Andrew Cuomo

Overview

Most retellings of Andrew Cuomo end with the August 2021 resignation. The stranger ending came four years later: a comeback that collapsed twice against the same 33-year-old. In June 2025, Cuomo entered the New York City Democratic mayoral primary as the prohibitive front-runner, backed by the power of a political dynasty and a super PAC flush with real-estate money — six-figure checks from RXR Realty’s Scott Rechler, SL Green’s Marc Holliday and Vornado’s Steven Roth, an industry that viewed a Mamdani mayoralty as an “existential threat” (Bisnow). He lost. Running as an independent in November, he picked up an even stranger asset: Donald Trump posted on Truth Social urging New Yorkers to back Cuomo to stop democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani, while declining to endorse the Republican in the race, Curtis Sliwa (NDTV). He lost again — Mamdani 50.3%, Cuomo 41.6%, Sliwa 7.2%, per the Associated Press, in the city’s highest turnout since 1969 (Hindustan Times). Conceding that night, Cuomo called his campaign “a caution flag that we are headed down a dangerous, dangerous road” — then, when his own supporters booed at Mamdani’s name, he stopped them: “No, that is not right.” He offered to help the incoming mayor, closing with the same grace note he had used in June: “Tonight was their night” (Hindustan Times).

From HELP to HUD to Albany

Andrew Mark Cuomo was born December 6, 1957, in New York City, the son of former New York governor Mario Cuomo and Matilda Raffa Cuomo, and grew up in Queens (NDTV). He graduated from Fordham University in 1979 and Albany Law School in 1982; after law school he managed his father’s successful 1982 gubernatorial campaign and served as a senior adviser in the state administration, then worked as a Manhattan assistant district attorney and became a partner at the firm Blutrich, Falcone & Miller (NDTV; Reuters).

His first public mark was on housing. In 1986 he founded Housing Enterprise for the Less Privileged (HELP), an organization providing transitional housing for homeless families, and in 1991 he chaired the New York City Commission on the Homeless (NDTV). In 1993 he joined the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development as Assistant Secretary for Community Planning and Development; President Bill Clinton appointed him HUD Secretary in January 1997, and he served through the end of the Clinton administration (NDTV; Reuters).

Cuomo’s first bid for statewide office in New York ended before it began: in September 2002 he withdrew from the Democratic gubernatorial primary a week before the election, trailing Carl McCall (Reuters). He rebuilt from Albany’s lower offices instead, winning the attorney general’s race in November 2006 and serving from 2007 to 2010, where he prosecuted public corruption cases and targeted financial misconduct during the 2008 crisis (Reuters; NDTV). Elected governor in November 2010 and reelected in 2014 and 2018, he ran New York from January 2011 through August 2021 (Reuters).

The record he left in Albany was heavy on concrete. Cuomo oversaw the new Mario M. Cuomo Bridge across the Hudson, the LaGuardia and JFK airport renovations, Moynihan Train Hall and the Second Avenue Subway expansion (NDTV). In mid-2020 his detailed daily news conferences on COVID-19 made him a national figure as the virus ravaged New York (Reuters).

The 2021 resignation

The collapse was fast. On December 13, 2020, former aide Lindsey Boylan accused Cuomo on Twitter of “a culture within his administration where sexual harassment and bullying is so pervasive”; his aides were later found to have retaliated by leaking her confidential personnel files (Reuters). In February 2021 Boylan published an essay describing being kissed on the lips and enduring unwanted touching, and Charlotte Bennett, a health-policy aide, told the New York Times that Cuomo had asked her inappropriate questions about her sex life — claims he denied (Reuters).

On February 28, 2021, state Attorney General Letitia James announced an outside investigation. On August 3, James announced that investigators Joon Kim and Anne Clark had concluded Cuomo had sexually harassed multiple women — describing unwanted groping, kissing and hugging, inappropriate comments and a “toxic” workplace — after 179 interviews and a review of more than 74,000 documents (Reuters). A week later, on August 10, Cuomo announced his resignation, effective August 24; Lieutenant Governor Kathy Hochul succeeded him (Reuters; NDTV). Throughout, Cuomo maintained he had not intentionally harassed the women, saying he had fallen behind what was considered appropriate workplace conduct (Associated Press).

The comeback that wasn’t

Cuomo’s 2025 mayoral bid began as his redemption tour — the experienced manager returning to steady a city he characterized as threatening and out of control, carrying the power of a political dynasty and endorsements from local leaders and labor groups, with political action committees pulling in large sums (Associated Press). It ended on June 24, 2025, when Mamdani, a 33-year-old democratic socialist and state Assembly member since 2021, declared victory in the Democratic primary and Cuomo conceded, saying he had called to congratulate him: “Tonight is his night. He deserved it. He won” (Associated Press).

The numbers showed what had happened. With 92% of precincts reporting, Mamdani took 43.5% of first-choice votes to Cuomo’s 36.4%; Comptroller Brad Lander, who had cross-endorsed Mamdani in the ranked-choice contest, took 11.3% (Bisnow). Mamdani’s platform — freezing rents on the city’s roughly 1 million stabilized apartments, raising taxes on the wealthy to fund free buses and childcare, and building 200,000 permanently affordable social-housing units — had been amplified by an army of young canvassers and slick social-media videos, and it resonated with voters living in a city where apartment rents were setting record highs (Bisnow; Associated Press). Mamdani was endorsed by two of the country’s foremost progressives, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Bernie Sanders (Associated Press).

Cuomo opted to stay in the race on an independent ballot line for November (Hindustan Times). The general election drew more than 2 million voters — the most since 1969, 38% of eligible voters, the highest percentage since 2001 (Hindustan Times). Mamdani won outright, was sworn in on January 1, 2026, and became the city’s first Muslim mayor and its youngest in more than a century (Hindustan Times). Cuomo married Kerry Kennedy in 1990; they have three daughters and divorced in 2005, and he later had a long-term relationship with television host Sandra Lee (NDTV).

What this profile does not claim

It does not present the 2021 harassment findings as adjudicated facts — they are the conclusions of the AG-commissioned investigation, which Cuomo contested, and the profile says so. It does not name Cuomo’s 2025 independent ballot line, which appeared in snippets only. It does not assert exact super PAC dollar totals, a Bloomberg super PAC contribution figure, or a Bill Clinton endorsement — all snippet-level. It does not cover any Department of Justice scrutiny of his COVID-era nursing-home testimony, which was not researched for this profile, and it asserts nothing about what Cuomo has done since the November 2025 election.