Three-time former New York governor Mario Cuomo, who turned down several invitations to run for the US presidency, died on Thursday at his home in Manhattan at the age of 82.
His death came on the day his eldest son, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, delivered inaugural addresses in Manhattan and Buffalo, New York, after being sworn in for a second term.
The New York governor’s office said in a statement that Mario Cuomo, who served as New York’s 52nd governor from 1983 through 1994, had died of “natural causes due to heart failure this evening at home with his loving family at his side.”
The former governor, long a celebrated orator and a leading voice of the US Democratic Party’s liberal wing, was hospitalized on Nov. 30 for treatment of a heart condition.
His younger son, CNN journalist Chris Cuomo, informed the network shortly before 5pm on Thursday that his father had died, CNN reported.
During that time Andrew Cuomo was giving an address at the Erie and Buffalo County Historical Society.
In his inauguration address on Thursday, Andrew Cuomo said he had read his speech to his father the night before.
“He said it was good, especially for a second termer,” the younger Cuomo said. “He couldn’t be here physically today, my father. But my father is in this room. He is in the heart and mind of every person who is here.”
US President Barack Obama, in a statement issued from Hawaii, where he was vacationing, saluted the former governor as “an unflinching voice for tolerance, inclusiveness, fairness, dignity and opportunity.”
White House spokesman Eric Schultz said Obama called Andrew Cuomo by telephone to offer his condolences.
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said Mario Cuomo was “a man who campaigned with poetry and governed with beautiful prose.”
Mario Cuomo was first elected as governor in 1982 and came to national attention two years later when he gave an electrifying keynote address at the Democratic National Convention in San Francisco, criticizing the policies of then-US President Ronald Reagan and challenging Reagan’s metaphor likening America to a “shining city on a hill.”
“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. But there’s another city; there’s another part to the shining city; the part where some people can’t pay their mortgages, and most young people can’t afford one; where students can’t afford the education they need, and middle-class parents watch the dreams they hold for their children evaporate,” Cuomo said.
His speech defining Republicans as looking out only for the well-off and Democrats as champions of the middle class and the poor propelled Cuomo to the forefront of the party leadership.
After easily winning re-election to a second term as New York governor, Cuomo was the apparent front-runner for the 1988 Democratic nomination fro US president.
However, the filing deadline came and went, and Cuomo’s reputation as a reticent, Hamlet-like figure began to grow.
A similar scenario arose in 1992, when Cuomo was again the focus of Democratic presidential anticipation. However, he said state budget problems needed his attention and again declined to run.
In addition to two sons, Cuomo is survived by his wife of 60 years, Matilda, and their three daughters, Maria, Margaret and Madeline, and 14 grandchildren.
The governor’s office said funeral arrangements would be announced soon.
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