Sex And The City's

Cynthia Nixon finds a new role in politics.

- Daniel D’Addario

SITTING IN THE OPEN KITCHEN OF HER New York City apartment, the first-time political candidate snacks on pistachios and talks campaign-finance reform. “In New York, you can’t call out Wall Street, right?” says Cynthia Nixon, who is running for the Democratic nomination for governor of New York. She rises to buzz in a delivery, and on the way to the door continues in campaign mode. “The private prison system is built on debt, right? Without the banks lending them all this money to expand, they would not be able to do what they’re doing. Fundraising is monopolizing everything.” Just before opening her door, she says, “That’s why campaign-finance reform is so important. It’s the mother reform, the reform that makes all the other reforms possible.”

She opens the door to accept a large, thin box. “You look like an actress,” the messenger says. Nixon has grown accustomed to this: “I am. Sex and the City.” Nixon’s most famous role is but a beat in a conversation dedicated to the role for which she’s now auditioning.

To those who hadn’t followed Nixon’s activism before she announced her candidacy, she’s still Miranda Hobbes, the tough-talking best friend from six seasons’ and two movies’ worth of Manhattan exploits. But to New York politicos, she’s a rising challenger to Governor Andrew Cuomo. New York politics has long been defined by personality and often haunted by scandal. (The state’s attorney general, Eric Schneiderman, resigned on May 7 after allegations of his abusing women were published by the New Yorker. “I have not assaulted anyone,” Schneiderman told the magazine.) Nixon appears, for a celebrity, almost prosaically scandal-free. Her persona—the smart, relentlessly logical law nerd from Sex and the City— precedes her and may help make her case.