Who is Cynthia Nixon?

Nixon is best known for her time playing Miranda Hobbes on the HBO show "Sex and the City" and for Tony award-winning roles on Broadway.

She has never run for public office before, but she has a long history of advocacy, particularly as an education advocate and an advocate for marriage equality. She has been a spokesperson for the advocacy group Alliance for Quality Education and has expressed support for Planned Parenthood.

She was also a vocal supporter of Mayor Bill de Blasio during his first campaign for mayor, in 2013. Nixon's wife also worked for the de Blasio administration, but she resigned before Nixon announced her candidacy for governor.

What platform is Nixon running on?

Nixon has accused Governor Andrew Cuomo of not doing enough for liberal causes. She has received the endorsement of several progressive groups, including the Working Families Party, which gave Nixon their line on the ballot - meaning she will be on the general election ballot, even if she does not win the Democratic primary.

She has made fixing the subways and buses a focal point of her campaign, and has placed the governor at fault for their current state. She has called for congestion pricing and a tax on wealthy New Yorkers to pay for it.

 

Nixon has made the legalization of marijuana a part of her platform, pointing to racial disparities in arrests.

She has unveiled a plan to improve under-performing school districts that involves a tax on New Yorkers making $300,000 or more. She has also called for an end to solitary confinement and for changes to a law dealing with youthful offenders.

She is calling for the passage of the Reproductive Health Act, something she says the governor has had eight years to pass it and has failed to.

She has also called for abolishing ICE, calling the group a "terrorist organization."

What do her opponents say?

Governor Andrew Cuomo has spent a lot of his primary campaign taking aim at President Donald Trump - but he and his surrogates have also attempted to paint Nixon as an inexperienced celebrity at times.

When Nixon called for closing juvenile jails as part of her plans for jails and prisons across the state, the governor's counsel, Alphonso David, said the jails did not exist. In reference to all of Nixon's plans, David said: "What we have here is, based on what I have seen and based on what I have heard, is comments that are completely uninformed and essentially developing policy based on conversations, or cocktail party conversations based on a table napkin. You can't do that."

The governor's campaign also accused Nixon of flip-flopping on the state's 2 percent property tax cap when she said in June that she supports it, claiming that she had previously said she was against it. Nixon claimed the Cuomo campaign was misrepresenting her position.