Cynthia Nixon: Sex and the City star mulls politics and New York state

The actor and education campaigner is reportedly considering a run for governor but beating Andrew Cuomo will not be easy

The rumors began in August last year. Cynthia Nixon, best known for her role in Sex and the City, was said to be mulling a run for New York governor. Nixon never confirmed it but talk continued. This week it was reported she has begun reaching out to people who could run her campaign. The actor is a longtime education activist in New York City and has ties to both Hillary Clinton and the mayor, Bill de Blasio. She is rumoured to have recruited the two politicos who propelled De Blasio to office.

If Nixon does run, she will face a tough battle. Andrew Cuomo has confirmed he will run for a third term as governor, which would bring him level with his father, Mario Cuomo, who served between 1983 and 1994.

But Cuomo is unpopular with the left wing of the Democratic party and has only a 47% approval rating in New York, according to a February poll. He was given a closer-than-expected run by a progressive professor, Zephyr Teachout, in 2014.

Should Nixon defeat Cuomo – and then a Republican opponent – she will enter the pantheon of celebrities who have made it in US politics. Ronald Reagan played a wealthy orphan in the Oscar-nominated Kings Row. Arnold Schwarzenegger was the Terminator before he was governor of California. Donald Trump fired people from behind a desk.

More pertinently, Nixon would become both the first female and first openly gay governor of New York. And she would hope voters look beyond her fame to consider the activist work she has done for more than a decade.

Nixon became a vocal defender of public education in the early 2000s, when the then New York mayor, Michael Bloomberg, proposed cutting the schools budget. She saw the impact at her daughter’s school and began appearing at rallies, even being arrested outside City Hall in 2002.

It was through that work that Nixon met her wife, education activist Christine Marinoni, in 2004. The pair married in 2012 and have a son, Max; Nixon has two daughters from her previous marriage, to schoolteacher Danny Mozes.

Nixon spent two years campaigning for same-sex marriage before the supreme court ruling in favour in 2015. She also raised funds for De Blasio, a liberal Democrat and strong supporter of education investment, in his 2014 mayoral campaign.

If her activism work has been conducted without attracting national attention, in the past 18 months Nixon’s politics have gained a higher profile. She spoke against the Trump administration at the Women’s March in New York City in January 2017, and appeared on the talkshow The View in April the same year, reiterating the importance of proper funding for public schools.

In January this year she wrote an article for CNN, criticising the Trump administration’s stance on immigration, healthcare and education.

“Our young people are at a disadvantage in the global economy, both because of the disinvestment in our public schools, which the Trump administration wants to make worse, and the crushing student loan debt so many carry when they enter the job market,” she wrote.

‘I feel she is unqualified for office’

Nixon faces numerous challenges. Teachout, who called for higher taxes on the wealthy and increased funding for schools, and would seem to have some commonality with Nixon, surprised many when she received 34% of the vote against Cuomo in 2014.

But in doing so she was able to tap into an anti-fracking sentiment among voters and environmental campaigners, inspiring a swell of activists who campaigned for her in droves. And she still lost by 25 points.

For Nixon to stand a chance against the heavily financed Cuomo she would need to inspire similar feeling. But her stance on key progressive issues is less well known, and some activists are less enthused by her bid.

Moumita Ahmed, who was Teachout’s deputy field director and went on to run the Millennials for Bernie organisation during the 2016 presidential election, said “the last thing Democrats should be doing is running a celebrity when a former reality TV star is our president”.

“I feel that she is unqualified for office,” Ahmed said. “She is great on education but what are her positions on student loans, gentrification, stagnant wage growth, and inequality?”

Watchers of New York politics are similarly sceptical. David Birdsell, dean of the Austin W Marxe School of Public and International Affairs at New York’s Baruch College, said that should Nixon decide to run, “the odds are very strongly against her doing well”.

“I still think right now we have to assume this is a perilously difficult undertaking,” Birdsell said.

In part this is because of the labyrinthine system candidates must navigate to even get on the ballot. Candidates require thousands of signatures – in 2016 it was 15,000 – just to be on the ticket. The incumbent has already sewn up some of the groups, including unions, who would traditionally go door-to-door to collect such names.

A spokeswoman for Nixon was coy on whether she would enter the race, but suggested there was clamour for her to run.

“Many concerned New Yorkers have been encouraging Cynthia to run for office,” the representative said, “and as she has said previously, she will continue to explore it. If and when such a decision is made, Cynthia will be sure to make her plans public.”

If Nixon does announce a run for governor, we might look back at that piece she wrote in January as having dropped the biggest clue.

“With so many races fast approaching, it’s vital that we work to elect progressive, diverse candidates for Congress and state legislatures across the country,” she wrote. “In 2018, each one of us has to do whatever we can to take the government back.

“If we want change, we have to go out ourselves and seize it.”