Mario Cuomo: Never Backed Away From Controversy

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One of my favorite memories about Governor Mario Cuomo was how he never ran away from a confrontation. Shortly after Cuomo took office in 1983, Jerry Gillman, the station owner of WDST, one of my client stations, told me that he had a conversation with Mario when he was a candidate. Gillman would publicly endorse the gubernatorial candidate if Mario would personally come to the radio station in Woodstock, Ulster County. Mario agreed. The two shook hands on the deal and Jerry held up his part of the bargain.

Over the next year, into 1984, Jerry kept giving me handwritten notes for me to give to the governor. These notes, of course, were intercepted by his staff and never saw the light of day. Finally, one day in May, when Mario was walking to the New York State Court of Appeals to address a group of attorneys on Law Day. I had my chance. Jerry gave me another handwritten letter and this time I personally handed this to the governor. The governor asked me what this was about. I told him. He then told his staffers walking with him to “schedule it.”

Later that year the governor landed his state helicopter on a field at the Woodstock Town Hall and proceeded by car to 118 Tinker Street where the radio station was located. It was another highlight in my career. I was only 24 years old.

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This was also at the time when Gary McGivern, a Woodstock native, was seeking clemency for being involved in the killing of a state trooper. Cuomo was met at the radio station by a phalanx of protestors seeking to get McGivern freed. Cuomo expected the protestors and didn’t flinch to engage with them after his hour-long appearance at the radio station. McGivern gained celebrity status when his wife, Marguerite Culp, a reporter for the Woodstock Times, was successful in getting folk singer Pete Seeger, poet Allen Ginsberg and political commentator William F. Buckley Jr. as advocates for McGivern’s release. Famed attorney, William Kunstler, was among a group of five attorneys working on McGivern’s behalf.

After three trials and many appeals, Cuomo granted clemency for McGivern on December 31, 1985. On March 17, 1989, after serving 22 years in prison, McGivern was released. He was rearrested for drug possession on June 13, 1994, a parole violation. He died of cancer in Albany Medical Center Hospital on November 19, 2001.