How Andrew Cuomo Lost The Governorship

In 2001, as he set out on his first, disastrous campaign for public office, Andrew Cuomo invited a columnist for this magazine to join him for a car ride through New York City.

- By Andrew Rice and Laura Nahmias

Bill Clinton had just departed office, leaving Washington in Republican hands after being impeached over his sexual relationship with an intern who worked for him, and Cuomo, the youngest member of his Cabinet, was impatiently angling to run for governor against George Pataki, the man who had defeated his father, the liberal giant Mario Cuomo. The story’s dynastic elements were irresistible, but the younger Cuomo sought to downplay them, portraying Clinton as his true model, emphasizing what he had learned from watching the master tactician.

In the back seat of his car, Cuomo deconstructed Clinton’s use of physical contact, clasping the (male) columnist’s shoulder, holding his hand, stroking his knee. “He knew every nuance of what he was doing,” Cuomo explained. “The effect of touching you there, or touching you here.”

You can say this for Andrew Cuomo: He always knew what he was doing—he was able to dissect, with a clinician’s eye, the many ways in which a man in power could control, dominate, and humiliate those he touched. “You can’t build something …” he started to say, 20 years later, on the phone on the Friday morning after his shocking resignation. He paused and searched for the right metaphor for his heavy-handed philosophy of governance. “You can’t talk a nail into going into a board. You can’t charm the nail into a board. It has to be hit with a hammer.”