Mario Cuomo: The Life, Legacy, and Presidential Run That Never Happened

Please join us as Roosevelt House, in collaboration with Spectrum News NY1, hosts an historical - and yet, in this election year, timely - discussion of the life, legacy, and near presidential candidacy of the 52nd Governor of New York, Mario M. Cuomo. Convening former high level Cuomo administration officials and media members, this panel explores the accomplishments of Cuomo’s three terms as governor, the challenges his administration faced, and the fateful decision in 1992 not to seek the Democratic nomination for president.
The conversation builds upon a recent NY1 audio documentary, Mario Cuomo: the Last Liberal, produced as part of the podcast “You Decide with Errol Louis.” NY1 political anchor Errol Louis will moderate the live discussion, which features Mario Cuomo’s director of state operations Mary Ann Crotty; historian and former member of the Cuomo administration Harold Holzer; and New York Daily News columnist Denis Hamill.
Mary Ann Crotty was the first woman to serve the state of New York as Director of State Operations, appointed by Governor Mario Cuomo. This position involved managing operations of all State agencies, developing policies, and establishing priorities for the annual State of the State message. She also served as Deputy Secretary for Transportation under Mario Cuomo, handling the State’s transportation policy in the 1980s and 90s. In addition, she served on Governor Andrew Cuomo’s transportation transition teams. Through the years, she has held a series of leadership positions in both the public and private sector.
Denis Hamill is a journalist, novelist, screenwriter, and TV writer. As a journalist, he served his apprenticeship at a Brooklyn weekly called Flatbush Life. Within a year, he was writing for the Village Voice and a year later he won the prestigious Meyer Berger Award from Columbia University for the best New York City reporting. From there, he went on to write columns for New York Magazine, the Los Angeles Herald Examiner, the Boston Herald American, New York Newsday, and the New York Daily News. His late brother Pete was instrumental in persuading Mario Cuomo to enter politics.
Harold Holzer is the Jonathan F. Fanton Director of the Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute. After serving as Mario Cuomo’s press secretary in two phases of the 1977 mayoral campaign, Holzer was Vice President of the NY State Urban Development Corp., accompanied the Governor as press aide on his 1991 trip to Japan, and coauthored two books with Cuomo: Why Lincoln Matters and Lincoln on Democracy. His most recent book is Brought Forth on this Continent: Abraham Lincoln and American Immigration.
Errol Louis is the host of NY1’s “Inside City Hall,” the preeminent political news show in New York City, as well as Spectrum News’ new national political discussion show “The Big Deal.” Previously, he served as a columnist and editorial board member at the New York Daily News and was a talk show host of WWRL radio. He has won numerous journalism prizes, and has taught at the Pratt Institute, Hunter College, Long Island University, and New York University.
Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute at Hunter College, May 14, 2024.