Andrew Cuomo

Andrew M. Cuomo was born on December 6, 1957, in Queens, New York City, to Mario Cuomo and Matilda Raffa Cuomo; his father, Mario Cuomo, was later elected Governor of New York three times.⁠[1][2][2]

Cuomo graduated from Fordham University with a bachelor’s degree in 1979 and from Albany Law School with a law degree in 1982.⁠[1]

In 1982, Cuomo served as campaign manager for his father Mario Cuomo’s run for Governor of New York; after his father won, he served for a year as the governor’s top aide at a salary of $1 a year.⁠[1][1]

From 1984 to 1985, Cuomo was an assistant district attorney in Manhattan; from 1985 to 1988, he was a partner at a New York City law firm.⁠[1]

In 1986, Cuomo founded Housing Enterprise for the Less Privileged (H.E.L.P.), a nonprofit providing transitional housing for homeless people that also offered education, job training, substance abuse treatment, and mental health services, and later grew into the largest private provider of transitional housing for the homeless in the United States. In 1988, he gave up his law practice to run H.E.L.P. full time in New York City.⁠[1][1][1]

In 1991, Cuomo became chair of the New York City Commission on the Homeless, established by New York City Mayor David Dinkins, while continuing to run H.E.L.P.⁠[1][3]

In 1993, Cuomo joined the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) as an assistant secretary, responsible for community and economic development, employment, affordable housing, and homeless programs; he introduced the “Continuum of Care” strategy to help homeless people become self-sufficient and a consolidated planning process for community participation in funding plans, both of which received the Innovations in American Government Award from Harvard UniversityHarvard UniversityHarvard University is a private research university in Massachusetts, established by the Massachusetts Bay Colony legislature in 1636 and named in 1639 for early benefactor John Harvard. Its principal campuses are in Cambridge and the Allston and Longwood neighborhoods of Boston. It includes Harvard College, graduate and professional schools, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Two governing boards share oversight. Alan M. Garber was president as of October 2026, and the endowment stood at $56.9 billion at the end of fiscal 2025.Open the full entry’s Kennedy School of Government.⁠[1][1][1]

In January 1997, Cuomo was unanimously confirmed by the Senate as the 11th Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, in the Clinton administration. That year he launched a management reform plan, established an enforcement center led by FBI agents, and conducted the first comprehensive inspection of all HUD-subsidized or HUD-insured housing; during his tenure, the HUD budgets passed by Congress were $25.5 billion for fiscal year 1999 and $26 billion for fiscal year 2000.⁠[1][2][1][1][1]

In 2000, Cuomo led HUD in negotiating an agreement with Smith & Wesson, the largest handgun manufacturer in the United States, requiring the company to make changes in the design, distribution, and marketing of its guns to improve safety and keep them out of the hands of children and criminals.⁠[1][1]

In September 2002, trailing Carl McCall in the polls in the Democratic primary for Governor of New York, Cuomo withdrew from the primary a week before the vote.⁠[2]

In November 2006, Cuomo was elected New York Attorney General, defeating Jeanine Pirro, for a four-year term. In office, he pushed for reform of the student loan industry, investigated fraud at major health insurers, and launched an investigation into the state pension system.⁠[2][4][3][3][3]

In November 2010, Cuomo was elected Governor of New York and took office as the 56th governor on January 1, 2011. In his first budget he closed a $10 billion deficit, and he pushed through New York’s first property tax cap.⁠[2][3][3][3]

Late on the night of June 24, 2011, after the State Senate passed the same-sex marriage bill 33 to 29, Cuomo signed it into law, making New York the sixth U.S. state to legalize same-sex marriage and, at the time, the most populous. Cuomo said New York is at its best when it is a beacon for social justice; opponents included State Senator Rubén Díaz and the New York State Catholic Conference of bishops.⁠[5][5][5][5][5][5]

In November 2014, Cuomo was elected Governor of New York for a second time.⁠[2]

In November 2018, Cuomo was elected Governor of New York for a third time.⁠[2]

During the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, New York at one point had the highest infection rate of any U.S. state. Cuomo held detailed daily press briefings, using more than a hundred slides to report on the pandemic and the state’s response, and drew wide national attention. In March of that year, the state Department of Health issued a directive requiring nursing homes to readmit residents discharged after hospital treatment for COVID-19; more than 9,000 recovering COVID-19 patients were transferred from hospitals back to nursing homes under it. The directive was later rescinded, and critics questioned whether it had accelerated the spread of the virus in nursing homes.⁠[6][2][7][6][4]

In October 2020, Cuomo published a book about his leadership in the early months of the pandemic, under a book contract worth at least $5 million. In November of that year, the International Academy of Television Arts & Sciences presented him with the International Emmy Founders Award, citing his pandemic briefings.⁠[8][7][7]

On December 13, 2020, former aide Lindsey Boylan alleged on Twitter that Cuomo had sexually harassed her for years. In February 2021, Boylan detailed her allegations in a post on Medium, and another former aide, Charlotte Bennett, also alleged that Cuomo had asked her about her sex life.⁠[2][2][2]

On January 28, 2021, New York Attorney General Letitia James released a report on the nursing home COVID-19 response, finding that the state Department of Health’s published data on COVID-19 deaths among nursing home residents may have undercounted them by as much as 50%, partly because nursing home residents who died in hospitals were not included. Afterward, calls for Cuomo and his team to resign grew.⁠[9][9][6][6]

In late February 2021, after allegations by multiple women, Attorney General James was formally authorized to hire outside lawyers to conduct an independent investigation. On March 3, Cuomo pledged to cooperate with the investigation and apologized for his behavior, but said he had never touched anyone inappropriately and would not resign. On March 11, more than 55 Democratic state lawmakers jointly called for his resignation, and Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie authorized the Assembly Judiciary Committee to open an impeachment investigation; the next day, U.S. Senators Charles Schumer, Kirsten Gillibrand, and others also called on him to resign.⁠[2][2][2][2]

On August 3, 2021, Attorney General James released the findings of the independent investigation led by former federal prosecutor Joon Kim and employment lawyer Anne Clark: Cuomo had sexually harassed multiple women through unwanted touching, kissing, hugging, and inappropriate comments (involving 11 women, including current and former state employees and a state trooper assigned to his protective detail), in violation of state and federal law, and his senior staff had retaliated against at least one former employee; the investigation interviewed 179 witnesses and reviewed more than 74,000 pieces of evidence. The report itself carried no criminal consequences.⁠[10][10][10][10][10][6]

Cuomo responded the same day in a pre-recorded video, denying that he had ever touched anyone inappropriately or made inappropriate sexual advances, and questioning the investigators’ independence; his lawyer, Rita Glavin, called the report biased.⁠[10][6][11]

On August 10, 2021, with President Biden calling for his resignation and the State Assembly moving toward impeachment, Cuomo announced that he would resign as governor, effective in 14 days. He said he was resigning so that government could get back to functioning, called the report politically motivated, but apologized for his behavior, saying he had not intended to harass anyone and that “in my mind, I’ve never crossed the line.” Lieutenant Governor Kathy Hochul said she supported his decision and would succeed him as New York’s first female governor.⁠[11][11][11][11][11][11][11][6]

At midnight on August 24, 2021, Cuomo formally left office. That day, the International Academy of Television Arts & Sciences announced that it was rescinding his International Emmy Founders Award and removing references to him from its official materials.⁠[7][7]

In October 2021, the office of Albany County Sheriff Craig Apple filed a misdemeanor forcible touching criminal complaint against Cuomo over allegations by former executive assistant Brittany Commisso; Commisso said Cuomo had touched her breast at the Executive Mansion in late 2020, which Cuomo denied. On January 4, 2022, Albany County District Attorney David Soares said that although he found the complainant cooperative and credible, the totality of the evidence could not meet the standard of proof at trial, and moved to dismiss the complaint; he had earlier criticized the sheriff for filing the complaint without consultation.⁠[12][12][12][12][12][12]

On November 22, 2021, the Assembly Judiciary Committee released an investigation report prepared by the law firm Davis Polk & Wardwell. The report found that Cuomo had repeatedly engaged in sexual harassment, created a hostile work environment, and engaged in sexual misconduct; had used state resources and Executive Chamber staff to write, publish, and promote his book published in October 2020, which guaranteed him at least $5.2 million in personal earnings; and had not been fully transparent about COVID-19 deaths among nursing home residents. The investigation had been briefly suspended after Cuomo’s resignation before the committee decided to complete the report.⁠[8][8][8][8][6][6]

On January 26, 2024, the U.S. Department of Justice reached a settlement with New York State, concluding an investigation begun in 2021. The department found that Cuomo had subjected at least 13 state employees to a sexually hostile work environment, that his staff had failed to properly report allegations, and that they had retaliated against four women who complained; the settlement required the state to improve its procedures for handling sexual harassment complaints. Cuomo’s lawyer, Rita Glavin, said he had not sexually harassed anyone, said the department’s investigation was based entirely on the attorney general’s “flawed” report, and said the department had never contacted Cuomo.⁠[13][13][13][13][13][13]

After resigning, Cuomo hosted a podcast and spoke at predominantly Black churches. On March 1, 2025, he released a campaign video announcing his entry into the Democratic primary for mayor of New York City; U.S. Representative Ritchie Torres had already endorsed him. In the video, Cuomo said he had the experience and knew what to do and how to do it.⁠[14][14][14][14][15]

In May 2025, according to people familiar with the matter, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Washington, D.C., opened a criminal investigation into whether Cuomo had made false statements to Congress about his pandemic-era nursing home policy, following a referral from House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman James Comer; Comer alleged that Cuomo had made false statements at a 2024 hearing. Cuomo’s spokesperson, Rich Azzopardi, said he had never been notified of the matter, said Cuomo had testified truthfully, and called the investigation “lawfare and election interference.”⁠[4][4][4][4][4][4]

On June 24, 2025, Cuomo conceded the Democratic primary for mayor of New York City to State Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani and called to congratulate him. Cuomo, who had been considered the front-runner for most of the race, said Mamdani had inspired and mobilized young voters.⁠[16][16][16][16]

In July 2025, three weeks after losing the primary, Cuomo released a video formally continuing his mayoral campaign as an independent candidate. He said he had badly underestimated Mamdani and had not connected with young voters, but believed the general election electorate was different and that he could still win.⁠[17][17][17][17]

In the November 4, 2025, New York City mayoral election, Mamdani received 50.4% of the vote, Cuomo 41.6%, and Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa 7.1%, with more than 2 million votes cast, the highest turnout since 1969. Before the election, incumbent Mayor Eric AdamsEric AdamsEric Adams is an American politician and former police officer who served as mayor of New York City from 2022 to 2025, following service in the New York State Senate and as Brooklyn borough president. He is the author of Healthy at Last and has been interviewed by School of Hard Knocks.Open the full entry withdrew on September 28 and endorsed Cuomo three weeks later, and former Governor David Paterson, former Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and President Trump also endorsed him. Cuomo gave a concession speech that night congratulating Mamdani; when supporters in the audience booed, Cuomo stopped them on the spot and said he would help the new administration with the transition.⁠[18][18][15][15][18][15][15][15][15]

As governor, Cuomo pushed through the Marriage Equality Act, a statewide $15 minimum wage, and 12 weeks of paid family leave, signed gun safety laws, and pursued policies addressing campus sexual assault and the opioid crisis; on infrastructure, he advanced the rebuilding of the Tappan Zee Bridge and the redevelopment of LaGuardia Airport. The State Assembly’s impeachment investigation also covered his administration’s handling of safety issues with the Mario Cuomo Bridge.⁠[3][3][3][6]

As of October 2026, Cuomo’s personal website continues to publish his opinion pieces and statements, such as a September 2026 op-ed on antisemitism in The Wall Street Journal and an August 2026 article in the New York Daily News calling on Democrats to resist a shift to the far left.⁠[19][19]

Andrew Cuomo: Official website: https://www.andrewcuomo.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[19]

X: Public account: https://x.com/AndrewCuomo (opens in a new window)⁠[19]

LinkedInLinkedInLinkedIn is a social networking platform for professionals. It was founded in 2002 by Reid Hoffman and others, launched in 2003, and listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2011; after Microsoft acquired it for approximately $26.2 billion in 2016, it became a wholly owned Microsoft subsidiary. Its revenue comes from membership subscriptions, advertising, and recruitment solutions.Open the full entry: Public account: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewmcuomo (opens in a new window)⁠[19]

YouTubeYouTubeYouTube is Google’s video-sharing and creator platform, founded in 2005 by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim and acquired by Google in 2006. Built around video uploading, viewing, and creator earnings, the platform has developed Shorts, YouTube Music, Premium, YouTube TV, and products for children, and is headquartered in San Bruno, California, United States.Open the full entry: Public account: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCL1hq1RDgOMWqlV-6I8Du_g (opens in a new window)⁠[19]