Drawbacks to Appeal : Cuomo Style: Foes, Allies See Negatives

NEW YORK — When New York Gov. Mario M. Cuomo came here early this month in the midst of his reelection campaign to address a Catholic church audience, demonstrators gathered outside and chanted protests against his views on abortion.

Inside the St. James Cathedral Pavilion, hecklers interrupted Cuomo’s remarks to charge that his leniency toward homosexuals had helped spread AIDS.

“It’s always great to come back to Brooklyn,” Cuomo said to a resounding ovation at evening’s end. “If this is what happens every time you come back, I’ll see you in 20 years.”

No one who knows Cuomo believes that. His track record suggests that contentiousness is so ingrained in the 54-year-old governor that he will return to Brooklyn, or any other arena of confrontation, at the earliest opportunity. As Cuomo himself acknowledges: “I am combative about things I believe in.”

And this intense forcefulness--coupled with his activist political philosophy--is the key to a remarkable phenomenon: Cuomo, already one of the leading contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1988, has become the chief symbol of hope for old-fashioned Democratic liberals.

At the same time, Cuomo’s assertive qualities could become the chief obstacle to realizing his full potential for national leadership. With his relentless drive and competitiveness, Cuomo sometimes strikes foes and also potential political allies as overbearing, even arrogant.

“The governor has a lot of appeal, but there is a negative perception among some Democrats of a certain kind of arrogance,” says Mark Siegel, a presidential campaign veteran and well-connected member of the Democratic National Committee. “Some people complain that he doesn’t take criticism very well, and he is going to have to deal with this.”

High Political Drama

These two sides of Cuomo’s nature have turned his career into the stuff of high political drama--a drama whose climax remains to be written. As Cuomo strives for an overwhelming reelection victory in New York against weak opposition, his campaign here has displayed in a microcosm both the positive and negative sides of his nature.

What makes Cuomo attractive to liberals, more than any set of philosophical doctrines, is the steel in his spirit. After six years of domination by President Reagan’s conservatism, most liberals now concede their approach to the nation’s problems has lost its appeal--in no small part because, measured against Reagan’s muscular image, liberalism seems pale and limp.

Consciously or not, many liberals are thus looking for someone who will reshape their message and do for their cause what the President has done for conservatism.

“Cuomo’s greatest strength is his strength,” says Jim Johnson, manager of the 1984 presidential campaign of Walter F. Mondale. “After very substantial scrutiny, everyone believes he is very independent and a person who acts out of conviction. If you look at what really matters in a presidential context, it’s forcefulness of personality.”

‘Projects Dynamism’

“He projects dynamism,” conceded one New York Republican strategist grudgingly. “He bristles with leadership.”

So far as 1988 is concerned, Cuomo says publicly that he will not decide about seeking the presidency until after November’s gubernatorial election, which his partisans hope will end in a victory big enough to get a White House campaign off to a flying start.

But at this point, “he is the leading liberal Democrat,” says Republican consultant Roger Stone, who served the 1980 Reagan presidential campaign as its New York coordinator and now advises 1988 GOP presidential prospect Rep. Jack Kemp (R-N.Y.). “He is the logical leader of the opposition.”

Rousing Call to Arms

Cuomo has gained this prominence in part because of his memorable keynote address to the 1984 Democratic convention, which many thought of as a more rousing call to arms on behalf of the party’s liberal tradition than the acceptance speech offered by the convention’s ill-fated nominee, Mondale.

More substantively, as chief executive of New York for four years, Cuomo’s zest for combat--a product both of political calculation and his New York-bred inclinations--has often placed him at the center of the fight for liberal causes.

In the sensitive arena of social issues, he has waged a running battle with the New York hierarchy of his own Catholic church over abortion. He has insisted on his independence as an elected official and has refused to advocate the outlawing of abortion, even though he personally opposes it.

While that debate continues, the governor appears to have come out ahead in a much-publicized confrontation over tax revision against no less an adversary than Reagan himself. The issue was the White House proposal to end the existing deduction for state income taxes as part of its federal tax revision plan.

Cuomo said that threatened the ability of high-tax states such as New York to maintain their broad public service programs. Taking on the President at the height of his popularity, the governor helped persuade Congress to retain state tax deductibility in the final version of the tax bill.

All this has helped gain Cuomo national reknown, and turned his reelection campaign into a potential launching pad for the White House. But his critics say the governor’s conduct of the campaign has already made evident the negative side of Cuomo’s strength.

‘Political Beanball’

They point out that to assure the nomination of his handpicked choice as lieutenant governor, Cuomo’s allies challenged a maverick candidate in the courts and had him forced off the ballot on technical grounds, a move the New York Times disapproved of in an editorial as smacking “more of political beanball than hardball.”

Moreover, Cuomo has so far insisted that he will not debate his GOP opponent, Andrew O’Rourke, until O’Rourke agrees to release his income tax returns along with information about his law practice. Although this seems out of keeping with Cuomo’s normal eagerness for confrontation, the governor contends that his demand for disclosure is a counter to Republican attempts to link Cuomo to charges of corruption involving some New York Democratic leaders.

“He has conducted basically a non-campaign by subtracting himself from the ordinary democratic process of running for office,” charges Charles Dumas, a spokesman for the Republican state Senate majority. “His whole attitude is imperial and condescending.”

Some Democrats, too, find fault with Cuomo’s style and character.

Looking ahead to 1988, Democratic National Committee member Siegel says that some Democratic activists would hesitate to support Cuomo because they doubt they could have much influence in the councils of his campaign.

Tight Inner Circle

“The track record is that he has a very tight inner circle, maybe so tight that no one but his son Andrew is in it,” says Siegel, who expects to support Delaware Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. for the Democratic presidential nomination. Andrew, 28, Cuomo’s oldest son, is his father’s confidant and campaign manager.

Perhaps even more telling is the response of another seasoned Democratic campaigner. “I like his policies and that’s why I’d like him to be President,” says the political director of a trade union, who asked not to be identified. “But I would not want to work with him to get there.”

Cuomo finds such criticism hard to understand because, he says: “It’s so apparent that I work with people well.” In a recent interview, he sought to rebut criticism of his character with the same vigor that he does everything else. But in the process, his tone and language at times offered potential ammunition for his critics.

“Whoever I trust, this trusting started in 1982,” he said, recalling his campaign for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination against New York City Mayor Edward I. Koch. Cuomo, who was an underdog, had trouble finding politicians to help him, so he learned to rely mainly on a small group of people, headed by his son, Andrew.

“We won a race (against Koch) that they said couldn’t be won,” Cuomo proclaimed. He won again in November and then, over the next four years, gave the state what he called “one of the most successful governments in history.”

Cuomo also brought up his role in Mondale’s critical victory over Sen. Gary Hart (D-Colo.) in the 1984 New York Democratic presidential primary.

“We chased Mondale’s people out of this state,” Cuomo recalled. “They called us arrogant. I said: ‘Fritz (Mondale), look, I love you, I’m going to win for you. I’ll lay myself on the altar for you. But don’t give me your friends. They’ll screw it up the way they did for (Jimmy) Carter (in 1980 when Carter, whom Cuomo supported, lost to Massachusetts Sen. Edward M. Kennedy).’

“We gave them (the Mondale campaign) a 16-point victory,” Cuomo said. “I wrote the damn commercials. We got outspent by Gary Hart. He’s still wondering what the hell hit him. This is that handful of grubby people, the insiders. If I had to run the universe, I’d do it the same way.”

The weight given to criticism of Cuomo’s character and operating style varies with perspective. Jerry Rafshoon, Carter’s media adviser, worked for Cuomo when he ran unsuccessfully for mayor of New York City in 1977. Rafshoon dismisses the idea that Cuomo’s practice of consulting with a small group of advisers would necessarily be an obstacle to his winning the presidency.

“Look at all the winners of the presidency in recent years,” Rafshoon said. “They all started with just a few people around them and then they opened things up.”

Criticism Raises Questions

There are other more basic questions about Cuomo’s character raised by the criticism--about his ability to accept and learn from criticism and his willingness to draw on a broad range of viewpoints. But for the present, the only man who can ultimately answer these questions is understandably preoccupied with trying to get reelected by as big a margin as possible.

“The governor wants to win by as large a margin as he can not because of 1988, but because it’s a referendum on him,” said Brad Johnson, Cuomo’s chief lobbyist in Washington. But Johnson adds sourly, and probably accurately: “No matter what the margin is, critics will say it’s too small.”

In the meantime, Cuomo presses on with his campaign, seeking not only to gain support but also to explain himself. In the process, he highlights elements in his record as governor that illustrate the positive side of his leadership style.

Visiting Love Canal, the Niagara Falls neighborhood which became synonymous with toxic waste pollution, Cuomo talked about the financial aid given by the state to the families that were evacuated from the area. He used the episode to illustrate his favorite doctrine of government as family.

‘Somebody Has to Help’

“That’s what I’m talking about when I say family,” he told a gathering of residents and environmentalists, referring to the millions of dollars in state government help to alleviate the problems of Love Canal. “That’s dollars from the Hudson Valley, from Long Island, from the people of Queens who are saying: ‘Look, they had nothing to do with it up in Love Canal. They were not responsible for it. Somebody has to help. They can’t afford it.’

“That’s what government is about--helping us when nobody else can.”

In seeking support for a $1.45-billion environmental bond issue, part of which would go to finance the cleanup of toxic wastes, Cuomo demonstrated his skill at dramatizing an argument by casting it in personal terms.

“Look, I’m running in November and I want very, very much to be elected again,” Cuomo said. “I’ve had a wonderful four years. I could cry when I think how beautiful it’s been. I just love it, and I would hate to lose it. But I tell you, if I win this election and the bond issue goes down, I’m going to think of this election as a total failure. That’s how important this is.”