Murray Rothbard on Mario Cuomo

As the hosannas come pouring down from the political crowd for Mario Cuomo, on news of his death, it may be instructive to consider a hard cold assessment of Cuomo after his third and final term as New York governor was just about ending.

The observations come via Murray Rothbard in a September 1994 essay, The New York Political Circus:

This year seems to present a golden opportunity to topple the famed three-term governor: the smart, eloquent, witty, alert, thin-skinned pretend-philosopher and left Catholic lay theologian Mario Cuomo. A disciple of the late left-heretical French Jesuit Teilhard de Chardin, Mario is the well-known expounder of the view that America (the world?) is an organic “family.” The result is the sort of collectivist ideology one might expect from that kind of world-outlook.

Mario, however, has palled in office; New Yorkers are tired of Mario, of his lousy performance, the rampant crime, the high taxes and spending, the visible decay of New York in his twelve years of office. His coy and evasive performance in every national election finally irritated and exhausted his supporters after he finally pulled out of the presidential race in 1992. The Republicans sensed victory, and their theme at this year’s convention is the plausible “It’s all Mario’s fault.”

My first personal notice of the Cuomo name came about when Mario was running for mayor of NYC against Ed Koch. Someone in a car was driving up and down the predominantly gay Greenwich Village section of the city, with a passenger in the car who had a loudspeaker pointed out the window and barking, "Vote Cuomo, not the homo." (Koch was a life long bachelor was rumored to be gay.)

Why would anybody pro-Cuomo be shouting this in Greenwich Village? I have always suspected it was a Koch campaign dirty trick. Koch won the primary election against Cuomo, a runoff against Cuomo and (Cuomo still running) the general election.