‘Italian vs Italian’ in New York governor race

NEW YORK - Sopranos-style gold chains have shown up in campaign advertisements. Ethnic-tinged terms, like goumada, and wisecracks about Sicilian grudges have been bandied about. New York is set to witness a different kind of campaign this time for the next month’s gubernatorial election as both the rivals in the fray are of Italian origin.

In the raucous race for governor of New York between Andrew M. Cuomo and Carl P. Paladino, an unexpected debate is mesmerising the Italian-American community and increasingly spilling out into public, according to The New York Times.

The two men are starkly different in how they view and express their Italian identity. Cuomo, the Democrat who is the state’s attorney general, prides himself on transcending the image of the unpolished, old-country Italian, and credits his father, Mario M. Cuomo, the former governor of New York, for debunking many of those stereotypes.

Cuomo complained after a reporter described him in an article as a “double espresso of a politician”, suggesting that the term amounted to an anti-Italian slur.

Cuomo, 52, said he had absorbed the lessons of his father and tried to emulate him. Mario Cuomo, before being a prominent figure in American politics, felt the sting of bias when he was rejected for a job at Manhattan’s “white shoe” law firms.

The younger Cuomo said that the polling he paid for in 2002, during his first run for governor, showed that the stereotypes remained pervasive.

On the other hand, Paladino, a Republican real estate developer from Buffalo, seems to relish his reputation as an undiluted, street-smart, up-by-the-bootstraps Italian.

Like Mario M. Cuomo, Paladino’s father, who immigrated at age six, also endured discrimination. He also shortened his name from Belesario to the anglicised Bill to find a job. But rather than shrinking from an ethnic style and mannerisms, his son Carl, 64, has embraced them.

The stereotypes are being stirred up in a race between Italian-Americans, “not when there was an Italian against somebody else, but an Italian against an Italian”, said Stefano Albertini, a faculty member in the department of Italian studies at New York University.

The Paladino camp, sensing Cuomo’s sensitivity to the issue, has deliberately injected ethnicity into the campaign from the beginning.

After Paladino won the Republican primary, his campaign manager commissioned a poster that depicted Cuomo shirtless in the shower, trying to wash off the muck of Albany corruption. (”Clean up Albany,” it said. “Start with Cuomo.”) A sly detail was inserted: a gold chain around his neck, prompting howls of protest from those who detected anti-Italian bias.

During the campaign, Cuomo uses his Italian roots subtly, seeking to connect to voters of all ethnic groups who feel they have not gotten a fair shake.

Speaking to black churchgoers in Brooklyn a few days ago, Cuomo assailed Paladino for espousing a policy that he said would allow the police to stop people who look like immigrants.

“I look like an immigrant,” Cuomo said, to warm laughter. At times, he sprinkles in Italian phrases and speaks affectionately of his childhood in Queens, where family dinners revolved around animated debates. “Sundays”, he says, “was politics and pasta.”