Election '82: Fresh Faces in the Mansion

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Although his treasury ($5 million) was less than half as big as Lehrman's ($12.5 million), Cuomo had considerable help from labor unions. Fellow Italian Americans were loyal, but it was New York City (Cuomo by 2 to 1) that sent the city boy to the Governor's mansion in Albany.

OHIO. Richard Celeste's campaign was nigh flawless, and Ohio's voters gave him an enormous win (59% to 39%). Republican Clarence ("Bud") Brown was an inept campaigner, but he was a credible, mainstream candidate: bright, a nine-term House veteran and a friend of the Administration. Celeste, 44, derided Brown, 55, as a "cheerleader for Reaganomics," and the rap stuck in a state with 13.8% unemployment and a foundering industrial base. Celeste supports legal abortion and handgun control and opposes the death penalty, but his social liberalism seemed no stigma. His comfortable victory made the pragmatic Celeste an attractive national Democrat. The son of Italian immigrants, he is well educated (Yale and Oxford), paid his dues for twelve years in lesser state offices and ran the Peace Corps from 1978 to 1981.

Ohio's gubernatorial race was, more than most, an explicit, and negative, referendum on Reagan. In his victory speech Celeste defiantly addressed Washington: "The turnout is a message from the heartland, Mr. President. We don't want your sympathy. We want jobs. We will not wait. We will not stay your course." Partisan rhetoric, to be sure, but a plausible reading of the political mood in the beleaguered middle of America. —By Kurt Andersen. Reported by Sam Allis/Houston and Joseph J. Kane/Los Angeles