Cynthia E. Nixon

Cynthia E. Nixon

Democratic

BACKGROUND: Nixon, 52, is best known for her Emmy Award-winning portrayal of Miranda Hobbes in “Sex and the City,” an HBO series. But she’s acted in dozens of other TV programs, films and theatrical productions and has won both a Tony and a Grammy. Before running for office, she had been a longtime education activist, calling on New York to spend more on urban schools, as well as working for abortion rights and LGBT rights. She graduated from Barnard College. She has two children from her first marriage and one with education activist Christine Marinoni, whom she married in 2012.

ISSUES: Nixon has made the deterioration of the New York City transit system a major theme, seeking to blame Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo for a lack of investment on repairs. She has called for expanding the subway and bus fleets, fixing the system’s signal problems and replacing “creaky” subway cars. To pay for it, she calls for “congestion pricing” (effectively, tolls) for driving in certain parts of Manhattan, higher taxes on millionaires, and a “carbon tax” on industry and other sources of pollution. She backs a single-payer (publicly run) health care system, stronger rent-control laws, legalized (and taxed) marijuana, an end to cash bail and solitary confinement of prisoners, lower campaign contribution limits, and a ban on companies with state contractors from donating to campaigns. She also criticizes Cuomo for tacitly backing a band of renegade State Senate Democrats who had formed a power-sharing coalition with Republicans and blocking, she says, Democratic initiatives.