Cynthia Nixon questioned Gov. Andrew Cuomo's record as a centrist Democrat who governed for much of his first term from the moderate, Clintonian wing of the Democratic Party. | AP Photo Nixon kicks off campaign with blistering attack on Cuomo's record

Cynthia Nixon's first official day on the campaign trail got a little boost from the failing subway system that she has already made a central issue in her underdog fight to oust Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

At about 10:45 a.m. Tuesday — 15 minutes before she was scheduled to make her official campaign announcement one stop and a short walk away — Nixon stood on the subway platform at Utica Avenue, looking around with resignation. She was having an experience common among New Yorkers these days: The 3 train that would take her to her final stop at Sutter Avenue was not running. In fact, two consecutive 3 trains had been pulled out of service, because of a sick passenger.


One woman got off a train coming from the other direction, talked a moment with Nixon, and told her, “I’m voting for you, definitely.”

Aside from picking up a vote, the delay also provided a convenient opening for Nixon in the attack she had in store moments later inside the Bethesda Healing Center, a small Pentecostal church in Brownsville where Nixon chose to officially kick off her campaign.

“I got here just in the nick of time. I allowed an hour and a half for what should have been a 30-minute ride — Cuomo’s MTA," she told a crowd of about 50 people. "Three trains pulled out of service. We had to get off three trains. I’m glad I’m here. I’m glad you’re all here."

Her dig at Cuomo’s handling of the subway system was just the beginning.

On her first full day as a candidate in the Democratic primary against Cuomo, the "Sex and the City” star launched into a blistering attack on Cuomo’s tenure as New York’s governor, calling him a fake Democrat who’d failed to live up to the promises he campaigned on when he first ran for office, and offering herself up as the alternative to his particular brand.

In a brief speech, delivered from behind a lectern with a paper “Cynthia for NY” flyer tacked up to it, Nixon told the room that she’d voted for Cuomo eight years ago “because I believed that he was a real Democrat.”

She attacked his tacit approval for the Independent Democratic Conference, a group of renegade Democrats who’ve conferenced with Senate Republicans for years. And she took aim at an obscure deal that has long haunted Senate Democrats in Albany — Cuomo’s rumored bargain with Senate Republicans in 2010 to allow them to draw their own district maps, all but ensuring they’d stay in power in the state Senate for the next decade, despite an overwhelming Democratic enrollment advantage across the state.

That maneuver, Nixon said, suppressed “Democratic voters, most especially Democratic voters of color."

“And with these two moves, Andrew Cuomo gave the Republican Party in New York state the power to block almost all of our big Democratic legislative priorities,” she said.

Nixon questioned Cuomo's record as a centrist Democrat who governed for much of his first term from the moderate, Clintonian wing of the Democratic Party, maintaining close ties with major corporations and avoiding tax hikes.

She called his budgets “inhumane” and argued he’d ignored the state’s infrastructure and mass transit needs.

She attacked him over his ethics, particularly the recent conviction of his former top aide Joe Percoco on federal corruption charges, calling Albany “a cesspool.”

“New York’s eight years under the Cuomo administration have been an exercise in living with disappointment, dysfunction and dishonesty,” she said. “Andrew Cuomo promised to clean up Albany, but instead he and his cronies have cleaned up for themselves. There is a reason that people close to Andrew Cuomo keep winding up under indictment for corruption. His right-hand man Joe Percoco was just convicted of selling his office to the highest bidder."

Under Cuomo, she said, the state had become even more unequal, with the gap between the incomes of the wealthy and the poor widening.

“Let me tell you about this kind of crushing inequality. This is not something that just happens by mistake. It comes from a choice. It comes from a choice to slash taxes for corporations and the super rich and slash services on everybody else," she said. "And it’s a choice we’re used to being made by Republicans like Donald Trump. But for the past eight years it’s a choice that has been made by our governor, Andrew Cuomo.”

“Since taking office, Andrew Cuomo has given massive tax breaks to corporations and the super rich while he has decimated our infrastructure and starved our state, its cities and its rural areas of their most basic services,” she said.

Nixon pledged to fund her campaign without taking corporate donations, drawing a stark contrast with Cuomo, who she said had built a “$31 million war chest with the donations of millionaires, billionaires and corporations.”

“Do you know how much of that came from small donors? 0.1 percent. If you’re a regular person in New York, the chance that Andrew Cuomo is going to care about your concerns is exactly that — 0.1 percent,” she said.

Cuomo, she argued, has stymied the hopes of progressive Democrats across the state.

“We could have fully funded our public schools. We could have enacted campaign finance reform. We could have enacted the Women's Equality Agenda and the New York Dream Act. We could have fixed our subways, strengthened rent control and become a leader in renewable energy,” she said.

“I am running for governor because I want these things for New York and New Yorkers. We want our state back. We want it to work again," she said. "We are tired of corruption and dysfunction in Albany. We are tired of fake corporate Democrats who won't lift a finger unless their donors say it's OK.”

Nixon was surrounded by a crush of cameras and reporters as she finished her speech, but a 59-year-old certified nursing assistant and New York Communities for Change activist from Ditmas Park named Winsome Pendergrass stopped her first, to talk about rising rents.

“We will fight for you, girlfriend. We will pull for you, girlfriend,” Pendergrass said. “But we’re begging you, don’t screw us over.”

Pendergrass later told reporters she thinks Nixon’s candidacy is “wonderful” and “a breath of fresh air.”

Nixon took a handful of questions as she made her way out of the church. One was how she’d fix the subway system.

“We can’t just find the money that’s in the budget as it exists now,” Nixon said. “We need a dedicated stream of revenue to fund the subway.”

Asked whether she supports congestion pricing or a millionaire’s tax to fund the subway, ideas put forth by Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio, respectively, she replied, cryptically, “I think both of those are good ideas.”

Her lack of experience in government? Not a problem, she said. “It’s time for an outsider.”

The outsider label had already been deployed by the Cuomo team earlier in the day, giving Nixon a taste of the attacks she may face in the coming months.

Former New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, a surrogate for Cuomo, told the New York Post on Tuesday morning that Nixon's candidacy was "a flight of fancy on her part,” and she attacked her as an "unqualified lesbian."

“Cynthia Nixon was opposed to having a qualified lesbian become mayor of New York City. Now she wants to be an unqualified lesbian to be the governor of New York. You have to be qualified and have experience. She isn’t qualified to be the governor,” Quinn said.

“My being a lesbian or her being a lesbian has nothing to do with why we’re running for office," Nixon responded when asked for comment Tuesday.

In the back of the room at the Bethesda Healing Center, 66-year old Norman Frazier, a Brownsville resident, said he’d decided to come to the campaign rollout after hearing about it Tuesday morning from people in the neighborhood. “I heard on the news about her issues — housing, homeless, education. I said 'I got to get out here.'”

Asked whether he had voted for Cuomo for governor previously, Frazier said, “Yes I did.”

“That’s why I’m so disappointed,” he offered. “And I feel like he threw us under the bus with the subway system, the housing system, the homeless system. So I am so disappointed in him.”

Frazier, who said he has lived in Brownsville for 50 years, said he thought Cuomo had been scarce in the neighborhood. “I can’t remember, as long as I’ve been in Brownsville, Cuomo coming to Brownsville.”

A spokesman for Cuomo's campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.