Cynthia Nixon's bid to deny Gov. Andrew Cuomo a third term has been met with a hard line of resistance from the party establishment, inside the state and nationally, and a paid media blitz from Cuomo, who tried throughout the campaign to cast himself as both liberal champion and hard-bitten foe of President Donald Trump.
Nixon, who is pushing for universal rent control, single-payer health care, new funding for public schools and a large-scale renewal of New York City's broken-down subway system, which is controlled by the state, frequently describes Cuomo's record as insufficiently ambitious for one of the country's bluest states.
"I voted for him eight years ago because I remembered his dad," Nixon said of the governor and his father, the popular late former Gov. Mario Cuomo, at a rally in Brooklyn on Saturday. "And because I believed that he was a Democrat, the way he said he was. But what happened? Since he's taken office, he seems to have forgotten that he's a Democrat. He's governed like a Republican."
The charge is a familiar one among New York progressives, who fault Cuomo for the state's failure to pass its own DREAM Act, legislation to protect abortion rights and serious campaign finance revisions. And while they credit his successful push to legalize same-sex marriage in 2011, years before most other states took the step, his critics also point to it as evidence that he is not committed to delivering on other liberal priorities.
On the trail last weekend, Cuomo veered strategically between listing his achievements and railing against the Trump administration.
"The President says, 'I'm fighting with Gov. Cuomo but it's just Gov. Cuomo that I'm fighting with, just Gov. Cuomo -- everybody else agrees with me,' " Cuomo said at a rally on Long Island, rehashing his recent Twitter dust-up with Trump before framing the ask: "I want you to come out Thursday and vote for me. And I want, when you fill in that little hole there on that little ballot, I want you to be saying, 'No, President Trump, it's not just Andrew who disagrees with you. Every decent New Yorker disagrees with you.' "
Cuomo, who led his progressive challenger in a poll out Monday by more than 40 points, has one eye on Thursday's vote and another on Marc Molinaro, the Republican candidate already taking potshots at his expected fall foe. Nixon, meanwhile, is holding out hope for an Election Day thunderbolt while also pumping up allied candidates down the ballot.
A fight, at least in the press, to the end
Throughout the campaign, Cuomo has mostly left the work of chopping away at Nixon to campaign aides and supporters. Live-tweeting through the primary's only debate, in late August, Cuomo staffers called Nixon "unhinged" while the governor, onstage, fought to keep his cool. Last weekend, he publicly distanced himself from the printing and distribution of a mailer, sent to Jewish voters by the state party, that falsely accused Nixon of being "silent on the rise of anti-Semitism."
Nixon's campaign has also pursued a two-pronged approach, alternating between searing criticism of Cuomo directly and much broader objections to a state government they view as grotesquely transactional.
The battle lines were drawn early on, when within weeks of Nixon's entering the race in March, she secured the backing of the New York-based progressive Working Families Party, a process that led to a rift within that party that its leaders blamed on Cuomo. From April on, the New York Democratic establishment and its progressive insurgency would wage one of the primary season's hottest conflicts.
Groups like Indivisible and local Democratic Socialists of America chapters eventually lined up with Nixon while organized labor, the state party Cuomo effectively controls and most of New York's top elected officials -- along with Hillary Clinton and former Vice President Joe Biden -- backed the governor, who also secured a lukewarm endorsement from the New York Times editorial board.
For all the respect and support her campaign has amassed on the left, Nixon has never trailed Cuomo in public polling by less than 20 percentage points. Cuomo's lead grew over the summer as his hard-charging campaign unleashed a torrent of television ads -- including one that aired right before the debate -- often featuring Biden's kind words.
Nixon, who was outspent by nearly 20 to 1 during a three-week span in August and at about that clip through the campaign, has mostly directed her limited resources to digital efforts and field work.
Cuomo supporters, like Stu Loeser, the longtime former spokesman for Mayor Michael Bloomberg, said the governor's advantage heading into primary day goes beyond the gulf in spending between the candidates -- and points to a misreading of the electorate by Cuomo's Democratic opponents.
"Progressives say all decisions should be made purely on the merits and that's why we should be pursuing affordable housing and everything else," Loeser said. "And there are a lot of people out there who think, 'We lose every time that happens. And this guy is concerned about us.' "
The progressive insurgency grows — but can it win?
The stakes of the primary escalated further in May, when then-state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman resigned after multiple women alleged, in a New Yorker report, that he had assaulted them. Suddenly, one of the most powerful statewide jobs in the country -- and a launching pad to higher office -- was up for grabs.
Cuomo-backed New York City Public Advocate Tish James, a longtime Working Families Party stalwart whose embrace of the governor frustrated some old allies; Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, who held a narrow lead in a recent poll and has attracted support from the real estate industry; and progressive favorite Zephyr Teachout, the anti-corruption activist, are about even-odds to win the four-candidate contest. The result could have an outsize effect on national politics, depending on how aggressively the winner sees fit to oversee Trump, his administration and financial titans on Wall Street.
Teachout and New York City Councilman Jumaane Williams, who is taking on Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul, have along with Nixon come together to form a de facto progressive ticket, one that now extends into the handful of state Senate races where grass-roots-powered primary challengers -- a mostly young, diverse group seeking to oust entrenched incumbents -- are pledging to unlock the seemingly impenetrable maneuvering that steers Albany, the state's corruption-plagued capital.
"There is a movement happening," Nixon senior adviser Rebecca Katz said. "It began with (Alexandria) Ocasio-Cortez and we've cross-endorsed state Senate candidates, we've cross-endorsed other challengers, Zephyr, Jumaane -- it's a different feel because we're all in this together. That will be a lasting thing."
Big drama down the ballot
Even if Nixon seems unlikely to take the reins next year, there is still an opportunity for progressives on Thursday to gain a deeper foothold in Albany -- and fundamentally shift the state's politics.
The movement is headlined by Alessandra Biaggi, a former Hillary Clinton campaign aide and lawyer in Cuomo's counsel's office, who is challenging the erstwhile leader of a breakaway band of Democrats who, for seven years, collaborated with state Republicans.
State Sen. Jeff Klein, of the 34th district, was a charter member of the so-called "Independent Democratic Conference," a group of eight Democrats (by the time it folded last spring) that effectively guaranteed GOP control of the chamber.
Their power grab also enflamed the progressive opposition to Cuomo, who critics say blessed the arrangement because it allowed him greater influence over the kind of legislation that hit his desk -- and protected him from the kinds of liberal bills he never intended to sign but also didn't want to be seen vetoing.
If Biaggi and her allies -- including Jessica Ramos and Zellnor Myrie, all three of them endorsed by the Times -- succeed on Thursday, Cuomo could be without some old allies and, potentially, forced to take up a more aggressive agenda.
In an interview, Biaggi praised Nixon for immediately bringing the Independent Democratic Conference into the headlines upon entering the race, but said it was Ocasio-Cortez's win in late June that began to open doors for her own bid -- sometimes literally.
"Her race put a massive crack in cynicism, in a way that people said, 'Whoa, this is possible and it can happen here,' " Biaggi said. "More volunteers came in, more shifts knocking doors, more small-dollar donations, and it has been one of the key pieces to our progress right now."
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