Mary Anne Krupsak, a Democrat who defied her party’s leadership in becoming the first woman to be elected lieutenant governor of New York State, and who then became so disenchanted with her boss, Hugh L. Carey, that she challenged him for the governorship, died on Saturday at her home on Seneca Lake in Geneva, N.Y. She was 92.
Her death was confirmed by her close friend Susan Cohen.
Hailing from upstate New York, Ms. Krupsak, who initially aspired to be a singer, served in the State Assembly for two terms, from 1969 to 1973, and then graduated to the State Senate before seeking the Democratic nomination for lieutenant governor as a long-shot candidate in 1974.
She went on to defeat Mario M. Cuomo in the primary, to the chagrin of Mr. Carey and the Democratic State Committee. Both had supported Mr. Cuomo, a high-profile Queens lawyer making his first run for elective office.
Campaigning on the slogan “She’s not just one of the boys,” Ms. Krupsak polled 390,123 votes to Mr. Cuomo’s 284,821 and 218,583 for Assemblyman Antonio G. Olivieri of Manhattan.
She then joined a ticket with Mr. Carey, a congressman from Brooklyn in his first race for governor, in the general election. (The governor and his or her running mate are nominated separately in New York but run together in November.)
Once in office as lieutenant governor, Ms. Krupsak, like many of her predecessors, privately complained that she had been sidelined and delegated few substantive responsibilities.
The tension between her and Mr. Carey came into public view when she announced that she would not seek another term as lieutenant governor but would instead challenge him for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination in 1978.
She said that Mr. Carey had been inaccessible, insensitive and even insulting to her.
“The seriousness of the obligations of the office of governor requires a leader to be accessible to fulfill commitments,” she said, adding that she had served Mr. Carey “with dedication, integrity and loyalty.”
“I had expected the same dedication from the governor to the people of this state,” she said. “This quality I have found is lacking.”
Mr. Carey called Ms. Krupsak’s criticism “unwarranted, unjustified and maybe somewhat emotional.”
He went on to pummel her in the primary, with 376,457 votes to her 244,252. With Mr. Cuomo as his running mate, Mr. Carey sailed to victory in November. (Mr. Cuomo would succeed him as governor in 1983.)
After running unsuccessfully for Congress in 1980, Ms. Krupsak retired from politics. She founded a law firm and an economic development consulting firm and owned a restaurant in Waterloo, N.Y., in the Finger Lakes region.
But she had proved to be a pacesetter of sorts for women in public office.
George E. Pataki, a Republican who succeeded Mr. Cuomo as governor, served with two women as his lieutenants, first Betsy McCaughey Ross and then Mary Donohue. And the lieutenant governor under Andrew M. Cuomo, Kathy Hochul, who succeeded him when he resigned in a sexual harassment scandal, became the first woman elected governor of New York in her own right, in 2022.
Two decades after Ms. Krupsak’s ill-fated run for governor, Ms. Ross, the lieutenant governor from 1995 through 1998, embarked on a similar challenge to her former running mate, Mr. Pataki, after being jettisoned from the Republican ticket. Ms. Ross bolted to the Democratic Party but lost the nomination to Peter Vallone, whom Mr. Pataki defeated.
Ms. Krupsak was not the first woman to be nominated by a major party for a statewide office in New York or elected to one. That distinction was earned by Florence Knapp, a Republican, who in 1924 won the cabinet-level position of secretary of state, an elective job at the time. (She was later convicted of grand larceny for mishandling state census funds.)
Mary Anne Krupsak was born on March 26, 1932, in Schenectady, N.Y., to Ambrose and Marnie (Wytrwal) Krupczak, Polish immigrants who were both pharmacists. Her father was also a county legislator and supervisor in Montgomery County.
It was only after attending the University of Rochester’s Eastman School of Music, where she studied voice, that Ms. Krupsak discovered her political aspirations. After graduating in 1953 with a Bachelor of Arts degree, she earned a degree in communications at Boston University in 1955.
In 1969, she married Edwin Margolis, who was a state judge and a former legislative counsel to three Democratic speakers of the State Assembly. He died in 1993. No immediate family members survive.
As a public information officer at the New York State Department of Commerce in Albany, Ms. Krupsak became active in W. Averell Harriman’s successful Democratic campaign for governor in 1954. She earned a law degree from the University of Chicago in 1962.
“The only women who are taken seriously in government are lawyers,” she said about her decision to enter law school.
Later, as lieutenant governor, she said: “I see myself as a catalyst. I love it, and I know it’s doing some good. People go beyond themselves when they get a little encouragement from their government.”
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