R.I.P Mario Cuomo: The Elizabeth Warren of the 1980s Dies

The death of Mario Cuomo today at age 82 marks the final end for one of the great “what if” figures in American politics.

Today, the Left’s standard bearer is Elizabeth Warren, a senator from Massachusetts who was first elected to office only two years ago. Back in the 1980s, the liberal heartthrob was Mario Cuomo.

The governor of New York from 1983 to 1995, Cuomo was long considered the great hope of the Left, especially after his riveting keynote speech to the 1984 Democratic National Convention. In it he contrasted Ronald Reagan’s vision of America as a “shining city on a hill” with what he claimed was a more accurate description.

“There is despair, Mr. President, in the faces that you don’t see, in the places that you don’t visit, in your shining city,” Cuomo told the Democratic delegates, who went on to nominate Walter Mondale and lose 49 out of 50 states that year.

But liberals believed Cuomo had the magic to win and relentlessly promoted him as the Democratic stand bearer in 1988 and 1992. Both times, Cuomo stalled and finally declined to run, earning the nickname “Hamlet on the Hudson.”

Cuomo ultimately turned down another big opportunity after Bill Clinton became president in 1992. Last year, Clinton told a New York fundraiser that he offered Cuomo a lifetime appointment on the Supreme Court.

“He is the first man in the history of this country to turn down a position on the Supreme Court, and it’s because he was dedicated to New York,” Clinton told a gathering of donors to Help USA, a homeless aid organization founded by current New York governor Andrew Cuomo, Mario’s son.

Only 18 months after he turned down the Supreme Court appointment, Cuomo was defeated for a fourth term by Republican George Pataki. He retired then from politics at the age of 62.

A decent man who believed passionately in his liberal ideology, Cuomo lived to see the economic policies he champion gradually leave the state he so loved in steady decline. Just last week, the Census Bureau announced that New York has been surpassed in population by economically thriving Florida as the nation’s third-largest state.

Mario Cuomo, with the help of mob expert and author Nicholas Pileggi, who wrote a magazine piece in 1987 whitewashing him, managed to escape close scrutiny for his ties to the Mafia, but it’s widely accepted that he chose not to run for President because of those ties, despite Pileggi’s best efforts. I have little doubt that future researchers will reveal mountains of evidence that Pileggi, a good Democrat, conveniently overlooked.

To wit, consider:

• Matilda Cuomo (ńee Raffa), Gov. Mario Cuomo’s wife, is the daughter of the late Mary Raffa (ńee Gitto). The Raffa family and the Gitto family have long lineages in Sicily, and extensive ties to the Sicilian Mafia. Sicilian mafioso Francesco Gitto, Mary Raffa’s nephew and Matilda’s first cousin, was murdered in the 1980s. His killers were never prosecuted. It’s known that Francesco Gitto owned a home in Sicily that housed a bustling and lucrative heroin refinery.

• Charles Raffa, Matilda’s father, arrived in the United States in 1927 penniless and left an estate of over $13 million at his death some 60 years later. Mr. Raffa’s hard work and business acumen may explain his success, as his defenders claim, but no one seems to want to explain why, late in life, he was nearly beaten to death on one of his properties. Mr. Raffa was unable to identify his attackers to police, who were rumored to be henchmen delivering a message over an arson dispute, and no one was ever prosecuted for a vicious crime against the father-in-law of the then sitting Governor of New York, and the father of a Long Island Assistant District Attorney. Mr. Raffa never fully recovered from the incident and died four years later at the age of 84. A bitter feud erupted among his children over the distribution of his estate.

• Attorney Mario Cuomo represented a group of junkyard owners who sued to protect their property from Shea Stadium developers when the stadium was in its planning stage. One of the junkyard owners was Joseph “Joey Narrows” Laratro, a capo in the Lucchese crime family. Cuomo won the case and said he never got paid for the work. Why would an attorney allow a client to avoid payment? Usually, attorneys sue for non-payment, and very, very rarely do they lose. Why didn’t Cuomo choose to sue if he never got compensated for legitimate work?

• Steven Bruno Raffa was an underboss for the Santo Trafficante, Jr. crime syndicate in Tampa and south Florida. His origins trace back to the same Raffa family in Sicily that produced Charles Raffa. Steven Raffa began his career in crime in the Lucchese crime family in New York.

• Gov. Mario Cuomo was asked by a reporter, on camera in front of the Javits Center in NYC in 1986, to comment on a Mafia trial then in the news. Gov. Cuomo said, “Mafia? That’s a word invented by people. It’s a lot of baloney.”

Taking the above into account, which undoubtedly is only a part of the story, is it really plausible to assert that Mario Cuomo had no mob ties? I think not.

Mario Cuomo made many boneheaded decisions in his day, from precipitously and unnecessarily shutting down the Shoreham Nuclear Plant to attempting to wreck eastern Long Island by building a bridge to Connecticut across the Long Island Sound. His rhetoric was often sappy, but, admittedly, sometimes eloquent, too. His decisions were roundly abysmal.

Andrew Cuomo recently made a decision about New York enterprise that well describes his attitude towards prosperity and jobs, and also the rigor of his inquiry into complex matters of science, much in the tradition of his father. On the basis of no compelling evidence, he banned fracking in New York State. When asked why he did it, he said his top scientific advisor told him he wouldn’t let his kids grow up near a fracking site, and the Governor said that was all he needed to hear.

It turns out the scientist has no kids, but whatever.

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