Cuomo Was No-Show for Race but Supporters Won’t Give Up

Not everyone is waiting for Mario.

“A woman just called in and said a write-in for Mario Cuomo is a vote for George Bush,” said Paul Shanabrook, one of a handful of volunteers manning the phones in a former insurance office where placards for non-candidate Cuomo line the walls. “I said, ‘I appreciate your support.’ ”

Here, where a national campaign to draft Cuomo for the Democratic presidential nomination has set up shop, hope springs eternal that the New York governor will relent and seek the presidency.

Some polls, including two released Tuesday, show support for Cuomo, even as a write-in. One placed him virtually even with former Massachusetts Sen. Paul E. Tsongas and Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton.

Cuomo, who took himself out of contention on Dec. 20, has yet to bless the effort. Asked on Monday in Albany whether he would, he replied elliptically: “It’s very difficult to discourage people who are saying nice things about you. We try not to be ungracious. But the record is, in modern times that with this primary process, it (the nominee) comes out of the primaries. That’s the way it is and that’s the way it will be.”

Nowhere in there was a flat “no,” and that was enough to thrill Wes Stinson, a local archeologist who started a draft-Cuomo organization in December.

“He’s had ample opportunity to stop it and he hasn’t,” Stinson said.

The logic goes like this: If Cuomo the write-in can pull a significant percentage of the vote in the first-in-the-nation primary Feb. 18, perhaps Cuomo the man will be persuaded to run.

The Cuomo campaign set up shop in a second-floor office off Main Street that was occupied by an insurance firm until recently--so recently that the only visitor to the Cuomo headquarters in one 90-minute period Tuesday was a woman bearing a yellow envelope.

“Where do I pay my insurance now?” she asked plaintively.

Organizers have mailed write-in instructions to state Democrats and started a phone bank to seek support. Television and radio ads are due next week.

There is precedent for a successful write-in candidacy here. In 1964, Henry Cabot Lodge, using the power of the pencil, defeated ultimate Republican nominee Barry Goldwater.