Tom Greco hangs onto a picture that shows him with former Gov. Mario Cuomo. Greco, who turned 90 on Tuesday, was at the New York State Fair 20 years ago this week when he came upon Mario with a suitcoat entourage from Albany.
“He had all these people following him,” Greco recalls, “and I walked up to him and told him, ‘My name’s Tom Greco and it’s my birthday.”
Mario, the consummate Democrat, handed a rose to Greco, a Republican. Then he put his arm around Greco’s shoulder and serenaded the retired plumbing equipment salesman with a gubernatorial version of “Happy Birthday.”
“Very friendly,” Greco said, from his East Syracuse home. “He seemed like a regular guy. He was talking to everybody!”
While it’s been 17 years since Mario made an official visit to the fair, those boisterous memories will give him a spectral presence today, when his son Andrew is expected to take his first midway stroll as governor. Mario, busy with his work as a lawyer in Manhattan, won’t be here. Although he makes a point of saying Andrew doesn’t need any advice - "He remembers all the things I didn’t do well, and he’s doing them better than I did," Mario says - the truth is, at the fair, Mario was at his best.
Love him, hate him, you always sensed one thing: Mario enjoyed being there. “He was the Socrates of the fairgrounds,” said Tom Young, a former state fair director who later served as mayor of Syracuse.
As a boy in Queens, Mario was surrounded by immigrants who had no politics beyond survival. Amid that raw working-class fraternity, he grew into a fiercely competitive athlete, lawyer — and politician. Voters soon learned to be prepared before trying to argue with Mario, who never retreated from what he likes to call a “passionate discussion.”
During his years as governor, he’d bring that whole package to the fair. When Mario saw a nuclear waste protester encased in a giant paper mache version of his own head, he hurried toward his double, eager to debate. When a Cortland County woman in her 70s challenged Mario about state law at bingo halls, he didn’t smile and wave her off. He dug in and argued, until his aides put down their shoulders and gently nudged him away.
Andrew is not built exactly the same way. How could he be? The father, shaped in the crucible of the New Deal, glories in the notion of government as muscular guardian and advocate. Andrew reigns in an era when the electorate cries out for lower taxes, leaner services and overall restraint.
Amid that climate, with so much at stake, the son has a chance at a legacy that might surpass the father’s. Yet the bar is set high for Andrew when it comes to the fair. His dad welcomed the best shots of everyday people, even if they loathed his politics. Mario took delight in going back at his midway critics, nose-to-nose.
While Mario — at 79 — declines to offer fatherly advice, he is happy to share his reasoning on what brought him here each year: “If you want to see a representation of a lovely part of Upstate that’s still lively, that still represents its people, then you go the fair,” Mario said. “It’s a very different place from where I come from. I liked to hear how they said, ‘Governor, you speak so funny!’”
And oh, on the midway, how they’d get to hear him speak — often at youth basketball courts that fascinated Mario, who’d keep talking as he heaved free throw after free throw. Protesters from left and right would seek him out. It might be voters upset about what they saw as the hypocrisy of the state lottery. Or voters angry about state response to a natural disaster. Or someone, always someone, sick of high state taxes. Mario would listen. He’d invite his challengers to walk along with him.
Then, with evident joy, he’d have his “passionate discussion.” He recalls how some voter would inevitably say: “You seem nice enough, but I’ve got to admit I didn’t vote for you.” Over three terms as governor, Mario had plenty of time to polish his reply. It turned into an annual ritual that he’d boom toward all midway congregants in Geddes:
“I’d always say, ‘Be honest. None of you voted for me. If this were a political poll, I would have gone elsewhere. Some of you, after meeting me, might draw the curtain and try to reach and pull down the lever by my name, but then your hand palsies, and you can’t do it. You’re born Republicans, and you can’t change your religion, and God bless you for maintaining your religion.”
Typically, his listeners smiled. Finally, toward the end of Mario’s time in office, an angry man in the crowd shouted back: “I didn’t vote for you, and I don’t need palsy to know you’re dangerous for my country!”
Did Mario laugh through clenched teeth? He laughs now, quietly. Still, his little speech might have been all wrong.
Tom Greco, at 90, said his meeting with Mario had a definite impact. “I’m a registered Republican, sure, but I don’t care what he is, as long as he’s a nice guy,” Greco said. “Whenever Cuomo ran, I voted for him, because he didn’t walk away from me like I was nothing.”
To Andrew, Greco’s statement ought to resonate, even if Mario declines to offer such concise advice. For that reason, it was impossible to end an interview without asking this question: In a time of fiscal crisis and voter discontent, aren’t there any words of state fair wisdom that a former governor might hand down to his son?
“I loved the sausage,” said Mario, who on occasion would stop arguing long to enough to eat.
Sean Kirst is a columnist with The Post-Standard. Email him at skirst@syracuse.com, visit his blog, contact him through Twitter or Facebook, or write to him in care of The Post-Standard, Clinton Square, Syracuse 13221.
At the New York State Fair, 1991: Mario Cuomo sings "Happy Birthday" to fair goer Tom Greco, who turned 70 that day.