March 19, 2018

It’s Official: Cynthia Nixon Is Running for Governor of New York

“I love New York. I’ve never wanted to live anywhere else, but something has to change.”

After weeks of hinting at a potential run, actress Cynthia Nixon announced on Monday that she will officially challenge two-term incumbent Andrew Cuomo in the Democratic primary for New York’s governor race. 

“I love New York. I’ve never wanted to live anywhere else, but something has to change,” Nixon says in a video that accompanied her announcement. “We want our government to work again, on healthcare, ending mass incarceration, fixing our broken subway.”

The two-minute video features Nixon discussing rising inequality rates throughout the state while riding both New York’s Metro-North and New York City’s much-maligned subway system. (Nixon owns an apartment in the East Village.)

“We are sick of politicians who care more about headlines and power than they do about us,” Nixon continued.

The announcement on Monday comes hours after the release of a new Siena poll that showed Cuomo holding a significant lead over his new primary challenger, with registered Democrats saying they strongly preferred the current governor over Nixon by a 66 to 19 percent margin. “While Nixon does a little better among younger and upstate Democrats, she doesn’t have the support of more than one-quarter of either group,” the Siena pollster Steven Greenberg said. The primary is scheduled for September 13.

Nixon’s video prompted a slew of humorous tweets invoking her role as Miranda Hobbe’s on HBO’s “Sex and the City.” The actress has been a prominent face in New York City politics for years, and was a strong supporter of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s successful 2013 campaign against Christine Quinn.

De Blasio, whose time at Gracie Mansion has been marked by public feuds with Cuomo, recently praised Nixon as “extraordinary.”

https://twitter.com/socarolinesays/status/975795627044016128

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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