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Mario Cuomo Dies at 82

By Michael P. Ventura | January 1, 2015 9:22pm | Updated on January 1, 2015 9:55pm
 Former Gov. Mario Cuomo speaks Oct. 22, 2012  at the ceremony to rename the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel after the former Gov. Hugh L. Carey.
Former Gov. Mario Cuomo speaks Oct. 22, 2012  at the ceremony to rename the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel after the former Gov. Hugh L. Carey.
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DNAinfo/Chelsia Rose Marcius

NEW YORK CITY — Former Gov. Mario Cuomo died Thursday afternoon, hours after his son Gov. Andrew Cuomo was sworn in for a second term. He was 82.

Mario Cuomo, the state's 52nd governor, was a native of South Jamaica, Queens, and served for three terms, from 1983 and 1994. He died in his Manhattan home, the New York Times reported.

The cause of death was "natural causes due to heart failure," the governor's office said in a statement. Funeral arrangements have not yet been announced.

Before becoming the first Italian-American elected governor of New York, Cuomo served as lieutenant governor and secretary of state in the 1970s.  He also practiced law for 18 years and was an adjunct professor at St. John's University Law School, his alma mater.

Cuomo ran for mayor in 1977, losing to Ed Koch, and twice flirted with running for president, and once was considered for the Supreme Court, the Times reported.

Cuomo's speech at the 1984 Democratic National Convention put him on the national scene as an eloquent and forceful liberal voice. In that speech, he challenged President Ronald Reagan's famous metaphor that America was a "shining city on a hill" by saying reality was closer to "a tale of two cities."

That theme would resonate three decades later in the mayoral campaign of Bill de Blasio.

"Tonight, New York has lost a giant," de Blasio said on Twitter. "Mario Cuomo was a man of unwavering principle who possessed a compassion for humankind without equal."