Mario Cuomo Dead at 82

The elder Mario Cuomo—the former governor of New York who is father to the current Gov. Cuomo of New York—died today at age 82 at his Manhattan home. Some early snippets in his hometown press:

• New York Times: "Mario Cuomo, the three-term governor of New York who commanded the attention of the country with a compelling public presence, a forceful defense of liberalism and his exhaustive ruminations about whether to run for president, died ... "

• Daily News: "Ever-eloquent Mario Cuomo, a son of Queens who rode his rhetorical gifts to three terms as New York governor and tantalized Democrats by flirting with a run for President, died ..."
• New York magazine: "Running through all of it wasn’t just Cuomo’s towering intellect, and his gift for lyrical phrasing. There was his burning passion, the quality that pushed Cuomo from his first-generation Italian immigrants’ parents grocery store in Queens to law school to mediating an ugly dispute over low-income housing. The quality that drove him from losing an epic and ugly mayoral race against Koch in 1977 to beating Koch in a nearly-as-bitter rematch for governor in 1982."
• New York Post: "According to President Bill Clinton, he was poised to nominate Cuomo for a spot on the High Court in 1993, but Cuomo took himself out of the running before Clinton had a chance."

(More Mario Cuomo stories.)