that, not only had the Giants moved to New Jersey in 1976, but that they seemed to want it both ways: Embracing and yet denying their New York identity.

"This foreign team," he said, "they used to have on their helmets, 'ny.' They took it off!" (My use of the lower-case "ny," as opposed to a capital "NY," is on purpose, since that's what the Giants used at the time, and what they now use again.) So what should the Giants do for a parade? "Let them parade in front of the oil drums in Moonachie." (That town, adjoining East Rutherford, is famous for Manny's of Moonachie, a bar favored by Giants fans, now defunct.)

When asked where he was going to be on Super Bowl Sunday, New Jersey Governor Tom Kean said, "I'm going to be in Pasadena." When asked where he was going to be that day, Koch said, "I'm, uh, going to be in Poland." Poland? I can't remember why he was going there, especially since it was still run by a Communist government and Koch was an ardent anti-Communist. He did say, "I'm going to, uh, see if I can, uh, listen to the game on the underground radio."

The Giants beat the Denver Broncos, 39-20, and paraded around the Meadowlands parking lot, before having the equivalent of a City Hall victory rally inside Giants Stadium. When Kean was introduced, he got a standing ovation. Andrew Stein, President of the City Council, and next in line for Mayor under the law of the time, stood in for Koch. In spite of his claim that New York City loved New Jersey and that "We're all part of the same region," he got booed by the crowd.

Koch knew that, to be Mayor of New York, it helps to have a mean streak. But there's a big difference between having a mean streak and being a dick, and he never figured that out. Koch was a dick about the Giants, and Stein "took a bullet for him."  I hope Koch at least bought him dinner for that.

Mayor Dinkins didn't give them a parade the next time, either, although Mayor Bloomberg has now done so twice.

*

Like Robert Wagner Jr. before him, and Mike Bloomberg after him (and he had to change the law to even run for a 3rd term, as term limits were enacted after Koch left office), Koch should have quit after 2 terms. But he did win a 3rd term, and it was a disaster. Although he'd helped get business booming in the City, from stocks to banks to tourism, crime remained out of control, and soon it was all over City Hall and the Borough Halls, too.

There was a big scandal in the Parking Violations Bureau, which led to the indictment of big Koch allies. One was his old friend (but never his girlfriend) Bess Myerson. Another was Brooklyn party boss Amadeo "Meade" Esposito. Another was Bronx-based Congressman Mario Biaggi, once a hero cop. Another was Bronx party boss Stanley Friedman. Another was Queens Borough President Donald Manes.

Myerson was acquitted. Esposito was convicted, but, given his age and health, was sentenced to community service and fined $500,000, and never spent a day in prison. Biaggi was convicted in 2 separate cases, and sentenced to 10 years in prison in total, but was released after 3 years due to ill health. Friedman was convicted, and sentenced to 4 years. Twice in early 1986, Manes attempted suicide, and, the 2nd time, he succeeded. This happened while his impending indictment was rumored, but before it could be filed. His suicide attempts looked like an admission of guilt.

Although no one could prove Koch had any direct involvement in any of these crimes, his image as a reformer and a patron of honest government was irrevocably shattered.

Things got worse in 1988. When the New York Primary came around in the Presidential election, instead of endorsing Governor Michael Dukakis of Massachusetts (then the front-runner) or the Rev. Jesse Jackson (then 2nd in delegates following his 3rd-place run in 1984), Koch endorsed Senator Al Gore of Tennessee (then 3rd).

Koch thought Dukakis was too soft on crime (a charge that would end up helping to torpedo his chances in the general election), but he really hit Jackson hard: Reminding everyone of Jackson's supposed anti-Semitism, including his calling New York "Hymietown" during the 1984 campaign, Koch said, "Jews would be crazy to vote for Jackson."

Gore acted as though he didn't want the endorsement, because he was a prude when it came to political corruption, and wanted nothing to do with Koch. Dukakis won the Primary. Gore then dropped out, and this, along with a ceiling of votes that Jackson simply couldn't climb over, cinched (if not yet clinched) the nomination for Dukakis.

Then came the riot in Tompkins Square Park on August 6. The park, on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, had become a squalid den of drug dealers, drug users, and homeless people. After neighborhood complaints, Koch sent the police in to clear the park, and they went overboard, beating people with their nightsticks. The homeless fought back, and it became the worst police vs. citizenry action in America since the Democratic Convention riot in Chicago in 1968.

It was Koch's doom. Liberal voters, particularly minorities, were angry that it had happened at all. Conservative voters were angry that it simply didn't work, because the dealers, the users and the homeless simply moved back in and reclaimed the park.

In 1989, when Koch ran for a 4th term, liberal voters turned to Manhattan Borough President David Dinkins, who edged him in a very bitter race, putting him in position to become New York's 1st black Mayor, presuming he could beat the Republican nominee. That turned out to be former U.S. Attorney Rudolph Giuliani, who gained the support of the conservatives who'd given up on Koch. The general election was very close, but Dinkins won.

On New Year's Eve 1989, Koch's last full day in office, Breslin launched another broadside, as only he could write: "Thus far there have been 20,000 murders while Ed Koch has been mayor. This is the one most ghastly figure in the history of American cities and shows clearly that Koch has been a hideous figure, a man who laughs in the morgue."

Daily News columnist Denis Hamill (brother of the even more legendary columnist Pete Hamill) said that Koch would occasionally tell him that he was determined to not only outlive Breslin, but give the eulogy at his funeral. Breslin has had some serious health difficulties, but, at age 82, is still alive, kicking and writing.

*

Koch sometimes forgave, but he never forgot. In 1993, after crime and racial strife got worse, he stuck it to Dinkins by supporting Giuliani, and effectively threw him the Jewish vote, and that made the difference: Giuliani won the race by as slim a margin as he'd lost it 4 years earlier.

And yet, by 1999, with Giuliani in his 2nd term, he and Koch were estranged enough that Koch wrote a book about him, titled Giuliani: Nasty Man. In 2001, in the wake of 9/11, they came together to help the City heal. Together, they campaigned for business tycoon Mike Bloomberg's election as Mayor. But in 2007, as Giuliani began his disastrous campaign for President, Koch blasted him as "a control freak."

Koch and Giuliani, like LaGuardia before them, understood something that Dinkins -- and Beame, and Lindsay -- didn't understand: To be Mayor of New York, you need to be able to show yourself as a nice guy, but you've also got to be a son of a bitch sometimes -- as I said earlier, you need a mean streak, without being a dick just for the heck of it.

Bloomberg, finally leaving office at the end of this year, understands it. What Mayor Moneybags doesn't understand, but Koch and Giuliani did, is that you also have to make it look like you love New York City for what it is, not just for what it can do for you. Sure, Koch had a massive ego, as does Giuliani. But both of them, whatever else you can say about them, love New York City. I don't really believe Bloomberg does.

Koch stayed active for as long as he could. Although he had never been appointed as a judge in any court, he replaced Judge Joseph Wapner as the judge on the TV show The People's Court. As I said at the beginning of this post, for several years he had a talk show on WABC. He wrote several books, including 2 memoirs, Mayor and Citizen Koch.

In spite of his age -- he was born the same year as my Grandma from Queens, and she wanted nothing to do with computers -- he embraced the Internet, and hosted an online show where he was a movie critic, Mayor at the Movies. He had previously written a book titled Ed Koch on Everything: Movies, Politics, Personalities, Food, and Other Stuff. 

He continued to be all over the political map. He supported Republican Al D'Amato for the Senate, and Republican George W. Bush for President. In the 2008 Presidential election, in the Democratic Primary, he endorsed Hillary Clinton, but when Barack Obama won the nomination, Koch supported him, saying he agreed with him on nearly every domestic policy, and that the thought of Republican Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin becoming President "would scare me."

He broke with Obama over Israel in 2010, but changed his mind again in 2012, saying that Obama's position had changed enough to win his endorsement. A few days ago, shortly before going into the hospital for the last time, Koch addressed the mass shootings that have been happening lately, and used his last public political statement to say he supports banning guns, a statement he would never have made as Mayor in the 1980s.

He'd been in and out of New York Presbyterian Hospital with heart trouble in recent years. In 2011, Bloomberg convinced the Triborough Bridge & Tunnel Authority to rename the Triborough Bridge the Ed Koch Triborough Bridge. He died overnight, at the age of 88.

My mother, usually a fan of his, said that when she traveled outside the Tri-State Area, she would still turn on the 11:00 news, and when the broadcast would end, she would feel that she was missing something: "No Koch."

The man was an icon. Sure, he took some weird stands. He was far from perfect. He drove me crazy. Sometimes, I wanted to grab him by the lapels, and yell, right in his face, "What the hell is wrong with you? You know better than this!"

But it was impossible to stay mad at the guy. Rest in, uh, peace, you old mensch.

UPDATE: Koch was buried at Trinity Church in Lower Manhattan, near the graves of Founding Father Alexander Hamilton and steamboat pioneer Robert Fulton, at the head of Wall Street, and, with some appropriateness, a short walk from City Hall and the Brooklyn Bridge.

He was predeceased by Meade Esposito, who died in 1993; Bella Abzug, 1998; John O'Connor and John Lindsay, 2000; Abe Beame, 2001; Joel Hartnett, 2006; Percy Sutton, 2009; and Hugh Carey, 2011. Roy Goodman and Herman Badillo, 2014; Mario Cuomo, Mario Biaggi and Bess Meyerson, 2015; Frank Barbaro, in 2016; Jimmy Breslin, 2017, and Barry Farber, Pete Hamill and David Dinkins, 2020. As of February 1, 2023, Tom Kean, Carol Bellamy, Andrew Stein, Stanley Friedman, Rudy Giuliani, Mike Bloomberg and Denis Hamill are still alive.