Andrew M. Cuomo served as the 56th Governor of New York State.
Born into a proud Italian-American family and raised in Queens, Governor Cuomo is dedicated to public service and has the proven leadership skills to make government work for the people of New York.
The son of Matilda and the late Governor Mario Cuomo, Andrew Cuomo learned from a young age the importance of fighting for equality and opportunity. His father’s legacy of public service remains an inspiration in Andrew’s life.
After graduating from Fordham University and Albany Law School, Governor Cuomo led his father’s successful campaign for governor, and later served as an assistant district attorney in Manhattan. Andrew became committed to fighting homelessness and in 1986 founded Housing Enterprise for the Less Privileged (HELP) in Brooklyn, NY – a single shelter for families that has since grown to become a national leader in the fight against homelessness, serving people of all backgrounds, including veterans, survivors of domestic violence, people with health challenges and disabilities, and seniors. Governor Cuomo's dedication to and tenacity on behalf of the homeless led him to serve as Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary in President Clinton’s administration.
He was elected Attorney General of New York in 2007 and later served as Governor for 11 years. There, Andrew Cuomo took the theory of progressive government and made it a functional reality, while simultaneously reimagining and rebuilding New York’s outdated infrastructure and putting New York’s fiscal house in order for the first time in a generation.
Under Andrew Cuomo’s leadership, New York once again became the nation’s beacon for social progress. As a result of his time in office, we have a stronger economy, a cleaner environment, a fairer criminal justice system, and more high school graduates attending college than ever before.
Again and again, he successfully fought for and delivered progressive accomplishments including marriage equality, the codification of Roe v. Wade into New York State law, the most comprehensive paid family leave policy in the nation, a $15 minimum wage, free college tuition for New York's middle class, and the nation's strongest gun violence prevention laws.
At the same time, Governor Cuomo demonstrated that progressive politics does not mean irresponsible spending. He enacted a fairer, more progressive tax code, aggressively lowering taxes for the middle class and creating a permanent cap on property taxes, while making New York a more attractive place to do business, by cutting corporate and manufacturing taxes to the lowest levels in decades and lowering the estate tax.
Governor Cuomo successfully enacted the most ambitious infrastructure program in the country rebuilding LaGuardia and JFK airports, Penn and Moynihan train stations, the expansion of the Second Avenue Subway, and the new Mario Cuomo and Kosciuszko bridges. He also made historic investments in education, economic development and healthcare, adding more than 1 million previously uninsured New Yorkers to health insurance plans.
During Andrew Cuomo's tenure, the state had its highest credit rating in forty years, unemployment was down in every region, and for a solid decade state spending was kept under a 2 percent cap.
And during the dark days of COVID it was his voice and his steady hand that helped lead this state and the nation out of the once-in-a-century pandemic and through recovery.
Andrew Cuomo is the father to three daughters: Mariah, Cara, and Michaela, and his dog, a Northern Inuit named Captain.