Frontrunner in race for New York's next mayor faces renewed questions on family's alleged ties to Mafia

Jerry Oppenheimer is a bestselling biographer whose subjects have included political icons like the Clintons and the Kennedys, popular figures like Martha Stewart and Barbara Walters, and dynasties like the Hiltons and the Kardashians

Disgraced former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, who's hoping to be the Big Apple's next Democratic mayor, is the current patriarch of a powerful political dynasty that has often-faced allegations of having Mob ties.

Rumors surrounding the 'mobster' skeletons in the Cuomo family political closet, which have been always adamantly and often angrily denied, begin with Andrew's father, the late family patriarch, Mario Cuomo – himself a three-term governor of the Empire State.

Among the various accusations, Mario, while governor, took campaign contributions from 'mob fronts'.

And Mario himself was once the reputed target of a planned Sicilian 'Mafia hit' ordered by Cosa Nostra while on a vacation in Italy.

The planned hit involved a dozen gunmen armed with Kalashnikov assault rifles who planned to kill Cuomo in broad daylight in the main square in the city of Messina, according to testimony brought to authorities by one of the would-be assassins, Mario Avola. 

But the hit was canceled when it was learned that Cuomo had a security detail of heavily armed bodyguards and was chauffeured in a bulletproof car – considered major artillery for a routine visit by one of America's governors to the homeland of his parents.

During the visit, an Italian reporter asked Cuomo whether it was damaging for an American politician to have an Italian surname.

'Of course,' Cuomo responded. 'Any Italian-American politician risks being associated with the Mafia, not least because the media continuously plays on this image.'

But Mario, billed as a 'liberal beacon' of the Democratic Party and depicted as a virtual 'choirboy' by the mainstream media also claimed, 'The Mafia doesn't exist.'

As a well-informed source told Daily Mail exclusively: 'Like the Russia, Russia, Russia refrain that has followed Donald Trump for years by his political enemies, the Cuomos have been haunted for decades by accusations of – the Mob, the Mob, the Mob - followed by a slew of denials from the Cuomo side. 

'But, yes, there's always been lots of smoke. Lots.'

The stories of alleged Cuomo family mob connections have often travelled far, wide and mostly quietly – particularly in high political circles.

In the early 1990s, for instance, when then-Arkansas governor Bill Clinton was seeking the presidency, the issue of Mario Cuomo's reputed connections surfaced in a secretly taped conversation the married Clinton had with his longtime girlfriend, Gennifer Flowers.

During their recorded chat, made public at a press conference in January 1992, the two were talking about Governor Cuomo and Clinton's need to win New York voters.

Flowers said she didn't like Cuomo's 'demeanor,' and Clinton agreed, responding, 'Boy, he is aggressive,' at which point she declared, 'I wouldn't be surprised if he [Cuomo] didn't have some Mafioso major connections'.

Clinton responded, 'Well, he acts like one.'

The release of the tape ignited a political firestorm.

Cuomo held a news conference, declaring that Clinton's comment was 'part of an ugly syndrome that strikes Italian-Americans, Jewish people, blacks, women all different ethnic groups.'

Regretting what he had said on the tape 'if' it was perceived as offensive, Clinton offered to call Cuomo and apologize. But the New York governor, wise guy-like, told him to 'save himself a quarter' - the cost of a payphone call.

Mario's first-born son, Andrew, now 67, who announced his run for New York City mayor in a video released earlier this month, resigned in his third term as governor in August 2021 when he faced a barrage of sexual harassment allegations involving at least 11 women.

At the height of the #MeToo movement, the so-called 'Love Gov' was accused of groping breasts and buttocks, inappropriately stealing unwanted kisses and creating a workplace environment 'rife with fear and intimidation', according to a report by the New York's attorney general.

Beyond the sex scandal, his administration – at the height of the Pandemic – was also accused of concealing thousands of COVID-19 deaths among elderly nursing home patients. Cuomo denied any cover-up.

Because none of that was known publicly before the scandals broke, Cuomo, like his father before him, was talked up as a future presidential candidate. Now, he's traded that lofty goal for being mayor of the country's largest city.

Mario Cuomo, who served as New York's liberal Democratic governor in the 1980s and '90s, died of a heart attack on New Year's Day, 2015, at the age of 82, only hours before Andrew was inaugurated for his second term as governor.

The senior Cuomo, a lawyer and the son of nearly illiterate immigrants, surprised his party by stepping back from running for the presidency in 1988 and again in 1992.

The latter reason, he claimed, was because of the state's severe fiscal problems and slow progress in negotiating a solution, the former was announced out of the blue on a radio call-in show after he had been implored to run by party leaders.

A New York Times headline called his decision, 'The Mystery Of Mario Cuomo.'

But to others, there was no mystery.

As a knowledgeable source told Daily Mail: 'Even though Mario was asked to run for the presidency a number of times, he never threw his hat in the presidential ring because it was feared the Cuomo family's reputed connections, direct or indirect would become public.

'Mario was considered a liberal beacon of the Democratic party, and he must have surely feared that if he ran for the highest office in the land, those connections would have become embarrassingly and scandalously public.'

As an attorney, before Mario even became governor, one of his law firm clients was a member and capo of the Lucchese crime family, Joseph 'Joey Narrows' Laratro.

The Lucchese family was infamous for its labor racketeering, extortion and drug trafficking.

The Cuomo dynasty's family tree sometimes reads like a cast list and with storylines from episodes of the Sopranos.

One character was Andrew Cuomo's maternal grandfather, Carmelo 'Charles' Raffa, a Sicilian immigrant in the 'supermarket equipment business.' He was nearly beaten to death in broad daylight in May 1984 outside his vacant store on Stanley Avenue, one of the mean streets in the East New York section of Brooklyn.

Raffa was the father of Mario's wife, Matilda Cuomo, the 93-year-old one-time first lady of New York, and the mother of five, including Andrew, his brother, former CNN news star Chris Cuomo and three daughters.

Raffa, 84, who lived in Queens, was critically beaten in the attack – a mob hit authorities were certain – to the point that his head was so sliced open his scalp covered his eyes like a blindfold, according to reports.

He pleaded with witnesses, 'don't call the cops,' and refused to identify his attacker, or attackers, vaguely claiming they were 'white, black and Hispanic.'

On the day of the attack, Raffa's grandson Andrew was spotted at the police precinct and at the hospital where his grandfather had been taken.

Raffa had a previous police record dating to 1973 on charges of offering an illegal gratuity, a misdemeanor, that was dismissed in 1974. In the 1950s and '60s, a confessed arsonist claimed that Raffa helped businesses cheat on electric and gas bills by illegally turning back utility meters for which he received compensation.

When Raffa died he left an estate worth millions in real estate, igniting a Cuomo family court battle challenging his will.

Meanwhile, mob connection rumors mounted for Mario.

In 1985, a congressional committee investigating gasoline tax fraud heard testimony from a government witness, Lawrence Iorizzo, who was tied to the Colombo Crime Family, that Cuomo accepted campaign contributions from what was described as tax scam funds.

The governor's son, Andrew, then his father's campaign manager, said he 'checked all 16,000 names,' and the contribution list failed to find Iorizzo, or Colombo crime family capo Michael Franzese, described by Vanity Fair as one of the Mob's biggest earners since Al Capone.

It was later revealed by law enforcement that the checks were for representation at a Thanksgiving 1984 fundraiser for Cuomo at the Sheraton Centre Hotel, in Manhattan.

NBC Nightly News reported at the time, 'At least five companies now identified by authorities as mob fronts have made contributions to a campaign fund for New York governor Mario Cuomo…'

Andrew called the report 'unfair' and 'wrong.'

In 1985, when Mario Cuomo was in his first year as governor, a Mob boss was fatally shot in Manhattan, and there was chatter that the victim was connected to Cuomo.

An indignant Cuomo claimed that his political enemies 'almost always mention The Godfather in relation to him.'

He called it 'an ugly stereotype.'