Carl Mccall’s face grew tense when a reporter asked him if he has
the stomach to do battle with Andrew Cuomo, his Democratic rival in the
Governor’s race.
“I’m being positive,” he said, leaning slightly towards his
interviewer. “But listen: If it gets down to hand-to-hand combat, I can do
that, too.”
The comment seemed out of
character for Mr. McCall, a man who has earned a reputation as a consensus-builder
and, above all, a gentleman in the ruffian’s game of state politics. But the
Comptroller is facing the most formidable challenge of his political career in
the form of Mr. Cuomo, a politician with a distinctly less gentlemanly
reputation-and one who is at once younger, slicker and more aggressive than Mr.
McCall. A nagging perception that the 66-year-old Comptroller is being
out-hustled by his more youthful (by more than 20 years) opponent seemed to be
borne out in mid-January with the release of the latest fund-raising numbers, which
showed that Mr. Cuomo has raised twice as much money as Mr. McCall over the
last six months.
Cuomo surrogates in the state party, far from showing respect for
the state’s highest-ranking Democratic official, are publicly suggesting that
Mr. McCall should make life easier for the party by simply dropping out of the
race. Meanwhile, Mr. McCall’s reputation is pricked
on a seemingly daily basis by unflattering column items in the tabloids
generated by the well-oiled Cuomo media operation. Suddenly, the quiet man who
was once regarded as the future of the Democratic Party seems in real danger of
being relegated to its past.
Mr. McCall professes to be unworried. “I don’t think most voters
pay a lot of attention to what they read in the gossip columns,” he said. “I
think voters are going to focus on my record and what I’ve achieved.”
On that score, Mr. McCall would seem to be in good shape. He has
already made history by becoming the first African-American elected to
statewide office in New York. He was re-elected in 1998 with far more votes
than any other candidate, including Governor Pataki. And his list of titles and
qualifications earned over the years is so long that it has become a running
joke wherever he’s introduced.
Past accomplishments aside, though-voters have notoriously short
memories-there are signs that Mr. McCall has yet to hit his stride in this
race, the biggest of his life. “At some point, he’s going to have to
crystallize his message,” said pollster Lee Miringoff of the Marist College
Institute of Public Opinion. “There’s not a unity to his message right now, and
I detect an uneasiness about how they’re doing in these early stages.”
In the absence of coordination from the top, supporters and well
wishers have been crafting their own arguments for Mr. McCall’s candidacy. One,
inevitably, is that because of his seniority and his prior achievements, the
nomination should simply be his to refuse. Many Democratic insiders subscribe
to this view. Mr. McCall has been considered a gubernatorial or Senatorial
candidate-in-waiting ever since he was appointed State Comptroller in the early
1990’s, succeeding Edward Regan, a Republican who resigned before his term
expired. He was widely touted as a possible Democratic challenger to Senator
Alfonse D’Amato in 1998, but declined to run. When Senator Daniel Patrick
Moynihan announced during a television interview in 1999 that he would be
giving up his seat, he let it be known that he favored Mr. McCall as his
successor, saying that no “New York Democrat has anything like his standing.”
But Mr. McCall has meticulously avoided any suggestion that he
is, in any sense, owed a chance to run for the state’s highest elected office.
“It’s not a question of it being anyone’s turn,” he said, reiterating what he
has often said in the past.
Mr. McCall is equally uncomfortable with another argument
sometimes made on his behalf: race. The fact is that he could become the first
African-American Governor of New York, a possibility that has not escaped
notice in New York’s minority communities, who make up a powerful force in
Democratic primaries. But the introduction of race into a Democratic political
contest can backfire-and did during last year’s Democratic Mayoral primary. All
of this leaves Mr. McCall trying to manage a delicate and slightly awkward
balancing act. “It’s difficult for Carl,” said a Democratic operative who has
worked closely with him. “He can use his race when he needs to, but to date, to
be successful, he’s had to avoid being ‘the black candidate.’ But as a result
of that, he doesn’t always do a very good job of talking to his base. He’s
afraid of any perception that he’s emphasizing race.”
At a Martin Luther King Day political forum on Jan. 21 in the
headquarters of Al Sharpton’s National Action Network, that careful attitude
was very much in evidence. At the first mention of race from a panel of press
and celebrity questioners, Mr. McCall replied emphatically: “This isn’t about
race. I’ve never asked anyone to vote for me because of what I look like; I
want you to vote for me in terms of what I’ve done and what I plan to do.” The
audience applauded politely.
But later on in the forum, Mr. McCall made it clear that the
contest will have some racial implications. “They tell us that if we are good
and we have the qualifications, then we get in …. I have done everything they
have asked me to do. And if you do it all, it means you’re supposed to get
ahead. And I just want to test that.” At that, the crowd cheered wildly.
Mr. McCall’s sensitivity to racial politics extends to a comment
that Mr. Cuomo made several months ago. Shortly after city Democrats
self-destructed during the racially charged Mayoral race, Mr. Cuomo was
overheard talking about the dangers of any “racial contract” in state
politics-a remark that Mr. McCall found sufficiently egregious to continue to
raise as an issue. At the Sharpton
event, Mr. McCall wondered why other Democrats had not protested more strongly
at the time. In the interview later that day, he reiterated his
“disappointment” that the comments had not received more scrutiny. “Whatever
the ugliness of the Mayoralty, I wasn’t involved in it,” he said. “I would hope
there would not be any attempt to introduce a divisive racial angle.”
It’s not the first time that Mr. McCall took offense at comments
coming from Mr. Cuomo’s camp. Early comments from Cuomo supporters-he’ll “take
a job in Washington,” said one source “close to Andrew Cuomo” to the New York Post ‘s Fred Dicker during the
2000 Presidential campaign-infuriated Mr. McCall, according to a prominent New
York Democrat who has had several conversations with the Comptroller on this
topic. Mr. McCall was similarly displeased with reported comments from Cuomo
supporters that he seemed ungrateful to former Governor Mario Cuomo, Andrew’s father,
for appointing him Comptroller after Mr. Regan resigned. “Carl really got his
back up about those comments,” said the Democrat. “He said that he’d worked too
long and too hard to be manipulated, and that he wasn’t going to be treated
like some kid.”
“Those comments are certainly patronizing,” said Mr. McCall.
“They’re patronizing, and I think anyone who has heard them would know that
they’re patronizing.”
Raked Over the Coals
In the meantime, Mr. McCall is bracing for the next round of
buffeting. When he was running for re-election back in 1998, he was raked over
the coals by The New York Times for accepting large contributions from several law
firms that he’d hired to do litigation on behalf of the state’s massive pension
funds; the litigation carried huge fees for the lawyers involved. Several of
those same donors have contributed to Mr. McCall in recent months, according to
his latest filings. Reporters-no doubt with help from Mr. Cuomo’s aides-will be
urged to pay close attention to the issue this time as well.
Mr. McCall was never accused of doing anything illegal, and he
pointed out that the controversy was a non-issue when he ran for re-election.
“It didn’t matter in ’98,” he said.
For now, Camp Cuomo seems to be growing more confident by the
day. “We are extremely happy with where we are in this primary right now,” said
spokesman Josh Isay.
Whatever problems Mr. McCall faces in the Democratic primary,
there is also the small matter of a general election against Mr. Pataki, who,
thanks to a surge of civic pride following Sept. 11-and despite a hard-time
budget-has enviable approval ratings. Mr. Pataki is also sitting on a war chest
in excess of $16 million, dwarfing the treasuries of both Mr. McCall ($5
million) and Mr. Cuomo ($7 million).
Publicly, anyway, Mr. McCall doesn’t seem concerned, and he
remains focused on the task at hand. “I’ve never really taken a job from the
standpoint of ‘Where does this job lead me?'” he said. “Every job I’ve taken
has led me somewhere else …. I want to be the best Governor. That’s my
ambition. I’m ready to do this.”
