The Village Voice called him the city’s “great smart hope.” The Daily News said he understood what needed to be done “to save New York.” Gov. Hugh L. Carey described him as “brilliant” (and added a backhanded expletive).

It was the beginning of a ritual that would soon become familiar to all of America: the courting of an ambivalent Mario M. Cuomo. Only this time, the 44-year-old actually agreed to run — and quickly regretted it. “My frame of mind throughout was reluctance,” he later wrote in his diary.

Mr. Cuomo’s failed bid for New York City’s mayoralty in 1977 would cast a long shadow over his political career. When the race was done, he swore to himself that he would never enter another one that he wasn’t fully committed to. It was a vow that no doubt weighed heavily on his mind as he deliberated (and deliberated) over whether to run for president in later years, and perhaps even informed his change of heart about the seat on the Supreme Court that President Bill Clinton was once about to offer him.

In the wake of Mr. Cuomo’s death, there has been an outpouring of praise for his leadership of New York State and his full-throated defense of liberalism during the height of the Reagan era. But there has also been some regret for his unfulfilled promise. If Mario Cuomo never quite managed to achieve what many of his admirers considered his political destiny, the bruising battle for Gracie Mansion in the summer of ’77 may go a long way toward explaining why.