ZCZC
BFF-13
US-VOTE-POLITICS-NEWYORK,UPDATE
‘Sex and the City’ actress defeated in NY election
NEW YORK, Sept 14, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – Cynthia Nixon, the left-leaning “Sex
and the City” actress turned education activist, lost her dream of becoming
New York governor Thursday, trounced in the Democratic Party primary by the
two-term incumbent.
Andrew Cuomo, 60, in office since 2011 and who commanded a huge war chest
from powerful donors, batted aside her insurgent bid at 66-34 percent, US
media projected not long after the polls closed.
The result puts him on course to win a third term as chief executive of
America’s fourth most populous state, which leans heavily Democrat, in the
general election on November 6.
The 52-year-old mother of three dived into the race in March, in a bid to
become the first woman and first openly gay governor, demanding change and
supporting a raft of left-of-center hot-button issues.
Neither Cuomo nor Nixon made any immediate public comment after US media
called the race.
Lower down the ticket, the candidate Nixon endorsed as lieutenant governor,
Jumaane Williams, a 42-year-old city councilman from Brooklyn, was narrowly
ahead of incumbent Kathy Hochul in a race that was considered too close to
call by US media.
“He is an experienced man and she is totally inexperienced,” explained
Cuomo voter Jack Buchanan, 87, on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.
“We already have a totally inexperienced guy in the White House, so why put
one in Albany?” he added in reference to the state capital and President
Donald Trump, who is hugely unpopular in the city.
“I don’t think she’s qualified,” Nixon voter Jill Vexler told AFP in Union
Square, confessing it had been “more of a sympathy vote.”
“I don’t think she has enough strategy to get the money to do what she
wants to do, but I do like what she wants to do.”
Nixon had hoped to ride the crest of other upset victories by political
first-timers in Democratic Party primaries for congressional seats in places
like New York and Boston.
– ‘Voters pumped’ –
The public school advocate and LGBT activist campaigned hard for universal
healthcare, rent controls and fixing the decrepit subway.
Yet she headed into Thursday’s vote trailing Cuomo in every single
demographic group, the governor leading 63-22 percent, up from 60-29 percent
in late July, according to the latest poll from Siena College.
Winning state-wide is a much tougher gambit than a congressional seat,
especially for a first-timer up against the well-oiled and well-funded
machinery of a sitting governor.
“To break through, that requires a lot of money and organization,” said
Michael Miller, professor of political science at Barnard College. “A lot of
people would be surprised if she did pull it off,” he told AFP.
Cuomo, the son of a governor who married a daughter of Robert F Kennedy and
had three children before they divorced, traded hard on his record on gun
control, gay marriage and the minimum wage.
Said to harbor presidential ambitions, he is a long-time political operator
who served as a cabinet secretary under Bill Clinton at the tender age of 39.
“Andrew Cuomo has outspent us 10 to one which says to me that he is really
scared,” Nixon told supporters in Union Square earlier on Thursday, where
queues formed to take a picture with her.
“Our voters are really pumped to get out and vote today and to get
everybody they know out to vote, and in the end that’s what counts.”
The final home stretch of the race degenerated into ugly spats. She
denounced as a smear campaign a Democratic Party mailer that implied she was
anti-Semitic, to which Cuomo pleaded ignorance.
Then she sailed into controversy and free column inches of her own with a
bagel order that incensed almost everyone, an incongruous lox, cream cheese,
tomatoes and capers — on a cinnamon and raisin bun.
BSS/AFP/MRI/0908 HRS