Who

The son of former Governor Mario Cuomo, Andrew was elected the state's attorney general in 2006.

Backstory

Born into one of New York's most famous political families, Andrew attended Fordham and Albany Law before going to work for his father: At 24, he was running Mario's first gubernatorial campaign; a year later, he'd become one of his dad's chief advisors, earning no shortage of contempt for his arrogance and well-displayed sense of entitlement. Following a short stint as an attorney in private practice, Cuomo went off on his own and founded Housing Enterprise for the Less Privileged (HELP), a political advocacy group, before returning to government. In 1993, President Bill Clinton appointed him to the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Four years later, he was named HUD secretary, which is where he remained until Clinton's term came to an end in 2001.

Cuomo took an unsuccessful shot at the governor's office in 2002. Although the campaign, orchestrated by Josh Isay, started off reasonably strong, it lost momentum after several embarrassing stumbles, including controversial comments about George Pataki's role on Sept 11th. With his poll numbers sinking—and with most Dems supporting Carl McCall—Cuomo soon fell on his sword and dropped out. He was widely expected to throw his hat in the ring once again during the 2006 election cycle. But when Eliot Spitzer announced plans to run on the Democratic ticket, Cuomo wisely decided to mount a bid for attorney general instead. He handily defeated a scandal-plagued Jeanine Pirro by about 20 percentage points.

Of note

As the state's top prosecutor, Cuomo has followed an aggressive, go-after-the-big-guys approach reminiscent of the one pursued by his predecessor, Eliot Spitzer. He gained national attention for taking on corruption in the $85 billion student loan industry, revealing that students were being defrauded by a wide array of commonplace practices such as lenders' gifting vacations to financial aid administrators. He went after Spitzer himself in mid-2007 in the wake of "TrooperGate," issuing a report that the Spitzer administration had improperly used state police resources to collect damning information about Joe Bruno.

More recently, he's launched a massive investigation into the mortgage industry over subprime mortgages gone bad; as part of the crusade, he's followed a Spitzerian path of antagonizing Wall Street, issuing subpoenas to the likes of Merrill Lynch, Deutsche Bank, and Morgan Stanley. And—just like Spitzer once again—it's believed that Cuomo hopes to parlay his reputation as a hard-charging, no-nonsense AG into a job as Governor of New York. Whether he'll take his Spitzer imitation to its logical conclusion and involve himself in a prostitution scandal remains to be seen.

Family ties

Cuomo's brother, Chris Cuomo, is an anchor on Good Morning America and the husband of Cristina Greeven Cuomo, an editor at Jason Binn's Niche Media. His sister, Maria Cuomo Cole, is married to fashion mogul Kenneth Cole. He has two other sisters, Madeline and Margaret.

Personal

Cuomo tied the knot with Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s little sister, Kerry, in 1990. (Their incredibly romantic first date included a tour of a homeless shelter.) They have three children, twins Cara and Mariah, and Michaela. They divorced in 2003 after Cuomo discovered Kerry had been cheating on him with restaurateur/man-about town Bruce Colley. He's now single and divides his time between Albany and an apartment in the financial district.