After leaving behind a possible bid for the U.S. presidency, Mario Cuomo tried instead for another feat — a fourth four-year term as governor of New York — a hurdle only Nelson Rockefeller has been able to cross in the state’s history.

But Cuomo could not survive the "Republican Revolution" election year of 1994, losing to Republican George Pataki, who would go on himself to serve three full terms.

Fast forward 16 years, another Cuomo would find his way into the Executive Mansion. Like his father, conversations about Andrew Cuomo’s potential national ambitions would swirl around the Capitol for years, with the height coming after Hillary Clinton’s defeat to Donald Trump in 2016.

And yet, also like his father, Andrew Cuomo didn’t make a run for the White House. Instead he turned his attention to capturing the other achievement that his father was denied.

Even with history against him, the prospect of a fourth term for this Cuomo wasn’t so far-fetched. In his 2018 re-election bid, he won more votes than any other New York gubernatorial candidate in history. His campaign chest continued to be relatively stocked. And his leadership when the state was the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic propelled him to national stardom and sent his job approval ratings north of 70%.

Combine that with New York’s Democratic voter enrollment advantage and the state’s incumbency success rate, and it seemed like Cuomo was about to get that political Holy Grail that was so personal to him and his family. Indeed, in the past, he has partly blamed himself for his father’s loss in 1994 because he was not fully involved in the campaign since he was working for President Bill Clinton’s administration at the time.

“My father would replay the game tape over and over and over again, and go back through what we could have done, what we should have done,” Cuomo once said.

And he wasted little time in making the effort. He announced his intention to seek a fourth term in May 2019, just five months into his third term.

“I would like to do it for as long as the people of the state of New York believe I am a positive,” Cuomo said at that time.

How things have changed.

A little more than a year before the election that could’ve sent Cuomo over the threshold of a fourth term, he will instead not finish this third, announcing Tuesday that he will resign on Aug. 24. After a scathing report from the state attorney general detailing sexual harassment allegations from 11 women, calls for his ousting, which began in the spring when the allegations first surfaced in media reports, outgrew his ability to continue serving in a functional government.

The historic move not only seemingly dashes the dynastic dreams of a Cuomo fourth term for the second time, but marks what may be the end of an era for one of the most powerful men and most influential families in New York politics. And at least for now, it also turns upside down the 2022 Democratic race for governor.