Cynthia Nixon says she received more donations from small donors on the first day of her campaign than Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo has in seven years.

"In one day of fundraising I received more small donor (contributions) than Andrew Cuomo received in seven years,’’ Nixon said in an exclusive interview with The Buffalo News.

Cuomo has a financial advantage over Nixon going into his third election for governor. He has a campaign war chest of more than $30 million. Nixon is starting from scratch, and she says she will not accept campaign money from corporate political action committees as Cuomo has.

Her campaign said she received 2,214 campaign contributions of under $200 in her first 24 hours as a candidate for governor. Cuomo, the campaign said, has received only 1,369 such donations since he took office in 2011.

Nixon points to filings at the state Board of Elections to support her claim. We wanted to know if she was right.

Since 2011

Nixon’s claim includes an important caveat: She counts only donations given to Cuomo after he first took office in 2011. She does not count donations Cuomo received when he first ran for governor in 2010.

If you limit the analysis to her time frame, Nixon is right.

Cuomo has received 1,369 donations under $200 since Jan. 1, 2011, according to a query of the Board of Elections database.

That count includes only donations through the middle of January 2018, the latest campaign filing available. We don’t know how many donations Cuomo has received since then. It’s possible he has collected 845 small donations that would make Nixon’s claim wrong. But filings show Cuomo has taken only 644 contributions of under $200 since his last inauguration in 2015.

Before 2011

Nixon would be wrong if she included donations from Cuomo’s 2010 campaign for governor.

Since the start of his first campaign for governor in May 2010, Cuomo has collected 2,898 campaign contributions of under $200, according to campaign finance filings.

Cuomo received 1,529 such donations before 2011, filings show. That’s fewer than Nixon received on her campaign’s first day.

Our ruling

"In one day of fundraising I received more small-donor (contributions) than Andrew Cuomo received in seven years," Nixon said.

She’s right. If you include the small-donor contributions he took during his first run for governor, Cuomo’s small-donor contributions have (so far) outpaced Nixon’s. But that's not what she said.

So we rate her claim True.