"People have described the Cuomo-de Blasio shenanigans as a beef between two Italian-American men."

"But their backgrounds are vastly different. De Blasio, who is from Cambridge, Massachusetts, adopted his mother’s surname. His father was a Wasp and a Yale graduate who lost a leg at Okinawa. He later abandoned the family and, stricken with lung cancer, killed himself. De Blasio molded himself into a hardworking Brooklyn man of the people. 'It’s sort of a false identity, like the shit-kicking version of George W. Bush, whereas Andrew is who he is,' the former city official said...."

From "Andrew Cuomo, the King of New York/The Governor has been widely praised for his response to COVID. But his critics see a would-be authoritarian obsessed with settling scores" by Nick Paumgarten (The New Yorker).

"Mario, as Andrew called his boss, was the son of Italian immigrants who had a corner grocery store. Mario graduated from St. John’s Law, top of the class, and, when no Manhattan firm would hire him, started out in Brooklyn; one of his clients was Fred Trump. Mario was a largely absent but highly demanding patriarch. Much has been made through the years, with little comment by Andrew himself, of Andrew’s desire to please or, as time has gone by, surpass his father. 'Mario was fucking brutal,' a former aide told me. 'Andrew was scarred.'"