By Hal Brown
Preface:
When I wrote this Cynthia Nixon hadn’t tweeted about Gov. Cuomo. Scroll down to see wha she tweeted.
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In 2013 Cynthia Nixon, who is best known for her role as Miranda Hobbes in “Sex and the City”, challenged Gov. Andrew Cuomo in the Democratic Party primary. She announced her candidacy on Twitter:
Subir wrote a Daily Kos story, “Vote for Cynthia Nixon” endorsing her. It generated 478 comments.
Nixon lost. She lost badly. Cuomo received 65% of votes and Nixon got 35%.
Gov. Cuomo is currently in serious trouble for the nursing home scandal. He has prompted stories titles like this: “Trump made Cuomo a Covid hero. A nursing home scandal proves the honeymoon's over.”
The scandal has brought people who worked for him, and those who he dealt with, who had decidedly unflattering things to say about his personality, into the open. For example “‘Bullying, screaming’: In Albany, Cuomo wields phone as a weapon” is the title of a Politico article. This seems to have been common knowledge among the politically connected in New York. From Politico: “I've never seen something like it,” Reed (R-N.Y.) said in an interview. “I've heard about the wrath and his anger, and that was the one time where I received it personally.”
We like to think of “our” Democrats as “super-nice” people unlike so many nasty Republicans. We know there are some exceptions. LBJ is the first to come to mind. See “Why Lyndon Johnson, a truly awful man, is my political hero” from The Guardian.
What we seem to have with Cuomo are two unrelated stories.
One is about withholding the state's nursing-home death toll from COVID-19 for political reasons. This was during a time when he was being lauded for his leadership and his daily candid press conferences. The other story is that he had an authoritarian streak a mile wide and, daring to delve into making a psychiatric assessment, something of an anger control problem.
I wonder what Cynthia Nixon is thinking and feeling about her loss right about now.