Another Son Also Rises

Former Clinton cabinet secretary Andrew Cuomo has announced that he's running for New York governor - the job once held by his father, Mario Cuomo.

At a star-studded "welcome home" party on Monday night, the younger Cuomo, who lost his job as U.S. Housing and Urban Development (HUD) secretary with the change in administrations earlier this month, said: "I want you to know that I intend to run for governor of the state of New York."

On Tuesday, Cuomo plans to file papers with the state board of elections, creating a gubernatorial campaign committee and allowing him to legally raise money for a campaign that could cost him more than $20 million.

Cuomo's announcement sets up a possible Democratic primary contest next year against state Comptroller H. Carl McCall, the only black ever elected statewide in New York. McCall is expected to tell supporters at a $1,000-a-person fund-raiser in New York City on Thursday night that he also intends to run for governor.

"We wish Secretary Cuomo well as he tries to reacquaint himself with the issues in New York," said McCall campaign spokesman Shawn Thompson. "If he pursues this, we'll just have to beat him."

In an 18-minute speech to more than 200 friends, family, and supporters, Cuomo on Monday vowed "a campaign of ideas."

"It's going to be a positive campaign," he said. "It's going to be an inclusive campaign ... and it's going to be a campaign that is fun."

"I think it's going to be a very exciting race," his father Mario said. "Maybe for the first time in a long time, it'll be a really productive race."

"I'm just so proud of him," his mother Matilda said. "He can do it."

Pataki has said he will likely run for a third term in 2002. He declined to comment on Cuomo's party, except to say that "one of the disappointments of the last eight years has been the concept of a perpetual campaign. There will be plenty of time for electioneering."

In winning easy re-election in 1998, McCall captured 2.9 million votes, the most of any statewide candidate, including Pataki, that year. McCall has already raised more than $2 million and has picked up the support of many of the state's top Democrats, including state Attorney General Eliot Spitzer and U.S. Rep. Charles Rangel.

Boosted by his strong name recognition, recent polls have shown Cuomo slightly ahead of McCall. Those polls also show Pataki ahead of both Democrats. And yet despite those polls and one of the most famous names in New York politics, Cuomo's camp is already talking about the uphill battle he faces.

"I'd say we certainly are the underdog," Tonio Burgos, a lobbyist and long-time political operative for the Cuomo family said Monday night.

Running as an underdog in New York's Democratic primaries has paid dividends for candidates in the past, including the elder Cuomo, who upset hen-New York City Mayor Edward Koch in a 1982 primary for governor.

And, as if to counter McCall's appeal to New York's black community, Cuomo had Martin Luther King III speak at his Monday night event. Praising Cuomo's work at HUD, King said, "I don't know what Andrew's going to do, I just want to be part of it."

Independent observers had said the party was an attempt to reinforce the younger Cuomo's credentials as a New Yorker. He has been in Washington as part of the Clinton administration since 1993 - the year before Pataki thwarted Mario Cuomo's attempt to win a fourth term as governor.

"A lot of what he's done, certainly recently, has been done outside New York," New York pollster Lee Miringoff said. "They want to establish that this is his place."

Celebrity hosts for Monday's party included Caroline Kennedy, Cuomo's cousin-in-law, and rap music impresario Russell Simmons, a leader of last year's "Rap the Vote 2000" effort. Cuomo's wife, Kerry, is a daughter of the late New York Sen. Robert F. Kennedy.

Finally, Democratic fund-raiser Denise Rich, who had written President Clinton in support of a pardon of her ex-husband, former fugitive financier Marc Rich, originally was to have hosted the party at her Fifth Avenue penthouse. Those plans were scrapped last week in the wake of President Clinton's last-day pardon of Rich. Denise Rich said she didn't want to become a distraction.

The event was moved to the Fifth Avenue shoe store of Cuomo's brother-in-law, designer Kenneth Cole. Rich did not attend.