Sex And The City star joins New York governor race
Cynthia Nixon, the US actress who shot to fame as workaholic lawyer Miranda on Sex And The City, jumped into the race for New York governor this week, unveiling a progressive platform championing economic equality and eschewing big business.
The 51-year-old declared her candidacy with a two-minute campaign video posted on Twitter that showed her at home with her wife and children, riding the subway, taking one of her children to school and speaking at liberal political causes.
The move confirmed speculation that Nixon would challenge incumbent Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo. If elected, Nixon — who is a vocal opponent of President Donald Trump — would be New York state’s first woman and first openly gay governor.
The actress and liberal activist, who has campaigned for gay marriage, public schools and access to women’s health care, announced that she was “sick of politicians who care more about headlines and power than they do about us”.
“Our leaders are letting us down. We are now the most unequal state in the entire country with both incredible wealth and extreme poverty. Half the kids in our upstate cities live below the poverty line. How did we let this happen?” she said in the video.
“Something has to change. We want our government to work again — on health care, ending mass incarceration, fixing our broken subway.
“Together we can win this fight,” finished the New York-born and -raised Nixon, who said she grew up with her mother in what she called “a one-bedroom, fifth-floor walk-up”.
The Trump presidency has seen a surge in women — particularly Democratic women — running for office. Only eight of the current 50 US state governors are women.
In 2004, Nixon accepted an Emmy award — the highest accolade in US television — for her role as Miranda Hobbes from Trump, the fellow celebrity-turned-politician whose current presidency she publicly opposes.
New York, the fourth-most populous state in the United States, goes to the polls to elect a governor on Nov 6. But Nixon remains a left-field candidate with Cuomo very much the favoured contender ahead of the Democratic Party primary on Sept 13. Despite the stardom brought by her role alongside Sarah Jessica Parker on the hit HBO comedy from 1998-2004 that spawned two movies, a recent Siena College poll found that Cuomo is overwhelmingly favoured by Democrats to Nixon, 66 to 19%.