TJ Walker breaks down how Ed Koch's 1982 comment calling suburbs "sterile" cost him the New York governor's race to Mario Cuomo. One careless remark to Playboy magazine alienated suburban voters and tanked his campaign, showing why politicians need media training and message discipline.
Last week, former Governor of New York Mario Cuomo passed away. What are some of the lessons from his career? I couldn't help but note in the New York Times coverage of Mario Cuomo's passing, they talked about the time in 1982 when he ran for governor the first time against Ed Koch. Ed Koch was the prohibitive favorite as soon as he announced the the well known mayor of New York City, which is the biggest block of votes in an election in New York State. Mario Cuomo he'd beaten in 1977. So a lot of people thought Ed Koch was just going to take that race and run with it. And then here's what happened. Ed Koch gave an interview with Playboy in which he said that the suburbs were sterile. That was the word, sterile. And he said that living in a small town like Albany would frankly be boring. And his campaign never recovered because people in the so called sterile suburbs resented that. They hated that, they felt it was condescending. And basically Koch lost all of his support. And Mario Cuomo went on to win that election and two subsequent elections and two very impressive political career. So to me it's fascinating because I remember it at the time. I was a political junkie back then in college and those words sterile were everywhere. Now it's interesting for a couple of reasons. Why was it quoted? It's a very attacking word. It's an emotional word and it's something where you're attacking the vast majority of the state now, maybe not in terms of population, but in terms of geography. Here you have the mayor of New York City sounding extraordinarily condescending, saying that 98% of the state is essentially a wasteland. That's how it was interpreted. Now the other thing that's interesting to me, I could say this because I lived in New York City for 20 years and now I live in the suburbs. Is Koch's right. The suburbs are sterile compared to New York City. What's another word for sterile? Clean. I don't have a problem with where I live in Long island being sterile. By the way, you may have just noticed my video. Some of you do ask from time to time what my backdrop is. It's just a video loop. It ran out and now you see a little error message. But hey, in the spirit of being transparent, I'm going to leave it there and just fill you in on what it is I'm doing. So if you build your own studio, you can do the same because it's very inexpensive. Back to Ed Koch and the sound bite. Lesson the real lesson for politicians is you've got to be very careful about any negativity. It's fine for most citizens to talk about how how politicians are mealy mouthed and dodge questions, but the problem is when a politician does say something honest and truthful and somebody's feelings hurt, it can destroy their careers. Mayor Koch never again entered that plane in the political sphere of being seen of as a national candidate or even a statewide candidate. It ruined his chances. That one word sterile. So you have to be extraordinarily careful anytime you use negative words, attacking words in the world of politics, because in politics, you have to appeal to majority plus 1 of the voters or you're out of business forever. And that one word put Ed Koch out of business. And here it is. That quote is outliving Ed Koch and Mario Cuomo. Koch died a while back. Mario Cuomo is now dead and people are still talking about that quote. SOUNDBITE that's why it's so crucial. I'm TJ Walker. If I can help you with your sound bites, please give us a call. Information below. That's what we do. We help people with their messages and sound bites and media training so they don't end up destroying their careers with interviews at Playboy or anyplace else.
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