New York Democratic gubernatorial candidate Cynthia Nixon roasted her primary opponent Gov. Andrew Cuomo during an address in Albany on Tuesday.
“Vote for the homo, not for the Cuomo,” Nixon said during her rebuttal to the annual Legislative Correspondents Association dinner. The line was a reference to the 1977 New York City mayoral campaign which pitted Ed Koch against Cuomo’s father Mario. During the campaign, flyers appeared with the line saying “Vote for Cuomo, Not the Homo,” which Koch had blamed on the Cuomo camp.
When Nixon first announced her run earlier this year, former New York City Council Speaker and mayoral candidate Christine Quinn referred to the new candidate as an “unqualified lesbian,” for which she later apologized. Nixon subsequently began printing campaign buttons and t-shirts with the phrase on them.
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The rest of the former Sex and the City star’s 12-minute address was similarly merciless.
“I hear that Andrew Cuomo has not attended this event very often as governor and I’ve been trying to figure out why,” Nixon said. “Because it’s such a fabulous evening. It must be either that he dislikes the press, or that he can't laugh at himself or just that he won't come to any event that’s less than $25,000 a plate.”
She also referenced a famous line from Michelle Obama in the 2016 presidential campaign, in the context of Nixon’s desire to legalize marijuana.
“It’s like Michelle Obama sort of said: When they go low, we get high,” Nixon joked.
She also poked fun at how her upstart candidacy has already influenced Cuomo’s policy positions from the left, saying, “At the rate Cuomo is changing, I expect that he’ll be rolling a joint in his first campaign ad.”
Linking the process of coming out as gay to Cuomo being an allegedly fake Democrat, Nixon said: “I think it’s time for Andrew Cuomo to come out as a Republican. The rumors have been out there for years. He’s not fooling anyone. Who knows why he’s stayed in the closet this long.”
