It is a family dynasty as the Americans love them so much. With Cuomo, all the ingredients are there: the myth of the “self-made man”, the success then the fall. Sign of their establishment in New York, the patriarch had even seen a bridge named after him: le Mario Cuomo Bridge. Of the two sons that this former governor of New York will have, Andrew will shine the clan by taking up the political torch from his father, when Chris, the youngest, will bear their name in the firmament of American journalism.
But these descendants of Italian immigrants were in turmoil after Andrew, who had taken on a national political dimension in 2020 thanks to his handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, was forced to resign as governor of New York , and that his brother Chris, star journalist of CNN, had been dismissed for having advised his eldest, then finally dismissed, on December 4. Andrew’s Multiple Sexual Assault Cases will eventually also have carried in its wake Chris.
Despite the gravity of the accusations against them, the case above all reveals the unfailing loyalty reigning among the Cuomo. “If I can help my brother, I will. If he wants me to hear something, I will. If he wants me to weigh on something, I will try to do it.”, had responded Chris Cuomo to investigators who questioned him in July on the advice given to his eldest, faced with accusations of sexual assault by at least 11 women.
A “family saga”
It is an understatement to say that the descent into hell of the two brothers is a serious blow to the family “success” story. To understand the strength of their ties, one must delve into the century-long “family saga” of the Cuomo, a shining symbol of Italian immigration to the United States at the beginning of the 20th century, explains to AFP Michael Shnayerson, author of The Contender, a biography of Andrew Cuomo.
And go back to the Italian grandfather, Andrea Cuomo, party from the Naples region in the 1920s to run a grocery store with his wife Immacolata in New York’s Queens neighborhood. He spoke “hardly any English and when asked what motivated him, he replied ‘puncha puncha!’ “Which meant don’t stop hitting and never give up,” says Michael Shnayerson.
Their son Mario Cuomo, born in 1932 and educated in New York, rose through the ranks of local politics and the Democratic Party and was elected governor of the state three times (1983-1994), also making his mark on the largest city in the United States . For their biographer, Mario Cuomo was “a man of immense charm but who was as hard with his sons as his father had been with him”.
The rise of the two brothers
Andrew and Chris Cuomo, 13 years apart, grow up in a family atmosphere of “brutality“, of” rivalry “against each other, but also with an” indestructible brotherly bond “, a” loyalty to each other and to the rest of the family “, continues Michael Shnayerson . His father’s campaign director in the 1980s, Andrew Cuomo also entered politics in the Democratic Party, then in the Bill Clinton’s government in the 1990s. He became Attorney General of New York State in the 2000s, before being governor from 2011 until August.
The Cuomo clan also crossed for decades a political dynasty of national scope, sometimes rivaling New York: the Kennedys. One of the daughters of Ethel and Robert Kennedy, senator from New York assassinated in 1968, Kerry Kennedy married Andrew Cuomo in 1990 until their rocky divorce in 2005. “In this great family saga, Mario remained the patriarch until his death” in 2015, notes the biographer. But after their father passed away, “Andrew and Chris may have lacked the moral compass to keep them from drifting,” he concludes.
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