Mario Cuomo

Mario Cuomo, born in 1932, American public official, governor of New York (1983-1995). Mario Matthew Cuomo was born in Queens, New York, the son of Italian immigrants. He attended St. John's University, where he received bachelor's (1953) and law (1956) degrees. Cuomo then joined a Brooklyn law firm and gained recognition for his work with community groups on housing issues. He detailed some of these experiences in Forest Hills Diary: The Crisis of Low-Income Housing (1974). He later taught at St. John's Law School.

Cuomo's first political campaign was as the candidate for lieutenant governor on Howard Samuels's gubernatorial ticket (1974), but Hugh Carey won the primary. Impressed with Cuomo, Carey appointed him secretary of state. In 1977 Cuomo made an unsuccessful bid for mayor of New York City against Edward Koch. In 1978 Carey was reelected governor, with Cuomo as lieutenant governor.

In 1982, after Carey declined to seek reelection, Cuomo announced his candidacy for governor, winning the primary against Koch and the general election against Lewis Lehrman. He recounted his campaign in Mario Cuomo: Campaign for Governor (1983). Cuomo was reelected in 1986 and 1990. As governor, he spoke out strongly for effective gun control and against capital punishment. A devout Roman Catholic, he supported the Church's ban on abortion but refused to endorse the state's authority to ban it.

Cuomo gained national prominence as the keynote speaker at the 1984Democratic National Convention. Despite widespread speculation that he had presidential ambitions, he did not run in the 1988 or 1992 presidential primaries. In 1992, he gave the nominating speech for Bill Clinton at the Democratic National Convention.