BORN WINNER
Nixon nabs key liberal nod as she turns 52
HAPPY BIRTHDAY to her.
Cynthia Nixon picked up the endorsement of the influential progressive group New York Communities for Change Monday — on what the Democratic primary candidate noted was her 52nd birthday.
“I can’t think of a better birthday present that I could get than an endorsement from New York Communities for Change,” Nixon, who is challenging Gov. Cuomo, told the organization’s members in front of a rent-stabilized building in Crown Heights, Brooklyn.
Nixon recalled her own mother’s realization that they’d been overcharged by the landlord of their fifth-floor walkup when Nixon was a child.
“I remember how angry she was that he had been cheating us and lying to us, but the thing I remember more was how proud she was that she had investigated and figured it out, and that she was holding him accountable,” Nixon said.
New York Communities for Change has often put pressure on Mayor de Blasio, a longtime friend of Nixon’s, on issues like homelessness and affordable housing. But on Monday the entire focus was on Cuomo, who she said had failed to deliver tighter rent laws and close loopholes that allow landlords to remove units from stabilization when they are emptied.
As she has before, Nixon blasted Cuomo for accepting campaign cash from big landlords and real estate companies.
“I will tell you that in my campaign I am accepting no corporate money whatsoever,” she said.
And Nixon compared Cuomo to President Trump, saying that the “inequities” in New York state were the result of choices, not errors.
“This is a choice . . . being made to slash taxes and slash restrictions on the wealthiest and the most powerful,” she said. “And it’s a choice that we usually see made by Republicans like Donald Trump.
“But in New York State it is a choice that we are seeing made again and again by our governor, Andrew Cuomo.”
In a statement, Cuomo campaign spokeswoman Sarah Paden said “Someone should actually show Ms. Nixon New York’s housing laws — they were strengthened both times they were up for renewal under this Governor, who also secured a record $20 billion in state funding to fight homelessness and build affordable housing.” ACTRESS AND gubernatorial wannabe Cynthia Nixon may have just had an Ed Koch moment when it comes to upstate New York. When The New York Times Magazine asked Nixon the oft-debated question of where “upstate” begins, the Democratic candidate cited Ithaca – about a fourhour drive from New York City and far beyond most co mmonly cited borders for the start of upstate. “I don’t think the Hudson Valley is upstate,” Nixon said. “Once you get to Ithaca . . . you’re starting to get upstate.” Nixon’s response drew bipartisan scorn on social media. “We might agree on the pervasive, corrosive corruption infecting the Governor’s #NewNormal, but Ithaca?” tweeted Dutchess County Executive Marc Molinaro, a GOP candidate for governor. A Nixon spokeswoman said she was only “having fun with the question” and does not really believe upstate begins in Ithaca. Nixon’s comments stirred memories of late former Mayor Ed Koch, who said in a 1982 Playboy interview that life in upstate New York was “wasting time in a pickup truck when you have to drive 20 miles to buy a . . . Sears Roebuck suit.”