In Mr. Cuomo’s second term, progressives have enjoyed some successes. Last year, he signed legislation backed by the W.F.P. — part of the party’s compromise for backing him in 2014 — raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour. The teacher’s union and advocates have forced him to retreat on charter schools. But everything progressive that Mr. Cuomo has done, he was forced into by activists posing an electoral threat from his left.

One of the people pushing him has been Cynthia Nixon. She has worked for years with the Alliance for Quality Education, a progressive public school advocacy group backed by the teacher’s union. She first got involved with the organization when Mayor Michael Bloomberg proposed cutting public school budgets in the early 2000s. She enjoyed her first political arrest outside City Hall in 2002 and has been an unflagging advocate of public education since, with a focus on combating segregation.

She’s taking a similar approach to her campaign. Ms. Nixon declared her candidacy in Brownsville, one of Brooklyn’s poorest neighborhoods. She has called for legalizing marijuana, single-payer health care and, citing Mr. Sanders, raising taxes on the rich.

Ms. Nixon has also built on the areas where the Sanders campaign fell short: She has made a point to address racism directly, especially when it comes to housing and educational disparities. She has talked about Mr. Cuomo’s sexism — he invented the bogus Women’s Equality Party during the last election but has refused to push for legislation that would guarantee New Yorkers the right to an abortion if Roe v. Wade is overturned.

Ms. Nixon’s critics say that her appeal will be only in New York City, but there’s good reason to think she will find support elsewhere. In Brownsville, she cited “the tyranny of landlords.” That’s not just an issue in Brooklyn: Places like Syracuse face severe housing crises, and homelessness statewide has grown around 40 percent under Mr. Cuomo as of 2016. Similarly, while much of Ms. Nixon’s public education activism has been based in the city, the issue is a hot one across the state.

This week, the Working Families Party endorsed Ms. Nixon, refusing to once again be bullied by the governor. That’s a great start. Every other progressive organization in the state should get behind her, too, from criminal justice advocates to labor unions. She faces an uphill battle against Mr. Cuomo’s $30 million in campaign funding, but she’s gaining in the polls.

And Ms. Nixon’s is only one name on a slate of reformers, including the candidate for lieutenant governor, Jumaane Williams, a City Council member from Brooklyn with grass-roots support, who has government experience that Ms. Nixon lacks. Across the state, new left-wing candidates are standing up to save New York from Cuomo-style centrism. This is the kind of coalition that working people need to win more power, and it’s the kind of slate commentators always declare impossible — rural and urban, multiracial, feminist, unified against the influence of the 1 percent. Not only could it move the Statehouse to the left. It can show the rest of the country how to win.