Gov. Cuomo overwhelmingly beats out Cynthia Nixon for Democratic Party nomination

[Jim Lane]

21. Nixon has already induced Cuomo to abandon some of his right-wing positions

The Atlantic has a good article about this aspect of the race: “Is the 'Cynthia Effect' Real?” After pointing out that Cuomo has the lead in the polls and a LOT more money, it reports:

But Cuomo, 60, seems to be scrambling to shore up support among the progressive voters who could thwart his renomination in the September primary. In the less than two months since Nixon declared her candidacy, Cuomo all but reversed his opposition to legalizing recreational marijuana, which he called “a gateway drug” as recently as last year; proposed a ban on single-use plastic bags, again barely a year after he signed legislation barring New York City from imposing a tax on them; vowed to use his pardon power to restore voting rights to as many as 35,000 felons; and declared a state of emergency at the city’s public-housing authority.

. . . .

Just about all of Cuomo’s recent policy announcements have come on issues Nixon had raised in the early days of her campaign. 

And then, of course, there’s Cuomo’s cozy relationship with the turncoat Democrats of the so-called Independent Democratic Conference – another subject on which he has recently mended his ways:

Nothing irritates Nixon and other New York progressive activists more than Cuomo’s acquiescence to—or, in their view, his preference for—the arrangement by which Republicans have controlled the state Senate for the last several years despite Democrats holding a majority of the seats. A group of Democrats broke away from their party to form the Independent Democratic Conference and aligned themselves with Republicans, who also gained support from a conservative Democrat who represents a heavily Orthodox Jewish district in Brooklyn that voted for Trump.

Until Cuomo brokered the intraparty deal this spring—another move that came just days after Nixon’s entry into the gubernatorial race—progressives had accused him of choosing not to use his considerable influence to bring the warring factions together. He even drew a rebuke from the national Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee shortly after Trump’s election in 2016. As progressives see it, Cuomo preferred not to have a unified Democratic legislature because it meant he could claim credit for orchestrating bipartisan victories and escape blame for not moving further to the left.

Nixon will have a good case for having advanced Democratic Party principles in state governance, even in the likely event that she gets fewer votes than Cuomo in the primary.