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 New York Gov Andrew M Cuomo begins his second term hours before his father Mario's death promising to address deep-rooted challenges like fairness of justice system, declining economic mobility and state of public education; Cuomo's inaugural speech is haunting reminder of former Gov Mario M Cuomo's oratorical style.  Mario Cuomo, the former governor of New York, died today at the age of 82. His death came hours after his son Andrew was inaugurated for a second term in his dad’s old job. Andrew, the second oldest of Mario and Matilda Cuomo’s five children, has been influenced by his father more than most sons. He spent much of 1991 weighing a campaign publicly, earning the nickname “Hamlet on the Hudson.” A chartered plane, idling on a tarmac, waiting to carry him to New Hampshire at the last minute to file primary petitions, became the indelible image of Cuomo’s indecision. Then, in 1984, Cuomo became a national figure and a liberal hero by delivering two classic speeches: “Religious Belief and Public Morality,” at Notre Dame, explaining how a devoutly Catholic governor could uphold the nation’s abortion laws, and the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention, in San Francisco, a stinging progressive rebuke to Ronald Reagan’s vision of America. The quality that drove him from losing an epic and ugly mayoral race against Ed Koch in 1977 to beating Koch in a nearly-as-bitter rematch for governor in 1982. “There is despair, Mr. President,” Cuomo said, “in the faces that you don’t see, in the places that you don’t visit, in your shining city.” 
 
 Related Stories The Story of Mario Cuomo, As Told by New York Magazine 
 
 Running through all of it wasn’t just Cuomo’s towering intellect and his gift for lyrical phrasing. He’d been elected six years earlier and put together a successful first term in Albany, balancing the state’s budget while expanding New York’s social programs. In the epic Democratic primary rematch, Cuomo skillfully exploited Koch’s haunting remarks from an earlier Playbook interview in which the mayor referred to suburban life as “sterile,” farm country as a “joke” and living in Albany as a “fate worse than death.” 
 
 Mario Cuomo and Ed Koch in 1977 Robert Kalfus Mario Cuomo presents Tim Russert with the first Big Apple Crime Fighters Award in 1984. MORE 
 
 Hundreds of people, both ordinary and famous New Yorkers, wait in slow-moving line to pay their respects at wake for former Gov Mario M Cuomo on Upper East Side; his family, including his widow Matilda, and his sons Chris and Andrew, receive condolences from an array of dignitaries. MORE 
 
 Mario M Cuomo, former governor of New York, muses before a crowd gathered to mark his 80th birthday, that someday his son, Andrew M Cuomo, may have the opportunity to serve as president; despite widespread discussion that Andrew Cuomo could be a strong contender for his party’s nomination in 2016, he has repeatedly sought to tamp down such talk and has chosen a particularly low-key role at this year's Democratic National Convention. He won a third term as governor but was beaten in 1994 by George Pataki, who emphasized how the state’s taxes and bureaucracy had ballooned during 12 years of Cuomo. - Daughter Madeline Cuomo 
 
 Cuomo’s first claim to fame came in the late 1960s as a community lawyer representing the “Corona Fighting 69,” a group of property owners opposing a plan to demolish their homes to make way for a new high school. Andrew Cuomo took his father’s right hand and held it high in the air, for a long time, making sure that Mario Cuomo exited public life to cheers. He didn’t, of course, and the way Cuomo opted out became a debacle that corroded the rest of his political career. “I have the honor to bring out the man who is the father of the modern Democratic Party, a man who is all about principle and inspiration,” he said.
– The elder Mario Cuomo—the former governor of New York who is father to the current Gov. Cuomo of New York—died today at age 82 at his Manhattan home. Some early snippets in his hometown press: New York Times: "Mario Cuomo, the three-term governor of New York who commanded the attention of the country with a compelling public presence, a forceful defense of liberalism and his exhaustive ruminations about whether to run for president, died ... " Daily News: "Ever-eloquent Mario Cuomo, a son of Queens who rode his rhetorical gifts to three terms as New York governor and tantalized Democrats by flirting with a run for President, died ..." New York magazine: "Running through all of it wasn’t just Cuomo’s towering intellect, and his gift for lyrical phrasing. There was his burning passion, the quality that pushed Cuomo from his first-generation Italian immigrants’ parents grocery store in Queens to law school to mediating an ugly dispute over low-income housing. The quality that drove him from losing an epic and ugly mayoral race against Koch in 1977 to beating Koch in a nearly-as-bitter rematch for governor in 1982." New York Post: "According to President Bill Clinton, he was poised to nominate Cuomo for a spot on the High Court in 1993, but Cuomo took himself out of the running before Clinton had a chance."