'Sex and the City' reruns don't count for Nixon
Mike Luckovich Credit: /
This originally appeared in The Point, the editorial board's newsletter for insiders. To subscribe, click here.
Perennial political pot-stirrer E. O’Brian Murray was back in the kitchen Friday, but he was cooking a surprising dish, and his recipe was a bit off.
Murray, a Republican operative who managed the campaigns of former state Sen. Jack Martins in his losing runs for Congress and Nassau County executive, tweeted this Thursday night: “When do the @CynthiaNixon re-runs stop since she is running for Governor? It happened to Fred Thompson on Law & Order as well as @Schwarzenegger”.
But Murray’s contention doesn’t hold much water and by Friday he was backpedaling and calling it a “gray area.”
While it’s true that NBC pulled Thompson’s “Law and Order” reruns in 2007 during Thompson’s presidential run to comply with FCC “equal time” regulations, cable network TNT did not. That’s because those regulations apply to broadcast, not cable transmissions. And while FX chose not to run Schwarzenegger movies during his California gubernatorial run in 2003, likely because of its relationship to broadcast network Fox, HBO and other cable stations continued to do so.
The screenshot Murray included showed Nixon in “Sex in the City” on cable station Bravo.
Cable shows might be forced to comply, too, but so far the courts have not ruled on the matter.
But what’s (far) more surprising than Murray being wrong is Murray going after Nixon. In theory, every good thing that happens to her is bad for Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, who Murray consistently heckles. Murray is not currently pulling a paycheck in this gubernatorial campaign, but his Twitter feed shows a lot of affection for GOP contender Dutchess County Executive Mark Molinaro, and very little for his rival John DeFrancisco, the veteran upstate senator.
So why stir this pot? Just because. Murray said Friday: “I contend when Nixon is on the ballot it will drive Cuomo crazy and he will have to decide if he wants to test the law or just accept it.”
