ALBANY, NY (WSKG) Actor and public education advocate Cynthia Nixon announced her campaign for governor of New York in a video Monday. She’ll be in a Democratic primary against incumbent Governor Andrew Cuomo
Nixon made her announcement in a video that shows her with her wife and children in her home, and on the streets of New York, taking her child to school and riding the subway.
“New York is my home,” Nixon said in the video, saying she grew up with her mom, a single mother, in a fifth floor walkup.
Nixon decries income inequality in a state that has “incredible wealth and extreme poverty” and the depressed upstate economy where she says half of all children live in poverty.
The video does not mention Cuomo, but in an accompanying release, Nixon calls the governor a “centrist and Albany insider” who’s “time in office has been defined by a string of indictments for corruption”, and backroom deals that allow Republicans to continue to control the State Senate.
Cuomo’s former closest aide was convicted of bribery last week.
“We are sick of politicians who care more about headlines and power than they do about us,” Nixon says in the video.
A Siena College poll released Monday finds that Cuomo leads Nixon among Democrats, by 66 to 19%.
In 2014, an unknown challenger to Cuomo, Zephyr Teachout, won over one third of the primary vote.