The Race Is On: Nixon Attacks, at First Campaign Event for Governor

One day after announcing her bid for New York State governor through a video on Twitter, actor and activist Cynthia Nixon addressed supporters at her first official campaign event on Tuesday at the Bethesda Healing Center, a Pentecostal Christian Church in Brownsville, Brooklyn.

Pledging to take on the crumbling mass transit system and address long-standing problems in state education funding, Nixon said her campaign would be about making New York State a national leader on progressive issues  — and she relentlessly attacked incumbent Democrat Andrew Cuomo's record.

"We need to show the entire country and the world that in the era of Donald Trump's divide-and-conquer agenda, New Yorkers will come together and we will lead our nation forward," said Nixon. "Our state could be a place where every single New Yorker could have what we need to thrive, if we didn't have a governor determined to sell New York off to the highest bidder." 

The event was a low-key affair, choreographed more for the media than the small number of supporters gathered in the room. Nixon was introduced by Zakiyah Ansari, from the Alliance for Quality Education, who described Nixon as someone who was in the trenches with advocates, fighting for public school funding for two decades.

For her part, Nixon sought to introduce herself as more than an actor and mother of three with a wife she "loves to pieces." She stressed her life-long connection to New York, where she has been fighting for education, LGBTQ and women's rights, and her eagerness to enter the race as a first-time candidate, joining thousands of other women running for office for the first time this year.

Nixon faces steep odds as she seeks the Democratic nomination. Cuomo has already picked up key endorsements like 1199-SEIU, the state’s largest healthcare workers union. Earlier this year, he also secured the support of the Human Rights Campaign, an organization that advocates for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer civil rights.

He's also banked more $30 million for his re-election, an advantage Nixon sought to portray as a weakness, arguing that his campaign relies on big-dollar donors to fund his campaigns. 

Citing a statistic first reported by The New York Times last year, Nixon said that about .01 percent of Cuomo's donations are from small-dollar donors, "So if you're a regular person in New York, the chance that Andrew Cuomo is going to care about your concerns is exactly that. Point one percent."  

She also wasted no time attacking Cuomo's credibility on fighting corruption. 

"If Washington is a swamp than Albany is a cesspool," Nixon said to applause. "Andrew Cuomo promised to clean up Albany, but instead he and his cronies have cleaned up for themselves. There is a reason people close to Andrew Cuomo keep ending up under indictment for corruption," she added, referring to the recent conviction of Cuomo's one-time right-hand adviser, Joseph Percoco. 

Cuomo faces real challenges in the weeks ahead. The state budget is due April 1. In years past, the governor has made it a point of pride to reach an agreement on time or close to the deadline. But the state currently faces a $4.4 billion deficit, with funding questions on major policies ranging from mass transit and infrastructure to criminal justice reform and voting rights hanging in the balance.

To reach a deal, Cuomo negotiates as one of the “four men in a room,” including State Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, Senate Majority Leader John Flanagan and Independent Democratic Conference Leader Jeff Klein, who leads a breakaway faction of Democratic state senators.

The split among the Senate Democrats —and Cuomo’s inability to reunite them — is another line of attack from Nixon.

Still, Cuomo retains an undeniable advantage in the race with supporters and surrogates who can advocate for him statewide. A recent Siena College poll, taken before Nixon launched her campaign, showed Cuomo ahead of a potential Nixon challenge by 47 points.

One Cuomo supporter, Christine Quinn, fired back at Nixon in an interview with The New York Post, calling her an "unqualified lesbian." Quinn is currently vice chair of the State Democratic Party. She lost her bid for the Democratic nomination for New York City mayor in 2013 to Bill de Blasio, who was backed by Nixon. Later in the day, Quinn sought to clarify her comments on Twitter.

"Cynthia Nixon aggressively opposed my candidacy in New York, despite my qualifications for the office and despite my strong progressive credentials," Quinn, who is openly gay, tweeted.  "I was attempting to make a comparison between the two of us."

The Cuomo campaign declined to issue a statement in his name instead relying on surrogates to attack Nixon's qualifications and credibility.