Elections presenting Mario Cuomo and other New York leaders with a check for Westway Project Funds, September 1981 In
1982, Carey declined to run for re-election and Cuomo declared his candidacy. He once again faced Ed Koch in the Democratic primary. This time, Koch's support for the death penalty backfired and he alienated many voters from outside New York City when, in an interview with
Playboy magazine, he described the lifestyle of both suburbia and upstate New York as "sterile" and lamented the thought of having to live in "the small town" of
Albany as governor, saying it was "a city without a good Chinese restaurant". He was immediately considered one of the frontrunners for the Democratic nomination for president in
1988 and
1992. Cuomo was re-elected in
1986 against Republican nominee
Andrew P. O'Rourke by 64.3% to 31.77%. He ruled out the possibility of running in the 1988 presidential election, announcing on February 19, 1987, that he would not run, and then going on to publicly decline
draft movements in the wake of
Gary Hart's withdrawal following the
Donna Rice affair. In the
1990 gubernatorial election, Cuomo was re-elected with 53.17% of the vote to Republican
Pierre Andrew Rinfret's 21.35% and Conservative
Herbert London's 20.40%. When Cuomo was asked if he was planning to run for president in 1992, he said, "I have no plans and no plans to make plans," but he refused to rule it out. In October 1991, news broke that he was interested in running and was taking advice from consultant
Bob Shrum. At the same time, he began working on a budget with the
New York State Legislature, and promised not to make any announcements about a presidential run until he had reached an agreement with the Republican-controlled
State Senate and the Democratic-controlled
State Assembly. Two polls taken in November of the
New Hampshire Democratic primary showed him leading the field by at least twenty points, and a poll in December showed him trailing President
George H. W. Bush 48% to 43%, having been behind by twenty-eight points two months earlier. he kept an airplane idling on the tarmac as he pondered abandoning the budget talks in order to fly to New Hampshire and enter the race. Democratic party leaders asked him to run and he prepared two statements, one in case he ran and one in case he did not. He tried to come to a final agreement over the budget, but as he could not, he made an announcement at 3:30 p.m. that day: Cuomo's supporters launched a draft movement and encouraged people to write in his name in the Democratic primary, which was held on February 18, 1992. Cuomo did not discourage it, which many saw as implicit endorsement of the campaign. Cuomo went on to receive 6,577 votes in the primary, 3.92% of the total cast and subsequently asked the draft committee to close down, saying, "I am flattered by their support and impressed by their commitment, but I am also convinced that in fairness to themselves they ought now to end their effort." After Bill Clinton won the Democratic nomination for president in 1992, Cuomo was a candidate for vice president but he refused to be considered and did not make Clinton's final shortlist. He was also spoken of as a candidate for nomination to the
United States Supreme Court, but when President Clinton was considering nominees during his first term to replace the retiring
Byron White, Cuomo stated he was not interested in the office.
George Stephanopoulos wrote in 1999 that Clinton came within 15 minutes of nominating Cuomo before the latter pre-emptively rejected the post. In
1994, Cuomo ran for a fourth term. In this election, Republicans attacked him for the weak economic recovery within the state since the early 1990s recession and the resulting high unemployment as well as his opposition to the death penalty by highlighting the case of
Arthur Shawcross, a multiple murderer convicted of manslaughter who was paroled by the state in 1987 and while on release became a serial killer. Republicans were able to associate Shawcross with Cuomo much like
William Horton with
Michael Dukakis six years earlier. Cuomo was defeated by
George Pataki in the
1994 Republican landslide, taking 45.4% of the vote to Pataki's 48.8%. Cuomo lost mainly because his support outside of New York City all but vanished; he only carried one county outside the five boroughs,
Albany County, while also failing to sweep the five boroughs unlike his previous three successful runs, losing
Staten Island. Cuomo and fellow Democrat
Ann Richards, the
governor of Texas who had been defeated in her re-election campaign by
George W. Bush, appeared in a series of humorous
Super Bowl XXIX television advertisements for the snack food
Doritos shortly afterwards, in which they discussed the "sweeping changes" occurring. The changes they were discussing turned out to be the new Doritos packaging.
Accomplishments of
Pilot Field in July 1986. From left to right:
Buffalo Bisons owner
Robert E. Rich Jr., Governor Mario Cuomo and Buffalo Mayor
James D. Griffin. In Cuomo's first term as Governor of New York, he produced a balanced budget and earned the highest credit rating over the long term for the State in one decade. Cuomo is also known for beginning the "Decade of the Child" initiative, an effort that included multiple health care and educational strategies to better the lives of children in New York State. The OIG provides oversight and monitors the activities of the MTA. Governor Mario and his wife Matilda Cuomo presided over the First New York State Family Support Conference in 1988. His statewide initiatives in developing over 1,000
family support programs are today termed "individual and family support" nationwide and are cited by the National Council on Disability. He was the first governor to support an ecological approach to families which was represented by
community integration and community development as the goal of deinstitutionalization. Healthcare was also an area that Cuomo improved as governor, implementing initiatives that succeeded in reducing costs of prescription medications. ==Planned assassination==