Mafia Targeted Mario Cuomo, Thrice Elected NY's Governor
Mario Cuomo was one of the greatest orators in modern political history. He was formally a democrat, but his goals and accomplishments made him too complex a politician to be so easily defined by such a label. He's been back in the news recently due to reports that the Sicilian Mafia marked him for death to send a message to Americans calling for nothing less than the destruction of the witness protection program . (They also wanted to whack New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani. The brutish Salvatore ‘Toto’ Riina, allegedly planned the hit when Giuliani was a state prosecutor in the 1980s. The American mob told him not to even try such a caper; Giuliani would wipe them out.) Cuomo's July 16, 1984 Keynote Address to the Democratic National Convention tops many lists as one of the 20th Century's most inspirational speeches. I'd delete the qualifier and say it's one of the most inspirational and powerful in American history. Listening to it again, it sounds even m...