I don’t have what you call a balanced life either. I work all the time. Enjoyment for me is when I’m with my daughters or my family, and in the summer I spend time on the water with my brother and friends, but usually I just work. Being governor is a job that is never really done. If I’m not working, I always feel a tinge of guilt. The wheels in my mind never stop turning, so at night I think about the things I need to do the next day or go through the events of the day that just ended. I inherited this proclivity from my father, who was an even worse workaholic. When someone would suggest to my father that he take a vacation, he loved to say, “Why should I unwind? I will just have to wind myself up again.” Then he would laugh. But living with a workaholic can be really boring.
I am a progressive Democrat, as that term used to be defined. I am frustrated by the incompetence of the government and distrustful of the motivations and ability of many politicians. I was raised at a kitchen table where my father talked about improving society in the teachings of Matthew 25 and tikkun olam: building community dedicated to doing justice and improving life for all. I deeply believe government is the best vehicle to advance that mission and that government service done well is an art form. But I also believe government service is a dying art, and too many seek office who do not possess the skills or knowledge necessary to actually make change or are motivated by personal rather than public advancement.
I spent eight years in Washington, and I have no desire to go back. There have been rumors during this crisis and before that I was interested in running for president. That is a natural suspicion: After all, Grover Cleveland and both presidents Roosevelt, FDR and Theodore, were governors of New York. My father, Mario Cuomo, talked about running for president, although he never did. But I have been definitive in my support of Joe Biden for president, and he is also a personal friend. But facts never get in the way of a good rumor.
I’ve worked with presidents, cabinet secretaries, governors, and world leaders, attended many meetings in the Oval Office, worked to pass many bills through Congress, was confirmed twice by the U.S. Senate. I fought for and alongside underserved communities, reduced discrimination against the LGBTQ community, sued the KKK, increased federal aid to Indian reservations, rebuilt public housing across the country, designed a new model to help the homeless, served during national emergencies and disasters, as HUD secretary, worked in every state in the nation, and represented this nation in countries around the globe.
As governor for the past ten years, I’ve worked with Democrats and Republicans. I reformed the bureaucracy of government. I reduced taxes, passed nation-leading progressive legislation—from gun control to marriage equality, and from codifying a woman’s right to choose to instituting the highest minimum wage at the time, free college tuition, and the nation’s most aggressive environmental program. My administration has completed more major infrastructure projects than any other in modern history. I have an advantage in my position: I have nothing left to prove to anyone and find the plain truth liberating.
This is my second life. I lived and died a political death before my eventual rebirth. I ran for governor in 2002 and lost. Before that, my father had lost his reelection in 1994 after three terms as governor. My father and I spent many evenings sitting on the couch, watching a ball game, drinking a bottle of wine, and replaying the “game tapes” of our government careers, reviewing what we did right, what we did wrong. The advantage of retrospection is priceless, as well as painful. Over time, the petty day-to-day political pressures become irrelevant, and only the lasting contributions remain.
Our shared conclusion was that if we could somehow replay the game, we would play it much differently. My father and I agreed we would be bolder, take more risks, make more change, and make more progress by proving to the people that government can be effective and can actually make a positive difference. We lamented the time wasted catering to this official or that official. The lost opportunities of an overly cautious legislature. The frustration of a bureaucracy that didn’t move fast enough to produce real results for people. If we could do it over again, we would get even more done, and those accomplishments would then build more support for government.
After all those nights on the couch, in 2006 I was reborn when I won the election for attorney general of New York. Dead politicians don’t usually come back to life. I had a second chance, and I would do it right this time. As I called my father onto the stage that election night and held his hand high, I pledged that I would do it right for myself and for my father.
The political pundits get to write the eulogy once you are out of office, and my father’s political eulogy was essentially that he gave great speeches but his government didn’t produce major successes. In my father’s case, the Albany reporter he respected the least wound up writing his actual eulogy for The New York Times. There is no justice. It was unfair as well as unkind. It was also untrue. But welcome to politics in New York. My father was interested in the articulation of government principles, but not to the exclusion of
