Andrew Cuomo (D)

Andrew Cuomo left his Albany post in 1984, the first in a series of career moves to strike out on his own and emerge from his father's long shadow. He worked as an assistant district attorney in Manhattan and then joined a private law firm, though he refused to allow "Cuomo" to be added to the firm's name.

While practicing law, Cuomo also developed a passion for the issue of housing. He started the Housing Enterprise for the Less Privileged, or H.E.L.P., a non-profit partnering government and private developers to build housing for the homeless. Cuomo began working for the organization full-time in 1988, a move that also allowed him to escape criticism that he had used his connections in Albany to attract clients for his law firm.

By 1991, H.E.L.P. had assisted in building 1,000 units of housing with an annual grant income of $30 million. New York City Mayor David Dinkins (D) tapped Cuomo to head a commission on homelessness, and in 1993, he moved to Washington to become an assistant secretary for Housing and Urban Development under President Bill Clinton.

HUD Secretary

Cuomo rose rapidly in the Clinton administration. He authored a federal report on homelessness and played a key role in the creation of empowerment zones in impoverished areas throughout the country. By the end of Clinton's first term, Cuomo had become part of the president's inner circle on urban issues while also forging close ties with Vice President Al Gore (D). Though living in Washington, Cuomo kept an eye on his home state and was considering a challenge to Senator Alfonse D'Amato (R-N.Y.) in 1998 when Clinton nominated him to replace Henry Cisneros as HUD. secretary in November 1996.

The new secretary, just 39 when appointed, embarked on an aggressive overhaul of a department that had become notorious for wasteful spending. Moving quickly to consolidate programs and restructure HUD, Cuomo won the largest budget increase in a decade, which was seen as a vote of confidence from the White House. By the end of his term in office, HUD had shed its label as a "high risk" agency by the Government Accountability Office.

2002 Run for Governor

Cuomo returned to New York after the Clinton administration with an eye on reclaiming the governor's post in 2002 that his father had lost eight years earlier to George Pataki (R). But before he could take on Pataki, who was running for his third term, Cuomo faced a divided Democratic Party. Many of the party's African American and Hispanic leaders had already rallied around state Comptroller H. Carl McCall (D) and took umbrage at the notion that Cuomo, in his first bid at elective office after living in Washington for eight years, would challenge a man seeking to become the state's first black governor.

The press flocked to the storyline of an ambitious son seeking redemption for his father's political failures. The similarities between the Cuomos were unmistakable, down to their deep voices and pontificating styles. The younger Cuomo would joke to reporters that "the greatest burden you carry being the son of Mario Cuomo is his nose."

The race did not begin well for Cuomo. He drew heavy fire for belittling Pataki's role following the terrorist attacks of Sept.11, 2001, saying that the governor had merely "held the leader's coat," in reference to popular New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani (R). With the party establishment coalescing around McCall, Cuomo skipped the state Democratic convention in May 2002, and his standing in the polls dissipated over the summer. Facing defeat in the party primary in September, Cuomo withdrew a week before the election, bringing his first foray as a candidate to an embarrassing end.

2006 Bid for Attorney General

Cuomo slipped further in the public eye in 2003, when his bitter separation from Kerry Kennedy became tabloid fodder.The episode pushed him into the political wilderness for months, but he eventually eased back into the spotlight while working behind the scenes to repair his ties to the state party. Spitzer had quickly emerged as the likely Democratic nominee for governor in 2006 and Cuomo turned to the race to replace Spitzer as attorney general, which was crowded with Democrats but lacked a frontrunner.

Cuomo's closest competitor in the 2006 primary was Mark Green, a staunch liberal and former New York City public advocate who had previously made failed bids for U.S. Senate and mayor of New York. Green fought Cuomo hard, attacking his record as federal housing secretary and criticizing his experience as irrelevant to the post of attorney general. But carrying the party leadership support he lacked in 2002, Cuomo easily held off Green in the primary.

Cuomo faced a former district attorney of Westchester, Jeanine Pirro (R), in a general election that initially looked to be even more bruising than the primary. Though he and Spitzer had never been close, Cuomo linked himself closely to Spitzer's legacy as attorney general. One of his television ads showed supporters holding foot measures to demonstrate that Cuomo could fill the "big shoes" Spitzer was leaving. Ultimately, Cuomo cruised to victory, capturing 58 percent of the vote after Pirro became ensnared by the disclosure that she was under investigation for allegedly conspiring to wiretap her husband.

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