Cynthia Nixon will not be the next governor of New York. The former Sex and the City star-turned liberal politician star lost to incumbent governor Andrew Cuomo in the state’s Democratic gubernatorial primary on Thursday night.
Nixon, the former actress, made her political debut as a progressive, running in favor of single-payer health care, marijuana legalization and many other social platforms familiar to those on the far left.
By 9:30 p.m. on the east coast, CNN projected that Cuomo would “easily” win the nomination, in part because of the $8 million he spent campaigning in the final three weeks of the primary push. The primary did seem to push Cuomo’s campaign further from the center than usual, though, with Nixon’s liberal platform making her a worthy opponent with many of the progressive goals some of the more liberal Democrats in the state would like to see the governor support. Said CNN’s report:
Pushing for universal rent control, single-payer health care, new funding for public schools and a large-scale renewal of New York City’s broken-down subway system, which is controlled by the state, Nixon spent much of the spring and summer relentlessly attacking Cuomo and his political agenda as insufficiently ambitious for one of the country’s bluest states.
“I voted for him eight years ago because I remembered his dad,” Nixon said of the governor and his father, the popular late former Gov. Mario Cuomo, at a rally in Brooklyn on Saturday. “And because I believed that he was a Democrat, the way he said he was. But what happened? Since he’s taken office, he seems to have forgotten that he’s a Democrat. He’s governed like a Republican.”
Nixon won at least one county in the primary, but the state’s Democrats came out overwhelmingly in favor of Cuomo, who will seek a third term against Republican Marc Molinaro in the November general election. Cuomo has served as governor of New York since 2010 and was attorney general of the same state before that.
(via CNN)