At some point after the early summer polls confirmed Governor Andrew Cuomo’s ample lead over progressive primary challenger Cynthia Nixon, but before the candidates’ first and only primary debate last week, actress and activist turned gubernatorial hopeful Cynthia Nixon pivoted to her fanbase.
The Emmy-winning actress has embraced the source of her celebrity: Playing snarky workaholic Miranda Hobbes on Sex and the City. The move toward Miranda acknowledges that though she’s been running for governor for several months, among the politically unaware, Nixon’s still better known for a character she played 14 years ago than for her spin on the millionaire’s tax or her critiques of Cuomo’s subway oversight.
At first, Nixon sought to separate herself from the source of her popular fame. She discussed marijuana policy, public housing, and education funding. The show was something that she’d done—it gave her a platform for which she was grateful, she told Glamour—but it wasn’t who she was. Gentle Miranda denialism worked, to a point. Out in public, supporters recognized her as a politician almost as often as they called her “Miranda!”
Since then, though, the strategy’s shifted back the other way. Milking Miranda Hobbes for all she’s worth, the campaign has made and marketed shirts that read “I’m a Miranda and I’m Voting for Cynthia,” pegged to the show’s 20th anniversary. (A note for the uninitiate: To be “a Miranda” is to be a smart-ass with a good job—as opposed to a preppy, a proud slut, or a sex columnist with an unlikely shoe budget.) One design even toyed with the disadvantage of being too much associated with a late-1990s sitcom, reading, “I’m a Miranda Future Governor of New York.”
Giddy supporters I met said they loved the candidate and the actress. Commuters who had their mornings ruined by a rally that (further) delayed their rush hour rolled their eyes at both Nixons’ performance. Two friends who marched with her in Buffalo’s Gay Pride parade said they’d love her even if she were a Republican—a small proof that, for some, star power surpasses politics.
With celebrity endorsements, some even from New Yorkers, and campaign events co-hosted by actresses, she’s continued to capitalize on her celebrity status now in the final stretch. She joked with Seth Meyers Wednesday night, for instance, that the non-Emmy-winning TV star in the Oval Office covets a trophy like hers. A recent event included a raffle for a bong signed by the stars of the show Broad City, a Brooklyn-based buddy comedy, and raised questions of legality. But, as it happens, the sale and promotion of pot paraphernalia is just another one of those drug crimes that, as Nixon would say, white people commit “with impunity.”
In these last days, her newest ad is an interview with comedian John Early who, doing his best Carrie Bradshaw impression, won’t stop riffing on the show while she tries to change the subject back to policy.
Those few registered voters who might still be swayed aren’t, probably, sticklers on the hard-boiled policy points she flubbed in the Daily News this week. (Much as she makes of the millionaire’s tax, for instance, she did not know the state’s top income tax rate.) If they were, they’d have made up their minds already. Being Miranda, in other words, can’t hurt with the indecisive holdouts. It’s a revealing final stretch strategy for a candidate expected to lose. And if indeed she does, she’s just a little more than a week from that post-election slide back toward normalcy—which, for Nixon, will include being recognized in airports as Miranda.
