Scoring a primary victory over Andrew Cuomo, a relatively popular incumbent and legacy of the Democratic party machine, was never going to be easy. But, for actress and education activist Cynthia Nixon, victory is looking more and more possible.
On Saturday, members of the state’s far-left labor-focused Working Families Party voted by an overwhelming 91 percent majority to support Nixon for the Democratic nomination. Just four weeks after announcing her run, Nixon’s already got an edge on the labor vote. How important is the Working Families Party, really? In New York, a state with 12.4 million registered voters—including 6.2 million Democrats and 2.8 million Republicans—just 46,000 are registered to the WFP. But their sway is broader than their numbers.
Cuomo fought hard to keep WFP in his corner for a reason: In 2010, they netted him 155,000 votes in the general election. And in May 2014, after a tense convention fight, Cuomo’s surprisingly successful progressive challenger Zephyr Teachout—now Nixon’s campaign treasurer—failed to secure the WFP ballot line because New York City mayor Bill de Blasio brokered a deal requiring the sitting governor to commit to more progressive policies in his second term. Come September 2014, voter turnout was low enough in the primary that every die-hard labor vote counted.
Cuomo’s relationship with the far-left wing of his own party has only suffered since. Even so, his campaign continued to name the WFP among his endorsements up until last month—when the Gotham Gazette called foul, and the campaign scrubbed the online list. Now that Nixon’s won the members’ love, a 2014-level turnout could help her to victory. Steven Romalewski, an elections expert at CUNY, told Politico shortly after Nixon entered the race that if no more voters turn up than did for the Cuomo-Teachout matchup last go round, she could win with a lead of no more than 75,000 votes.
And, so far as turnout is concerned, Ester Fuchs, a veteran of former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg’s office and political science professor at Columbia University, told THE WEEKLY STANDARD it will be particular problems, more so than personalities, that steer primary voters to the polls. “It’ll come down to what issues people are going to vote on in the primary,” said Fuchs. “There are tremendous dissatisfactions on service delivery issues in the city—and also obviously on the cost of housing.” More of the blame belongs to de Blasio than Cuomo for the failing subway system, Fuchs believes. But Nixon’s campaign cleanly and convincingly blames Cuomo’s Albany for both income inequality and infrastructural rot.
In fact, leveling straight-talking critiques at Cuomo’s record has proven one of Nixon’s greatest strengths. He’s not a “real Democrat,” she says, and the charge sticks. A recent campaign press release pokes fun at the Cuomo campaign’s claim that he and socialist Senator Bernie Sanders are “in lock-step” on progressive policies and Democratic priorities: “Governor who once proudly boasted he governed like a Republican now claims to have morphed into a Democratic socialist,” it reads—under the cheeky subject line, “Need a laugh?” Cuomo “can’t quit Republicans,” she says, branding him a “corporate Democrat.” And where he’s reputedly duplicitous, she’s unbridled—or “mad as hell,” as she told a recent audience: Mad that Cuomo’s let black New Yorkers rot in jail for drug offenses whites commit “with impunity” and mad that, under Cuomo’s watch, real estate’s allowed to flourish in certain parts of the city, while the slums and the post-industrial towns upstate decay.
And this summer, peak primary season, Cuomo’s cabinet will be busy fighting off corruption charges. “The thing about corruption in New York state is it just doesn’t stick,” Fuchs argues, describing a base-level tolerance of dirty dealing up in Albany: “Basically, it’s hard to make [Cuomo] look worse than people’s general view of the political process.” By the standard to which New Yorkers are accustomed, a newbie Nixon looks pure as the driven snow.
And her path to candidacy plays to a liberal sensibility that’s hungry for inspiring idealism and neat narratives. Nixon told New York magazine that she, like so many female first-time candidates in 2018, most of them further down ballot, was driven to action when Trump won even after the Access Hollywood tape. She describes attending the Women’s March in D.C. and feeling she should do more. As a celebrity candidate who represents, in substance and motivation, a referendum on the Trumpian way, it’s a little ironic that she shares the president’s talent for theatrically and effectively exploiting her opponent’s weaknesses. She’s subtle, however, where Trump—and Cuomo, for that matter—is brash. Driven by anti-Trump disgust, she improves on his winning brand of celebrity candidate.
“She is a classic case of somebody having the capacity to run, but maybe not the skills to govern,” Fuchs worries, with a nod to Nixon’s deft messaging and masterful command of audiences. You’d be a fool, at this point, to say she can’t win—but does she have what it takes to run a populous and complicated state? There’s one way to find out: Stay tuned, New York.
