Washington, D.C. -- In a town where claiming credit is more important than actual accomplishment, there is no more accomplished credit-claimer than Housing and Urban Development Secretary Andrew Cuomo.

Son of Mario Cuomo, the famously indecisive New York governor, Andrew Cuomo was named to the second-tier Cabinet post in 1997. Since then, he has used the department's press operation to industrialize the Washington art of self-promotion.

Cuomo knows better than anyone that the perception of power is almost as good as actual power, and he works hard to generate that perception using the oldest trick in Washington: acting like a prima donna. Cuomo is famous for holding press events with pomp and circumstance befitting a foreign dignitary, and for refusing to take the podium at luncheon speeches until every plate and fork has been cleared away.

Of course, it's hard to be a prima donna if nobody cares what you have to say, which is why Cuomo is constantly pestering other Cabinet secretaries and government officials to hold joint press conferences.

Perhaps the most telling example of Andrew Cuomo's style comes from the new book by former Clinton aide George Stephanopoulos, who describes Andrew's 1993 attempt to railroad his father into accepting a Supreme Court nomination while simultaneously railroading President Clinton into offering it.

But it's not just the quality of Cuomo's self-promotion, it's also quantity. A visit to the HUD news page shows that Secretary Cuomo has issued nearly 600 press releases since the beginning of 1998, more than two for each working day.

The releases range from grand statements of wishful thinking ("Cuomo Says HUD Will Drive Slumlords Out of Business") to banal statements of the obvious ("Cuomo Tells Mayors: ‘HUD is Back in the Housing Business’") to mind-bending statements of the surreal ("Off-Broadway Play to be Presented at HUD by Formerly Homeless Children Living with AIDS"). Mainly, though, the press releases fall in two categories: progress reports on Cuomo’s efforts to eliminate "fraud, waste, and abuse" and announcements of funding for federal projects.

More telling is a statistical analysis of Cuomo’s prodigious public relations efforts: of those 600 or so press releases over the last 15 months, more than 450 of them contain the name "Cuomo" in the headline. For the sake of comparison, Cuomo's boss (some guy named President Bill Clinton) is mentioned in a mere 20 headlines, which puts him in third place. Landing the second-place spot, with 44 headline mentions, is Vice President Al Gore.

It's no secret that Cuomo and Gore are extremely close friends and political allies. As it became clear earlier this year that Gore would have the Democratic presidential nomination handed to him on a silver platter, Cuomo cut short speculation that he would run for the New York Senate seat being vacated by Daniel Patrick Moynihan. ("My wife actually made this decision for me," he said, invoking another hoary political tradition.)

When he bowed out of the Senate race, insiders assumed he was angling for a role in Gore's presidential campaign. Recent rumors have Cuomo positioning himself to be Gore's running mate, but despite being married to a Kennedy, a vice-presidential nomination would be a tall order for Cuomo: he brings nothing to the ticket demographically or geographically, and he has never held elective office. More reasonable rumors have Cuomo hoping to be named White House Chief of Staff in a Gore administration.

Being Chief of Staff means being a hatchetman, and Cuomo may be using his Cabinet post to sharpen his blade. In February he released a report charging the Boston Housing Authority with racial discrimination. Boston officials cried foul, arguing that the discrimination charges were based on conditions years ago and that the report did not factor in reforms implemented since 1996.

Mayor Thomas Menino, who was lobbying hard to win the 2000 Democratic National Convention for Boston, could barely restrain his anger at Cuomo. "These are the days that you wonder what somebody's agenda may be," Menino told Boston reporters. "Sometimes in this business of government people like to make news at appropriate times."

Which is the story of Andrew Cuomo's career. If you want to guess what news HUD will be making in the coming two years, just ask yourself one question: What can HUD do to help Gore's presidential bid while simultaneously getting Andrew Cuomo's name in the headline?