BROOKLYN, N.Y. ― Gov. Andrew Cuomo won the Democratic gubernatorial nomination for the third time Thursday, overcoming a spirited progressive challenge that highlighted the ongoing ideological divide within the Democratic Party.
Cuomo defeated Cynthia Nixon, 52, an actress and education activist backed by an array of left-leaning groups, who had trouble convincing voters that she had the experience needed to run the fourth-largest state in the country.
Cuomo, 60, a two-term incumbent, is due to face Dutchess County Executive Marc Molinaro, a Republican, and former Syracuse Mayor Stephanie Miner, a Democrat running as an independent, in the November general election. He is heavily favored to win a third term.
“Cuomo may be re-elected but Albany has been transformed forever,” said Joe Dinkin, head of campaigns for the progressive Working Families Party, which backed Nixon’s bid. “To beat Cynthia Nixon, Cuomo had to spend tens of millions of dollars and also make serious policy concessions to progressives, from criminal justice reform to funding the subways.”
Indeed, Cuomo raised $35.6 million as of the latest pre-election disclosure and spent $8.5 million in the three weeks before the final filing period.
Nixon, by contrast, raised and spent $2.5 million. The vast fundraising gap prevented Nixon from establishing her name recognition, let alone disseminating her message. Her campaign first purchased television airtime just three days before the election.
Cuomo also pivoted to the left in order to undermine Nixon.
After Nixon entered the race, Cuomo restored voting rights for paroled felons, released a state study that reviewed marijuana legalization favorably and, perhaps most significantly, in April struck a deal to disband the Independent Democratic Conference, a breakaway faction of state Senate Democrats who aligned with Republicans (albeit after passage of the state budget in March).
The IDC has been a particular sore point for Cuomo’s progressive critics, who believe he deliberately encouraged the faction’s alliance with Senate Republicans in 2013 and subsequently allowed it to endure to serve as a scapegoat for the failure of progressive priorities. Together with state Sen. Simcha Felder, who also caucuses with Republicans, the IDC empowered a Republican majority that refused to take up a series of liberal laws approved by the Democratic-run state Assembly. The stalled measures include bills protecting the young undocumented immigrants known as Dreamers, codifying women’s abortion rights, shifting the state to renewable energy, modernizing archaic voting laws, boosting school funding and enacting state-level single-payer health care.
Cuomo has had a rocky relationship with the Democratic Party’s progressive wing since he first took office in 2011 and immediately cut both taxes and education spending.
However, just as Nixon’s challenge prompted an adjustment in his political calculations, a surprisingly strong primary contest in 2014, when Zephyr Teachout received 34 percent of the vote, nudged Cuomo to the left in his second term.
That proved helpful to the New York governor in his bid for a third term, allowing him to point to several major progressive accomplishments he has passed since winning re-election. He banned fracking in 2014; passed a $15 minimum wage and paid family leave in 2016; and in 2017, created the Excelsior Scholarship program, which provides a tuition-free public college education to some underprivileged students (though the stringent eligibility standards have severely limited the program’s reach).
