WI : Mario Cuomo in 1992

[Archeo04]

Governor Mario Cuomo of New York considered running for President in 1992, but finally decided not to run.
Let's say he runs and wins the Democratic nomination. How well would he do in the general election against Bush? Would he do worse or better than Clinton? Who would be his running mate?

 

[Vidal]

Tagging in @Enigma-Conundrum who has been working on this of late

 

[Dancing Fool]

How well would he do in the general election against Bush?

Slow jobs recovery from the 91 recession, and therefore a year which favors the challenger.

However, good Catholic that he is, Gov. Mario Cuomo doesn’t believe in the death penalty. And like with Dukakis in 88, that may play a surprisingly big negative.

 

[Aisha Clan-Clan]

Wins with a bigger margin than Clinton thanks to more economic populism. 1994 congressional shift takes a generation to accomplish so nobody nationally hears about Gingrich.

US at minimum is closer to national healthcare, possibly gets it in 1993.

 

[Red_Neptune]

Wins with a bigger margin than Clinton thanks to more economic populism.

Why? Clinton won a number of states I doubt Cuomo would win -- e.g. Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky, Louisiana, Montana, etc.

1994 congressional shift takes a generation to accomplish so nobody nationally hears about Gingrich.

A generation? The Republicans had already begun gaining states in the South from the 1980s; all that's needed is for Democratic incumbents to retire during a Democratic presidency (e.g. 1994). I agree it probably wouldn't be as bad as it was OTL, but the Republicans could probably retake the House either way.

 

[David T]

Wins with a bigger margin than Clinton thanks to more economic populism.

Cuomo will win but I stongly disagree that it will be by a larger margin than Clinton. He is vulnerable on capital punishment , was already held to 53.2% in the New York governor's race in 1990 and was of course to lose it in 1994 (Clintons unpopularity was not the only reason).

His being Italian-American will be a mixed blessing--Italian-Americans do not automatically vote for other Italian-Americans and there will probably be rumors of Mafia ties which will hurt him, however unjustly.

I do expect him to win all the same but I don't see him carrying a single state Clinton lost while he will lose some southern and border states Clinton won (AR, GA, KY, TN) and maybe OH and MT and NH as well.

I don't even know what "more economic populism" means in this context--Cuomo was hardly an enemy of big business as governor of New York--but if economic populsim were a guarantee of victory, George McGovern would have won in a landslide....

 

[Waldo]

Cuomo would likely do worse than Clinton did in OTL. Clinton was a Southern centrist, a New York liberal like Cuomo would not have had as much appeal to swing voters. Cuomo would likely lose all of the Southern states that Clinton won by fairly narrow margins, and maybe also some of the close races elsewhere. The Bush campaign will have an easier time trying to portray him as an out of touch and too far to the left, in the tradition of Mondale and Dukakis. Cuomo is even against the death penalty too, an issue that was famously very damaging to Dukakis in 1988.

Still, Cuomo is a lot more charismatic than Bush and there's the 91 recession, the jobless recovery from that recession, Bush's controversial tax hike, and fatigue with the Republicans after 12 years in power. So he'll still do reasonably well, just somewhat less well than Clinton did in OTL. I am unsure whether the net effect of all this means that Cuomo loses to Bush or just wins by a narrower margin than Clinton. Either outcome is reasonably within the realm of plausibility.

There's also Ross Perot to consider. Opposition to NAFTA was the Perot campaign's biggest issue by far. Cuomo was a critic of NAFTA, unlike Bill Clinton. If Cuomo runs on an anti-NAFTA platform then Perot gets a lot less traction. OTL Perot left the race in the summer only to re-enter at the last minute. With Cuomo as the Democratic nominee then Perot may not do too much better than 3rd parties normally do. Perot may just stay out of the race permanently after withdrawing the first time. At the very least I think it is very unlikely Perot would be allowed into the debates as we was OTL. In the OTL debates Perot kept going after Bush on NAFTA and Clinton was able to stay outside the fray a bit, letting Perot be the attack dog and portraying himself as the most reasonable moderate man on stage. In a one-on-one debate with Bush, Cuomo is probably forced to be more aggressive than Clinton was in the OTL debates.

 

[Mynock]

Wins with a bigger margin than Clinton thanks to more economic populism.

Which states would he win that Clinton didn't? He'd certainly lose those southern states that Clinton carried. Only area he could do better in is popular vote if he siphoned votes from Perot with an anti-NAFTA position.

1994 congressional shift takes a generation to accomplish so nobody nationally hears about Gingrich.

If there's a northern liberal in charge that shift happens faster. How does Cuomo being in office make the Republicans less appealing in the south? If anything the opposite will be true.

US at minimum is closer to national healthcare, possibly gets it in 1993.

No chance UHC in 1993, the votes weren't there. He may be able to pass something, depends largely on his relationship with Congress.

 

[MNM041]

Honestly, I think Cuomo would have done better than Clinton did. Remember, they were allegations of Clinton having affairs during the general election, meanwhile Cuomo would have no such allegations being the church going Catholic man he is.

 

[David T]

Honestly, I think Cuomo would have done better than Clinton did. Remember, they were allegations of Clinton having affairs during the general election, meanwhile Cuomo would have no such allegations being the church going Catholic man he is.

The "character issue" really didn't hurt Clinton much. Cuomo's reputation as a "tax and spend New York liberal" and his opposition to capital punishment (which, remember, hurt him *in New York state* in 1990 and 1994) would be far more important.

The crime issue hurt Dukakis in 1988 and public oopinion had not grown less hard-line in the next four years. To remind you of what public opinion was on capital punishment in the early 1990s:

Death Penalty

Are you in favor of the death penalty for a person convicted of murder? If you could choose between the following two approaches, which do you think is the better penalty for murder -- [ROTATED: the death penalty (or) life imprisonment, with absolutely no possibility of parole]?

news.gallup.com

 

[Galba Otho Vitelius]

Perot is a big issue with an alternative 1992 presidential election.

IOTL Perot generated a good deal of excitement with an independent run, had problems getting a campaign together, and then started losing traction when he dropped out and said the Democrats had a viable challenger in Bill Clinton. Later on he reentered the race, took part in the debates and did well, and finished winning no states but taking 19% of the nationwide popular vote, which is quite good for third party candidates.

There is an argument about whether Perot drew more from Bush or from Clinton. Most people think he drew evenly from both, citing post election polls. The problem I have with this argument is that post election polls always overestimate the percentage of the vote won by the winner of the election. People like voting for the winner! People will claim they voted for the winner or would have, and people who voted for the losing candidate will say they voted for the winner. I did a congressional district by congressional district breakdown of the vote, and found that if you combined the 1992 Bush and Perot votes, it correlated highly with the 1988 Bush vote, and Clinton consistently got just below what Dukakis got in 1988 (Dukakis in 1988 ran 3% better than Clinton in 1992 nationally), with the exceptions being the Dallas area and upstate New York.

Its been reported that Perot hated the Bush family personally, and his strange behavior in 1992 was to maximize the votes he drew from Bush. I find this very plausible. But Perot's positions, as opposed to his image, were closer to Cuomo's than to Clinton, so even if Perot was running for ego or to push protectionism, he has less reason to run if Cuomo is the Democratic nominee.

In the likely scenario that Perot doesn't run and Cuomo is the Democratic nominee, its a two candidate race, and as a baseline you give Bush and Cuomo the vote percentages Bush and Dukakis got in 1988. Cuomo's profile as an anti-death penalty northeastern governor with an Ellis Island ethnic background is similar to that. Now add the weaker economy, fatigue with the Republican party, and Cuomo being more charismatic than Dukakis, and in a two candidate race I think that Cuomo takes it, running 5% or 6% better than Dukakis nationally. This would be a 3% national popular vote margin, instead of Clinton's 5%, but it would be enough. He doesn't need to carry a single state in the South. He will carry all the Dukakis states, plus California, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and Maryland, all of which Dukakis lost narrowly, plus Michigan and Missouri. Dukakis didn't lose Arkansas, Louisiana, and Tennessee by overwhelming margins, so if Cuomo's running mate is from one of those states he should carry a southern state as well.

If Perot runs anyway, he will draw tough on crime voters from Cuomo, but I don't think that changes much. Their stances on trade are similar enough that Perot gets a smaller percentage of the nationwide popular vote than he did, with the difference going to Cuomo, and then Cuomo loses some of Clinton's southern support to Bush. I think this is a wash, and Cuomo still wins the nationwide popular vote by about 3%, with both Cuomo and Bush drawing in the low 40s.

Now if the rumors of Cuomo having mafia ties are correct, and that comes out, all bets are off. That is the problem with doing alternative history speculation on late twentieth and early twenty-first century American politics.

 

[CountDVB]

How would Cuomo be as a President? I reckon no NAFTA, but what else? Who would his VP be? Al Gore?

 

[KingSweden24]

How would Cuomo be as a President? I reckon no NAFTA, but what else? Who would his VP be? Al Gore?

Cuomo probably picks somebody from the South, yes, but not necessarily Gore. Bumpers or Pryor from AR seem good choices, in particular

 

[Waldo]

How would Cuomo be as a President? I reckon no NAFTA, but what else? Who would his VP be? Al Gore?

I think Al Gore is still a pretty good choice for running mate. As a Southern centrist he is a good regional and ideological balance to New York liberal Cuomo. Now I could say the same thing about Bill Clinton too but he and Cuomo are both state Governors whereas Gore is a Senator. Two Governor tickets aren't really a thing in the modern era. It's generally felt that if the candidate doesn't have any foreign policy background then at least his running mate should. Neither party has nominated two Governors since the 1940s, and such a ticket hasn't been elected since the 20s.

 

[CountDVB]

Cuomo probably picks somebody from the South, yes, but not necessarily Gore. Bumpers or Pryor from AR seem good choices, in particular

Bumpers is quite old by then and I don't he run. Mark Pryor I think might do so there. I may still stick with Gore. I am wondering how the two would get along with regarding Gore's sort of technology like bent.

I am wondering what the effects of no NAFTA would be. I imagine things would be a bit better for Mexico given what NAFTA did.

 

[Waldo]

As for how Cuomo would be as a President we can only make some informed speculation. In OTL Clinton got a lot of criticism for trying to do too much at once at the start of his presidency, squandering his politcal capital by dividing it between too many issues. Bill tried to tackle healthcare, the economy, and other things all at once. Would Cuomo have done the same? In OTL Hillary Clinton told Cuomo that Bill asked her to lead the push for healthcare. Cuomo jokingly responded, “What did you do to make your husband so mad at you?” Years later Cuomo also criticized Obama for not tackling the economy first before moving on to the healthcare issue. So I think it's a possibility that a President Cuomo tries to tackle the economy first and foremost, and lets healthcare be a secondary priority. With the benefit of hindsight we can say that there was probably no chance of healthcare being passed in the early 90s, the necessary level of support in Congress just wasn't there no matter who the President was and what they prioritized.

The Republicans likely still do well in the first midterm election, as the opposition party usually does. Do they do better or worse than OTL? Cuomo is more liberal than Clinton so maybe the hyper-partisanship of the 90s gets even worse than it did with the OTL Gingrich congress. But if Cuomo is more successful at tackling the economy early in his term then maybe that helps the Democrats with swing voters in the midterms.

There is also the question of how much the partisan hatred of the Clintons was based on policy issues, and how much was based on their image and what they were seen to represent as people. In 1992 Pat Buchanan proclaimed a "Culture War" at the Republican convention and the Clintons personified the kind of social changes conservatives hated. The Clintons were the first Baby Boomers in the White House. Bill was a slick womanizer who had smoked cannabis and didn't go to Vietnam. Hillary was an openly proud feminist who had short hair, who hadn't wanted to take her husband's last name, and publicly said she wouldn't just bake cookies as First Lady. Cuomo is on paper more liberal than the Clintons, but he is the same old kind of liberal who have been around forever, he doesn't necessarily provoke the same personal hatred that Bill and Hillary did. In OTL today we see that Biden doesn't provoke the same level of seething hatred that Hillary did, even though his platform is to the left of anything she ever ran on. Likewise Michelle Obama played a much more traditional role as First Lady and isn't nearly as hated as Hillary. Cuomo was not quite as firmly pro-abortion as the Clintons either in his rhetoric, though his actual policies would be the same. His position being that he was personally opposed to abortion but would not seek to force his personal views on others who didn't share them.

In OTL Bill Clinton shifted the Democratic party firmly towards the centre and made many compromises with the Gingrich congress. Cuomo would not be willing to make as many concessions to the Republicans as Clinton did. Cuomo's presidency might look a lot like OTL Obama's. He gets a lot done in his first 2 years with a Democratic congress, and then the rest of his presidency is dominated by constant deadlock between the White House and a very partisan Republican Congress.

 

[Archeo04]

I think senator Sam Nunn of Georgia would make a good running mate for Cuomo. He was often considered as a possible running mate by democratic candidates. He would appeal to the South and add foreign policy experience to the ticket, which Cuomo doesn't have.
But Cuomo would probably still do worse than Clinton did in the South, due to his liberal stances. I'm not even sure that Nunn's popularity in Georgia would be enough for Cuomo to carry the state.

 

[JDGiant]

Given that he's no longer with us, I think I can say this without being sued - didn't he have skeletons in his closet? This was apparently the reason that he never ran for President.

 

[KingSweden24]

I think senator Sam Nunn of Georgia would make a good running mate for Cuomo. He was often considered as a possible running mate by democratic candidates. He would appeal to the South and add foreign policy experience to the ticket, which Cuomo doesn't have.
But Cuomo would probably still do worse than Clinton did in the South, due to his liberal stances. I'm not even sure that Nunn's popularity in Georgia would be enough for Cuomo to carry the state.

Nunn basically spent twenty-odd years as everybody’s fantasy VP even long after he retired lol

 

[Mynock]

Nunn basically spent twenty-odd years as everybody’s fantasy VP even long after he retired lol

IIRC even Lee Iaccoca named him as his hypothetical running mate when discussing running for president.

My money is still on Gore, if nothing else as an attempt to capture the youth vote.