A Democratic prince
Washington whispers, as we all know, and lately it has been whispering about — Andrew Cuomo. He is, of course, son of, and also secretary of housing and urban development. HUD is not exactly a glamour spot, but Cuomo has made the most of it, politically. He is very close to Al Gore, and one whisper has it that he could become the vice president’s running mate. If not that, chief of staff, in a Gore administration. If not that, governor of New York, after the 2002 election. Smart, determined, and politically shrewd, Cuomo has as bright a future as any Democrat of his generation. That name doesn’t hurt, either. Actually, he has two names that don’t hurt, being married to a Kennedy (one of Robert’s). Democrats can be excused for salivating over this prince.
Would Gore actually name him to the ticket? Probably not. He has his strengths: He’s an “ethnic,” and Catholic. And he has eloquence, presence, a New Democratic credential or two, an attractive family (including twin daughters), and those royal names. But he has never held elective office, is barely into his forties, has a scandal-smudged past, and comes from a state that should be in the Democratic column anyway. Gore’s better bet might be another cabinet member, energy secretary Bill Richardson, who, though gas prices are up, still has a Mexican mother. Lovely, in today’s politics.
Chief of staff, however, makes perfect sense, and governor of New York, even more. Cuomo obviously wants it, it is well within his grasp, and his father is bursting for him to have it. He would have to do something about the state’s Democratic comptroller, Carl McCall, who has already begun to campaign. But that should be no problem. Andrew and his backers could easily induce McCall to step aside, avoiding the unpleasantness of a primary.
Ask around about Cuomo, and you get strikingly common responses: bright, ambitious, proud, impressive, thin-skinned, aggressive, hard-hitting, thuggish, brutal. Seldom will a reporter do a story and find so much fear surrounding his subject. People — even his fans — are reluctant to talk about him, conscious of his power and wrath. “He can get you,” is something you often hear. “Vindictive son-of-a-bitch,” is a typical description. One Cuomo-watcher notes that Andrew “practices an old-style politics, ward-boss politics,” the politics of a bruiser. Cuomo is notorious among reporters for going to unusual lengths to control any coverage of his activities. Yet he has the world’s most charming and affable press secretary — go figure. Every operation needs a good cop, apparently.
Then there is that temper — the Cuomo temper, one of the most fabled in Washington. Most insiders have a store of Cuomo-temper stories, some of them truly hair-curling. “Woe unto you if you get on Andrew’s bad side,” says one who has worked with him, and admires him. When it comes to temper, “he makes John McCain look like Winnie the Pooh.” Cuomo will erupt volcanically among his inner circle, while these fits are “shielded from the outside world.” The Cuomo associate goes on to say, however, that Andrew has a noble Democratic heart: “He has a Rooseveltian, a Kennedyesque sense of public service, and that, combined with his sharp political elbows, ain’t bad.”
Cuomo was born in 1957, and learned politics at his father’s knee. In 1982, just after graduating from law school, he ran his father’s first campaign for governor. They won. For two years, Andrew served as his father’s top adviser, drawing a dollar a year. Later, he became a partner in a Manhattan law firm, filled with shady characters who would soon cause him grief. Cuomo, along with some others, invested in a Florida savings and loan called Oceanmark. Messy and intricate lawsuits ensued. Luckily for Cuomo, they are as difficult to understand — and mind-numbing in their details — as Whitewater. Still, Cuomo is super-sensitive on the subject. When The American Spectator was preparing an article on Oceanmark, Cuomo had his men send the magazine a comically threatening letter.
In 1986, Cuomo performed the signature act of his career, founding HELP, which stands for Housing Enterprise for the Less Privileged. This organization — it is now run by one of his siblings — is dedicated to building “transitional housing” and to the idea of a “continuum of care,” whereby the down-and-out are guided to self-sufficiency, step by step. HELP is what President Bush twinklingly referred to as a “point of light.” Cuomo has derided this language, but it applies.
Even while engaged in this project, however, Cuomo was never far from politics. He had a (famous) direct line into the governor’s office. And he was not averse to throwing his weight around, dropping ominous hints — “You can be replaced, you know” — when state officials and others refused to do his bidding. Even many who share his politics and his passion for social activism recoil in disgust at the mention of his name, regarding him as a bully-boy.
Cuomo came to national attention in 1991, when Mayor David Dinkins tabbed him to head the city’s commission on the homeless. The report he produced — “The Way Home: A New Direction in Social Policy” — was something of a shocker. It confirmed the neoconservative critique of the homelessness problem. “For too long,” Cuomo conceded, “we did not want to admit the truth, because to admit the truth could be seen as criticism of [the homeless themselves].” The problem, Cuomo admitted, was not one of poverty, of lack of housing. Rather, it had “many roots,” including “troubled family histories, drug or alcohol problems, and premature deinstitutionalization from mental hospitals.” He even charged that “the very term ‘homeless’ is a misnomer.” He sneered at “crusaders” and quipped that “an apartment doesn’t cure a crack addiction” — a remark worthy of Irving Kristol himself. Cuomo called for “a new war on poverty,” to be waged by a private-public partnership. The free market would supply the expertise; the government, the dough.
The young man was careful, of course — they all are — to cover his semi-apostasy with traditional liberal rhetoric. His concept, he protested, was “poles apart from the Republican notion of ‘voluntarism.’” But Cuomo had broken a dam on a difficult, heavily mythologized issue. During this period of his life, he sounded much like his sister-in-law, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, lieutenant governor of Maryland, and another name that Washington whispers — she is a possible, though a long-shot, Gore veep. Most likely, she will be elected governor of her own state in 2002. “KKT,” as she is known, is a master at combining small heresies with doses of Democratic poetry.
When Bill Clinton won the White House in 1992, Cuomo went to Washington to become assistant HUD secretary under Henry Cisneros. When Cisneros left at the end of Clinton’s first term — still under a cloud of “sex lies” to the FBI — the president elevated Cuomo to the top spot, in part at Gore’s urging. Cuomo quickly promised a new, “reinvented” HUD, nothing like the pit of its past. But he has mainly fashioned the institutional equivalent of himself: an agency that rewards friends and punishes enemies, real or perceived. He has repeatedly tried to use the department as a patronage machine, often being blocked by Republican on Capitol Hill, with whom his relations have been rocky. They ask; he stonewalls.
The most astonishing and abhorrent aspect of Cuomo’s HUD tenure concerns the agency’s inspector general, Susan Gaffney, against whom Cuomo has conducted what can only be called a dirty war. This war has been extensively detailed, though chiefly in the conservative press. The long and the short of it is: Gaffney, fulfilling her responsibility as inspector general, objected to certain of the department’s practices, and Cuomo did everything in his power to discredit and destroy her, spending hundreds of thousands of federal dollars in the process. Congressional Republicans ordered an investigation, which produced a damning report.
Yet Cuomo cannot fail to delight his fellow Democrats, especially those who are most partisan. Many wanted him to run for Pat Moynihan’s Senate seat this year, but then Mrs. Clinton wanted in, and Andrew had to cool his heels. He has hardly been absent from the campaign, though. In December, he seized some $60 million in housing funds from Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, Hillary’s opponent in the Senate race. This was about as naked a political move as could be made. Republicans squawked, while Democrats merely grinned, shaking their heads at their boy’s audacity. Hill Republicans are investigating that one, too.
The young Cuomo has many of the formidable gifts of his father. But he is even more the political animal. He can cut up Republicans with the best of them, as he has proven in his campaign forays for Gore and Mrs. Clinton. This is a slasher in the Gore / Tony Coelho style. Yet he can lay on the goop, too. He speaks unblushingly about “economic justice” and refers to “progressive politics” as “the Judeo-Christian tradition.” His wife, Kerry Kennedy Cuomo, has said about him, “He has a serious commitment to helping the most vulnerable, the poorest people in our society . . . He’s their advocate. He speaks for the people in urban America, the people on Indian reservations, the people who have no other voice.” And who does that sound like? Right — Mrs. Cuomo’s father. And no comparison would flatter Andrew more. In fact, he courts it. Like RFK, he is both ruthless in his politics and on fire with the belief that Democratic policies are just and godly, while Republican ones are . . . not. In his party, how can he miss? Watch out.
This article first appeared in the April 3, 2000, issue of National Review.