From Smith to Cuomo, a Gubernatiorial Retrospective

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For the past three weeks, since his passing, I have been thinking a lot about the 12 years Mario Cuomo served as governor. For me, good, bad or indifferent, covering the actions by the Cuomo Administration is an experience I will never forget.

Many people have said recently that Mario Cuomo’s tenure did not have a singular trademark of his administration. I was curious about this oddity as well.

Let’s travel back 75 years from when Cuomo left office in 1994. Some of our chief executives with the least amount of accomplishments have everything from grandiose government buildings, majestic bridges, a tunnel, government office campuses and major transportation thoroughfares named for them. Until 1942, governors served two-year terms and state lawmakers ran for office every year, constantly campaigning. The following is a brief recollection of the prestige New York governors have attained over the past century.

Governor Al Smith

Al Smith (1919 – 1920; 1923 – 28) is known for bringing alcohol back to the Executive Mansion in Albany and opposing Prohibition; Nathan Miller (1921 – 22), briefly interrupted Smith’s tenure, is known for creating the New York City Transit Commission, now the MTA, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority; Franklin Roosevelt (1929 – 32) battled and then supported Tammany Hall bosses during his two terms in office; Herbert Lehman, (1932 – 42), the first Jewish governor, the son of one of the three founders of the prestigious Lehman Brothers investment banking firm and was the last chief executive to serve two-year terms; when Governor Lehman resigned on December 3, 1942 to accept appointment as Director of Foreign Relief and Rehabilitation Operations for the United States Department of State, Charles Poletti succeeded to the governorship, serving only 29 days, the shortest term of any New York governor; Thomas Dewey (1943 – 54) is credited with building the New York State Thruway, Averell Harriman (1955 – 58) had a mostly unremarkable career but was known for raising personal taxes by 11%, Nelson Rockefeller (1959 – 73) was known as the longest serving governor turned the State University of New York into the largest system of public higher education in the United States, his botched handling of the Attica prison uprising in 1971, creating the first State Council on the Arts in the country, which became a model for the National Endowment for the Arts, instituted the toughest drug laws in the nation known as the Rockefeller Drug Laws and building the magnificent Empire State Plaza in Albany. In December 1973 Rockefeller resigned to run the Commission on Critical Choices for Americans and Malcolm Wilson (1974) assumed the governorship for the remaining year of Rockefeller’s term. He was known as a caretaker governor and for greatly improving passenger rail service in New York State. His a greatest and longest lasting accomplishment came when he was a state lawmaker passing the Wilson-Pakula Act which prevents candidates from running in a party primary if they were not members of that party. Finally, Hugh Carey (1975 – 82) was known for getting the state out of fiscal despair and for being fond of scotch and other hard liquors.

From this list of ten New York governors, only four showed presidential ambitions – Al Smith, Franklin Roosevelt, Thomas Dewey and Nelson Rockefeller. Roosevelt served four terms as President of the United States and Nelson Rockefeller was the accidental vice president, appointed by Gerald Ford on August 20, 1974 in the aftermath of the Watergate scandal. Rockefeller was unceremoniously dumped by Ford from the 1976 ticket in favor of Bob Dole because Rockefeller was viewed as too liberal by the Republican rank-and-file. Al Smith made one bid for president in 1928 but failed to Herbert Hoover. Thomas Dewey twice ran for president (1944 and 1948) and in 1948 became known as one of the biggest political upsets in the 20th Century.

Of the 10 governors listed above, only three have not received any naming rights, including Nathan Miller, Herbert Lehman and Charles Poletti.

Governor Mario Cuomo

Now what about Mario Cuomo? He once told me that he would be known as the governor who built more prisons than any other governor. When asked how he would want to best be remembered he said he wanted the words “I tried” written on his tombstone.

Prisons are not named for people but for the town in which they are built. His son, the current governor, Andrew Cuomo, might be trying to unravel his father’s legacy by closing down more prisons than any other governor.