ME AND MARIO
Seeing the passing of Mario Cuomo reminded me of the one time I met him. A truly amazing man and intellect, the tragedy wasn’t that he never ran for president, the tragedy was that he never went on the Supreme Court. I would have loved to see him battle Scalia.
In 1989 I was doing the David Dinkins campaign for mayor against incumbent Ed Koch. We had debate prep (my first one) in the Sheraton. We had a suite and in it at various times were Dinkins, Bob Shrum, Bill Lynch, Harold Ickes, Harry Belafonte, and Mario Cuomo. Cuomo hated Koch and was doing everything he could to ensure Koch lost. And that meant lending his debate advice to Dinkins. One day during a break Cuomo wanders over to the window and yells, “Come here quick, but not you David.” All of us ran over to the window to see what Mario was looking at. He was looking at a woman in a window across the way, naked and toweling herself off after a shower. Brilliant politician that Cuomo was, he made sure Dinkins never came to the window to look, so he could have deniability. To this day I have no idea who the woman was, but she made debate prep a lot more fun than it ever was with any other candidate.
TOBY KEITH AND 2008
As part of the planning for the 2008 Democratic Convention I kept pushing for a country act. My idea was to have Garth Brooks and a black gospel choir sing “We Shall Be Free.” I thought it would send a huge message about how Barack Obama was different, a break from the past, and that having a country connection would also be symbolic. Although Garth performed it months later at the inauguration, he couldn’t make it to the convention so the campaign and I talked about other country stars who were Democrats. That’s a smaller list than “Jewish sports heroes.” Tim McGraw was one name that came up but he was on tour. Then one day the campaign called to ask me what I thought about Toby Keith. I’m a big Toby fan but killed that idea when I pointed out that it probably sent the wrong message if “End the war, Barack” had the star famous for the song “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue (The Angry American)” with these lines:
’Cause we’ll put a boot in your ass
It’s the American way.
GEORGE JONES AND ME
In 1990 I made a music video. Well, actually not a music video, but a TV ad for Zell Miller when he ran for Georgia governor in 1990 that looked like a music video. Zell is the guy who got me my first pair of cowboy boots and is a big country fan. One day he called to say that the legendary George Jones was willing do to an ad. We came up with the idea that George would start singing “The Race Is On,” then talk about how the race is on for governor and why he supported Zell. I flew to Nashville, got picked up by George’s driver “PeeWee,” went to the house, and had a lovely lunch with George and his wife, Nancy. We then went to shoot the ad. In the copy we had, George was to say, “And I’m for Zell because he is for a lottery for education, and boot camps for nonviolent drug offenders.” I could see George was a little troubled as he did a few takes, so I called for a five-minute break and went over to him. He said, “Jon, I can’t do that line.” I said, “Why not?” He said, “Because I’m a nonviolent drug offender.” We changed the line.