NEW YORK, Sept. 3 (UPI) -- Maybe Andrew Cuomo finally saw the light.
Just a week before the gubernatorial primary that many thought he should never have entered, the former HUD secretary, joined by his former boss, Bill Clinton, withdrew with a plea for unity in the party.
When Cuomo, son of the last Democratic governor, Mario Cuomo, first entered the race for the Democratic nomination for governor of New York last year, political insiders murmured, "Why is he doing this?"
The front-runner for the Democratic nomination, Comptroller Carl McCall, was the highest-ranking African-American politician in the state, and had collected chits from most of the political leaders.
The race against incumbent Republican Gov. George Pataki, in the wake of the events of Sept. 11 last year, was considered uphill in any event, given that he has always led any presumptive opponent by more than 20 points in every poll. So insiders questioned the value of a nomination won against a member of the state's most Democratic voting block in a year that favored incumbents.
Cuomo set out to prove the insiders wrong. Using his family connections -- to the last Democratic governor, his father, Mario Cuomo, and to the family of his wife, Kerry Kennedy Cuomo, daughter of New York's briefly serving but probably most famous senator, Robert Kennedy, and showing much more vigor than his 65-year old opponent, Cuomo surprised everyone by surging to a lead in the Democratic polls. And, although Pataki kept a huge lead in the polls, New York State, after all, has two million more registered Democrats than registered Republicans.
So, well into 2002, Cuomo was considered competitive with McCall, although not with Pataki. Indeed, for much of this year, more attention was paid to the incumbent Republican governor's ability to win the support of normally Democratic unions, ideological groups, and even elected officials than to either of the two Democratic candidates for his office.
For the first few months of 2002, Cuomo continued to lead in the polls. And there were many complaints about the sluggish nature of McCall's campaigning.
But politicians, looking behind the face of the polls, saw that McCall had only a small lead among African-Americans, one that was sure to increase. Insiders couldn't help thinking that McCall, supported by most of the officeholders in the state, still had to be considered the favorite.
Then came Cuomo's announcement for governor in April. When he spoke, he had double-digit leads over McCall in the polls. No one remembers what he said in his announcement, but what he said in one of his follow-up interviews became the subject of headlines and tut-tutting editorials in all the state's newspapers.
Cuomo said that Pataki wasn't the leader after Sept. 11, but that Mayor Rudy Giuliani was. Pataki "stood behind the leader. He held the leader's coat."
This idea had been a commonplace in the pages of the same newspapers that professed to be "shocked, shocked" that Cuomo would say such a thing.
No matter. The statement began a steady hemorrhage in the polls for Cuomo, most notably in his negative ratings, which shot up past 30 percent, a very high number for a non-incumbent.
By summer, he and McCall were even. In the last two months McCall started pulling ahead. In the most recent polls, McCall's lead was reaching two-to-one. The tortoise, once again, was beating the hare.
In the last week, Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., started running ads for McCall, and Monday, Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., who had been studiously neutral in her public statements, walked arm-in-arm with McCall in a parade.
The handwriting, it seemed, was on the wall.
Cuomo was as abrupt in his departure as he had been in his entry. Whether he has any political future in New York is an open question: Dropping out now can be taken as a sign of a realism, which wasn't always evident in his campaign. Both senators are Democrats, and in the front of the line for the gubernatorial nomination in 2006 (assuming Pataki wins) is state Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, backed by his own family fortune.
It never pays to underrate the future of anyone with the energy of Andrew Cuomo. But this year, it's going to be Carl McCall, and not Cuomo, who will face off against Pataki in November.
