When you start making calls about Andrew Cuomo, attorney general of New York State and unannounced gubernatorial hopeful, you have two conversations with nearly everyone: The first is full of praise for his time as AG, his strong work ethic and sense of duty. The second begins without much prodding, but only under the strictest assurances of anonymity: Cuomo’s rage, unleashed repeatedly on his most loyal employees. The vaulting ambition, woe to anyone in his way. An inability to delegate, micromanaging staffers — real lore involving hearsay of ulcers and breakdowns.
“He was just vicious,” says one longtime Democratic operative who has known both Andrew and his father, former governor Mario, for over 20 years. “If he got involved in something, people were terrorized.”
After enough calls about Andrew Cuomo, his office — which routinely denies all interview requests, preferring to play possum — suddenly becomes very animated. A steady stream of calls and e-mails follow, about 20 in a day, helpful suggestions on what a story about Andrew might be about, should be about. Ben Lawsky, Cuomo’s special assistant, calls.
Lawsky has an idea, a “comeback kid” narrative: The formerly aggressive pol, humbled by a premature, obnoxious race for governor in 2002 (Andrew infamously said that then-Gov. Pataki “held [Giuliani’s] coat” in the days after 9/11) and an ugly divorce from Kerry Kennedy. That, too, was compounded by rumors he smeared her, leaked stuff to the press. Anyway, he slowly emerges, humbled. He burrows in as AG, keeps his mouth shut and his head down, and suddenly finds himself touted as the likely Democratic nominee for governor of New York State. It’s practically a fairy tale! He sounds excited, conspiratorial.
“I see it as an evolution,” he says.
Subtle.
“I’ve got a great story for you,” Lawsky continues, undeterred. “The other morning” — this is last Monday, the day President Obama was due to meet with state officials including Gov. Paterson, who has just been asked by the Obama administration to step aside in the 2010 election — “Andrew’s in the kitchen cooking breakfast. He’s trying to mediate a dispute between his girls over who’s wearing what jeans. I said, ‘We don’t want to be late — why don’t we get someone else to drive the kids to school?’ And he said, ‘Oh no. I’m dropping the kids off at school. It’s what I do. And if we miss the president, we miss the president.’ ”
Cuomo got there in time. And the next morning, there he was, on the cover of The Post, happily shaking hands with Obama as a distraught David Paterson looked on.
*
The makeover (or –under, as the case may be) of Andrew Cuomo has been underway, in earnest, since he won the election for AG in 2006, succeeding then-Gov. Eliot Spitzer, that self-described “f – – – ing steamroller.” Spitzer did not care for Cuomo, and vice-versa. Cuomo, who spent four years as the secretary of Housing and Urban Development under Clinton, still had difficulty modulating his ambition, earning Spitzer’s enmity when he tried to take on the public face of Spitzer’s work in enacting controls on gun manufacturing.
“These rehab periods with Andrew seem to come in cycles,” says Wayne Barrett, a journalist who has closely covered both “the father and the son,” as everyone in their orbit calls them, for decades. “Andrew’s great at dropping a stinkbomb,” adds Barrett. “I wouldn’t be surprised if this is how the Obama thing surfaced.”
Cuomo the younger began working in politics in 1982, managing his father’s successful campaign for governor of New York. He quickly carved out a niche as one of the most bloodthirsty soldiers in New York politics, more than happy to do the morally ambiguous stuff his father just couldn’t bear. It’s long been rumored that Andrew was responsible, during the 1977 mayoral race between his father and Ed Koch, for a poster reading “Vote for Cuomo, not the homo.” (He has denied this.)
More recently, several people close to Cuomo say he was furious that Paterson did not offer him the Senate seat vacated by Hillary Clinton, that it was all he could do to publicly contain himself even though he didn’t really want the seat. Just the offer, so he could turn it down. Some think it’s quite possible he helped agitate negative coverage of Caroline Kennedy’s bid, and there were reports Cuomo made calls to labor leaders, threatening them if they supported her. As one observer puts it, he’s very good “at not leaving fingerprints.”
Andrew’s staff, of course, says this is nonsense. After all, says Lawsky, just look at David Paterson’s speech on this very subject! He helpfully reads aloud from the text: “Attorney General Andrew Cuomo never asked to become United States senator from New York.” Lawsky is quite satisfied that that is the end of that.
Also, according to Lawsky, the idea that Cuomo (nickname in the ’80s: “The Prince of Darkness”) has so much as raised his voice to anyone, anywhere, at any time in the past or present — or that he would in the future — is unfathomable.
“There is no screaming, no yelling,” says Lawsky. “I’ve read all these stories, and it’s like reading about a person I don’t know.”
“I’ve never experienced him in that regard,” says another strategist with longtime ties to Cuomo. “Does Andrew mince words with folks? No. Temper indicates loss of control. Lose control of his faculties and throw stuff? That’s not him. It’s not true. Unbelievable.”
Then why are there people claiming to have been on the receiving end of his abusive behavior, people far removed from his terrain who remain so scared of Cuomo they ultimately opt to keep quiet? Even more strangely, why do people who claim to have nothing but good things to say about him refuse to actually say some good things about him, either on or off-the-record?
“I don’t know,” says the strategist. “I’m not gonna call everybody liars.”
*
As for his work as AG, even Andrew’s enemies will concede that he has done a good job, striking the right balance between populist outrage at Wall Street and prosecuting judiciously (unlike the perception of Spitzer, who seemed to enjoy it a little too much). Timing, after all, is everything. Andrew’s also described as a “true-blue Democrat” who genuinely cares about helping the poor and disenfranchised. In 1986, he founded Housing Enterprise for the Less Privileged, or HELP. Henry Cisneros, under whom Cuomo served at HUD in Clinton’s first term, remains a “big fan.”
“I watched him work over the years in New York and then in the homeless field, where he made a big name for himself,” says Cisneros. At HUD, he says, Andrew “did a stellar job. He innovated, advanced the concept of empowerment zones. He was a key man, key man.”
As for that temper?
“Well, I never saw it,” says Cisneros. (If a tree falls . . . ?) “But I probably wouldn’t have — I was one step above him.” He laughs. “Andrew was on his best behavior with me.”
Clarence Day, who worked as part of Cuomo’s security detail at HUD, reveres his former boss. “Just about every morning, we’d stop at St. Dominic’s and have a few words of prayer,” he says. “His religion was very much on his mind. Here’s a man that felt for other people. If it came to doing a good deed for somebody, he always felt that it would come back to him in some way.”
Another former employee, who was ordered by her politically-connected boss to go work for Cuomo during his run for AG and who says her initial reaction was “no f – – – ing way,” says she loved working for him. She has decided to go public with this assertion after an initial conversation in which she shakily said she “had to think about it,” and did not, at the time, refute allegations that she had been tormented by Andrew.
But a day later, she calls, having ignored two previous voicemails, sunshine in her voice. “People who worked on his campaign for governor said I was crazy — that he had a temper, had pushed people around, was a micromanager.” She’d heard all the other rumors — “that he was the dumber version of the father, arrogant, a womanizer.”
Others on the campaign, she said, would cringe at Andrew’s Socratic method, at his relentless chipping away, his perfectionism. She, however, loved it. “He was so smart, so dynamic, so funny,” she says. ‘He was one of my best bosses.”
By any chance, did Andrew’s office call you? “No!” she says, voice tight and small.
*
Cuomo continues to be coy with the press, refusing to even acknowledge that he might possibly maybe some day be interested in running for governor. And why bother? The current governor is imploding, and Cuomo learned from his presumptuous, ill-fated bid against Carl McCall (who, ironically, was New York’s first viable black gubernatorial candidate) “not to step in front of the process,” as one ally puts it.
He is, according to one source close to Cuomo, studying Rudy Giuliani intensely and “has been for months. I don’t think he’s thought about Paterson in a long time.”
Meanwhile, his office is assiduously, desperately attempting message control even as they strain to project cool diffidence. The attorney general isn’t doing interviews, they say, preferring to concentrate on the work — but how about a visit to office? Lawsky extends an invitation to “come look at Andrew’s tchotchkes.” Really? “It can be fun,” he says. He is serious.
Cuomo’s Manhattan office, on lower Broadway, is spacious and grimly decorated. Blue industrial carpet, office furniture from the ’80s, and, of course, those tchotchkes: A tacky wooden cigar box (“The Adirondacks!”) from Bill Clinton, who has really bad taste in souvenirs. Various and sundry glass paperweights and sculpture; family pictures, photos with Clinton and Al Gore; a small, narrow bookshelf. Among the 30-odd books: “The Purpose-Driven Life,” “Your Aching Back.”
“He doesn’t have an aching back,” Lawsky says.
Also, three copies of “The Diaries of Mario Cuomo.” The observation that there are three copies of the same book warrants a follow-up call: “Andrew says he has three copies because he likes to give them to young people who are interested in politics,” says Lawsky.
Andrew does, his staff will admit, have a tendency to wallow in the details. “He always says, ‘The little things are the big things, the little things are the big things,’” says Steve Cohen, his chief of staff. But Andrew is known more as a political genius than a policy wonk — something that chafes at his friends.
“Wonk is maybe not the first word you’d use to describe him,” says a longtime strategist and ally. “Fine. We need a leader. If I’m a voter, I’m looking for someone who has the charisma and communication skills to sit someone down and say, ‘Here’s how we’re gonna do things.’”
So: How much has Cuomo changed? Even his most ardent supporters aren’t sure. His staff has done a brilliant job of helping Cuomo restrain and remake himself. Long forgotten is the spoiled scion who defied his party to run for governor against the admired McCall, siphoning away money from the good Democratic soldier via his Kennedy connections. But what is Andrew’s guiding philosophy?
“I know that the father always believed that good policy is good politics,” says Allen Cappelli, who was McCall’s campaign manager and had worked for Mario in ’82. “As to what the son believes . . . it’s been a long time. I don’t know where his head is at.”
Nor do the voters. Cuomo has yet to actually engage with regular people, to sit down for lengthy profiles, to show that he is not only emotionally stable but human. Right now, early as it is, it looks like the race for governor of New York is his to lose. Then again, right now, most New Yorkers really have no idea who he is.
So when, Lawsky is asked, is he planning to make Cuomo available to the press?
“Why,” he says coyly, “would you think we’d do that?”