Speaking to reporters last summer, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo made it clear that he had no interest in repairing an unusual rift in the state Senate between Democrats and eight breakaway members who caucused with Republicans, giving the GOP a narrow majority in the upper chamber. “If they don’t want to marry, I have no power or role in forcing the marriage,” Cuomo shrugged. “There is no political shotgun marriage equivalent of the old days.”​

But on Tuesday Cuomo did just that, brokering a reconciliation between Andrea Stewart-Cousins, the leader of the Senate Democrats, and Jeff Klein, the leader of the breakaway faction, known as the Independent Democratic Caucus. At an event in New York City on Wednesday, the two sides formalized the deal, which would give Stewart-Cousins control of a united Democratic caucus in the state Senate.* “It’s not easy to put your own interests aside for the greater good,” Cuomo said. It was a statement rich with irony given Cuomo’s own suspected role in creating the IDC-GOP alliance to further his interests, including a possible run for president.



What changed? Since the election of Donald Trump, groups across the state have sprouted up to demand the eradication of the IDC; all eight of its members are facing primary challengers. But the biggest difference between this spring and last summer is that Cuomo is facing a primary challenge from his left in the insurgent candidacy of Cynthia Nixon.



Nixon, best known for her role as the character Miranda from Sex and the City, has made the IDC a centerpiece of her campaign, saying it shows Cuomo’s fairweather commitment to progressive values, his ruthless personal ambition, and his failures to protect the state from the Trump administration’s abuses. In a statement released on Wednesday morning, she rolled her eyes at the unification deal: “If you’ve set your own house on fire and watched it burn for eight years, finally turning on a hose doesn’t make you a hero.”



Cuomo and his allies have responded to Nixon’s candidacy in two ways: smirking at her lack of political experience and her dim electoral prospects, and attacking her for the same. Cuomo dismissed her candidacy as “political silly season”; his ally Christine Quinn, the former speaker of the New York City Council, called Nixon an “unqualified lesbian.” But the reunification deal shows the extent to which Nixon’s embryonic candidacy has already shaken up politics in the state. For the last eight years, Cuomo has used the IDC to carefully calibrate the pace of reform in New York, a mechanism that allows him to build a resume that is ostensibly appealing to voters in both his home state and more conservative areas of the country. But it has also meant that the state’s progressive priorities have often been watered down or ignored.

