Actress Cynthia Nixon of Sex and the City to run for NY Governor

[Tintrlvr]

I wonder what a general election race between Cynthia Nixon(D), Andrew Cuomo (I), and Some Guy (R) would look like...

Something like this?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Senate_election_in_New_York,_1980

Except that there is no way in hell a Republican takes 45% of the vote in 2018.

There were a lot of headwinds for the Democrats in that election. Misogyny definitely weighed on Holtzman's vote a lot in addition to vote-splitting with Javits.

If Cuomo loses the Dem nomination but is nominated for Working Families and/or Women's Equality Party (which is apparently stacked with Cuomo's people), do you think he'd win the general?

Cuomo has done everything in his power to destroy the Working Families Party, so I don't understand why would they throw him a lifeline.

If Nixon loses but gets the Working Families line in the general, things can get interesting

The Working Families Party is just an apparatus for union leaders and, while not always cozy with Cuomo, are definitely suspicious of outsider activist candidates, especially wealthy actresses (Teachout, with more union and other institutional left-wing political connections, had slightly more credibility with them and still failed to get the nomination). They might even endorse Cuomo in the highly unlikely circumstance where he loses the Democratic primary.

[Tintrlvr]

A lot of people I know are registered as an independent or 3rd party and so are sh**t out of luck in voting in this primary thanks to New York's ridiculous laws that you had to change parties 11 months before the primary.

Maybe they could have tried registering as Democrats if they were actually serious about electing Democratic politicians after literally the exact same thing happened to them in the Presidential primary two years ago. Morons.

[Tintrlvr]

A lot of people I know are registered as an independent or 3rd party and so are sh**t out of luck in voting in this primary thanks to New York's ridiculous laws that you had to change parties 11 months before the primary.

Wait seriously?

That's unfortunate.

And ridiculous.

It was an issue back in 2016 during the primary. Some in the Bernie wing thought it was a major reason he lost the NY primary. I don't have a problem with closed primaries but the 11 months seems arbitrarily far away from the actual election.

It's to prevent entryism. Because New York has a fusion system, a lot of minor parties have local or state ballot access. Without these types of limitations, it would be easy for small groups of entryists to hijack the minor parties to run their own candidates, destroying the fusion system. Honestly, I don't see the problem; primaries should be reserved for voters who are devoted to the long-term success of their parties. In that vein, it makes sense to limit party-switchers from voting in the primary until they've been part of the party for a relatively long period of time, in particular long enough so that you can't switch parties in anticipation of voting in a particular primary election. There's no special right to be registered independent until you want to vote in a primary, and pretending otherwise is ridiculous.

(Note that newly registered voters only have to be registered IIRC something like three weeks in advance, so it's only party-switchers who are penalized.)

[Tintrlvr]

This is hard for a socialist like myself to get past, but defenders of Cynthia Nixon insist that her comments were taken out of context and she was really attacking pro-Cuomo unions from the left

https://ucommblog.com/section/state-politics/cynthia-nixon-starts-campaign-governor-attacking-unions

If you are a socialist, just trust me here, the TWU is not your friend or ally.

[Tintrlvr]

An update to the third-party madness: the Serve America Movement has endorsed Miner and her campaign will circulate petitions to get the party on the ballot in November.

I always love me a good chaotic race with a bunch of third parties

But for real though, she would probably be my candidate in the election if I lived in NY.

Same. She's the only one who's not A. corrupt B. very inexperienced C. extreme.

I'll probably be the only Miner vote in my Brooklyn precinct

[Tintrlvr]

Which, if any, counties is Nixon expected win? Or will Cuomo just sweep the entire state?

If Nixon wins any counties, she'll win New York County (Manhattan) and a few counties in the Hudson Valley like Ulster, Columbia, Saratoga and/or Schoharie (but she will undoubtedly be weaker in that area than Teachout was). I think she probably wins Tompkins as well.

Cuomo should most likely sweep everywhere else, though I wouldn't be shocked by a random rural county somewhere like the North Country voting for Nixon, either, and she could win some of the other upstate Teachout >60% counties.

Edit: For reference, the 2014 map: http://alloveralbany.com/archive/2014/09/10/clickable-county-by-county-results-for-the-cuomo-t. Nixon should do much worse than Teachout upstate but noticeably better in NYC (at least in Manhattan and Brooklyn, though she'll be far from winning in Brooklyn).

[Tintrlvr]

Does anybody know in which parts of NY state she has been campaigning?
Where is she out canvassing for votes today?

Nixon has been campaigning almost exclusively in NYC. This is why she will do better in Manhattan and in NYC generally than Teachout but much worse than Teachout (who was Upstate-focused) Upstate. People seem to be trying to apply a uniform swing on 2014, which is foolish because Nixon and Teachout are very different candidates, and Cuomo's popularity has also shifted somewhat since 2014 (recovery Upstate but decline in NYC).

[Tintrlvr]

If you want to know how insanely bad NY's election laws are:

https://mobile.twitter.com/JonCampbellGAN/status/1039882192959270917

Upstate opens at noon?!? I had no idea. Bizarre.

[Tintrlvr]

Does anybody know in which parts of NY state she has been campaigning?
Where is she out canvassing for votes today?

Nixon has been campaigning almost exclusively in NYC. This is why she will do better in Manhattan and in NYC generally than Teachout but much worse than Teachout (who was Upstate-focused) Upstate. People seem to be trying to apply a uniform swing on 2014, which is foolish because Nixon and Teachout are very different candidates, and Cuomo's popularity has also shifted somewhat since 2014 (recovery Upstate but decline in NYC).

'
do you think she will win any boroughs? how much better do you think she will do? The only one she has probably has a chance in is Manhattan.  

I think Nixon wins Manhattan and comes nowhere close to winning anywhere else in the city. No one in Manhattan knew who Zephyr Teachout was in 2014, yet she got 41% of the vote, purely as an anti-Cuomo protest vote from people who had no idea what she stood for. Nixon is focusing a lot more energy and time on Manhattan and should be able to win it. But she is winning white voters (specifically, liberal white yuppies, so not the sort of whites in southern Brooklyn/outer Queens/the South Shore of Staten Island) almost exclusively, which prevents her from making any real headway in the other boroughs.

[Tintrlvr]

So, it wouldn't be expected that there'd be a certain protest-vote of sorts against Cuomo upstate? I'm not suggesting she should be able to win up there as a result of it, but I always imagined anybody running against an incumbent Democrat in the state would do better as a result (not to mention that there's a big correlation in general between incumbent support and minority vote-share, or the lack thereof).

Is it reasonable to expect Nixon will do better upstate in general (even if she wins no non-Tompkins counties) than she would in NYC (perhaps save for Manhattan)?

Yes, I think it is likely that Nixon overall does better Upstate than in NYC, mainly because Nixon will be no higher than the mid-teens with non-white voters, which sets a quite low cap on her performance in NYC. She will, however, do much worse Upstate than Teachout did because Nixon isn't really campaigning Upstate and is spending most of her campaign time talking about NYC issues (like the subway) while Teachout campaigned almost exclusively Upstate in 2014 and focused on issues that resonated Upstate, like teachers' unions. It's worth pointing out that, IIRC, Teachout actually *won* the votes cast in the 2014 primary north of Westchester/Rockland. Nixon isn't going to come anywhere close to that performance. She will, however, improve over Teachout's disastrously poor performance in NYC (i.e., she should get at least around 25% in Queens, 30% in Brooklyn, 50% in Manhattan, etc., each at least something of an improvement over Teachout, who got 22%, 27% and 41%, respectively, in those places).

It is also the case that some of rancor against Cuomo Upstate (especially in the Hudson Valley) that was present in 2014 has since faded away, so even if Teachout were running for governor again instead of Nixon and ran the exact same campaign in 2018 as in 2014, I think she would have declined somewhat Upstate, especially in the Albany area.

[Tintrlvr]

I voted just now. Turnout in my Brooklyn precinct/polling place was very high, much higher than I expected. Had to wait in line briefly to cast my ballot, which has never happened before (and this was at around 9:30, so a bit after the morning rush would ordinarily be over). I imagine my precinct will be a hotbed of Nixon support. Anecdata mean very little, of course, but perhaps the race will be closer than I expect.

[Tintrlvr]

Question:  I know they're a higher percentage of the GOP electorate, but how much does the Italian American vote matter in Democratic primaries in NYS?  Is there one really?

I don't think it's especially distinct as a vote in Democratic primaries except in certain limited areas (Staten Island, parts of Brooklyn). Certainly not large enough or, more importantly, cohesive enough to make a big difference.

[Tintrlvr]

If the WFP wants to keep their ballot line and Nixon wants off, maybe they should look at other candidates to replace her. I suspect that Julia Salazar will be free after tonight.

Ineligible, NY Governor has a minimum age of 30.

Hell, he's 42, I say give it to Jumaane Williams (if he wants it) if/when Nixon drops off the ticket, esp. if/when he loses the Dem LG primary too.

Tbh I think Williams has a very good chance of winning the LG primary.

[Tintrlvr]

If Williams wins without Nixon, it will finally be proof that New York progressives are actually sexists.

Nah, the difference is entirely that black people in Brooklyn and apparently Manhattan and Queens to a lesser degree are voting Cuomo-Williams, which is just black people voting for a strong black candidate. Plus Williams is quite well known and popular in his district in Brooklyn and the surrounding area but Nixon is basically unknown to those voters (her campaign was, shall we say, not adept at outreach to minority voters).

Hochul will win in the end, anyway. Williams is doing terribly Upstate.