The governor’s victory came after months of at times, bitter and often personal battles with Nixon. | Richard Drew/AP Photo Cuomo sails to primary victory, with eyes to the White House

NEW YORK — This time, conventional wisdom proved right.

The Associated Pressed called the Democratic Party vote for New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Thursday within a half hour of polls closing, beating back Cynthia Nixon’s anti-establishment attack from the left with a message of experienced leadership.


Although Cuomo tried to position the race as a contest between himself and President Donald Trump, who is deeply unpopular in many areas of his home state, the primary election became a referendum on Cuomo’s eight years in office, his centrist style of governing and the state’s Democratic establishment.

Now as Cuomo positions himself for a possible 2020 presidential run, he’ll do so as the head of New York’s sizable Democratic majority in a state that fashions itself as a leader in challenging Trump’s actions to push the country to the right.

"It's a great night for the governor, and we're all proud of that because we believe he's got a great record as governor," said Bill Mulrow, a former top Cuomo aide. "He's obviously willing to fight back against what's going on in Washington."

Officially, Cuomo says he's not running, but with 88 percent of districts reporting Cuomo posted big numbers, beating Nixon roughly 65 to 35 percent, he has some momentum.

George McDonald, a Cuomo ally and founder of the Doe Fund, said he was holding out hope.

"He's by far the best candidate the Dems" could run and "I'm going to try to convince him of that, even though he said he's going to serve four more years," he said.

And unlike some Democrats, the primary showed Cuomo’s willingness to move where the party is going.

“Even though he’s been a centrist moderate Clintonista he has shown that he can be pushed to the progressive wing of the party rather swiftly and easily,” Fordham political science professor Christina Greer told POLITICO.

The governor’s victory — buoyed by a $30 million war chest and the endorsements of virtually all of New York’s labor unions, its highest-profile elected officials and newspapers — came after months of at times bitter and often personal battles with Nixon, who before the campaign had been best known as Miranda on "Sex and the City." Early in the campaign, a Cuomo surrogate called Nixon an “unqualified lesbian,” and Nixon attacked Cuomo as “notoriously vindictive” and often tone deaf in his public interactions with women.

Cuomo led Nixon by double digits in every poll taken since she entered the race in late March, but the governor took the challenge from the high-profile actor more seriously than his contest four years ago against then-unknown Fordham University Law Professor Zephyr Teachout, who — to the surprise of the political class — won a third of the vote.

This time around Cuomo took no chances. He blanketed cable television with ads touting his record on gun control and women’s rights and attacking Trump, spending $16 million over a period of six weeks between mid-July and late August, more than 25 times what Nixon was spending. In the waning days of the campaign, Cuomo spent roughly $400,000 a day. Nixon’s campaign put up one television ad, in the lower-priced Albany region, in the final week of the campaign.

"We took on one of the most powerful governors in America. We started with nothing and we earned every single vote," Nixon said in a lengthy concession speech. "What we saw tonight was not what we hoped for, but I am not discouraged. We have fundamentally changed the political landscape in this state."

Thursday’s win also came after a series of late mistakes in the final weekend of Cuomo’s campaign. He opened a new span of the Tappan Zee Bridge the Friday before the primary only to be forced to close it down hours later, because of structural problems with the old bridge. And his campaign spent days defending its involvement in the distribution of a mailer that implied without evidence that Nixon was anti-semitic, before admitting that one of the governor’s former senior aides had signed off on it and another senior aide had drafted it.

For much of the day before the primary, Cuomo effectively went into hiding, keeping his whereabouts a secret from the press in an apparent effort to evade further questions about the mailer.

Although socially liberal, the governor pursued moderate economic policies and seemed to prefer Republican control of the state Senate in an overwhelmingly blue state, an arrangement he helped ensure by allowing Republicans to redraw election districts in their favor.

Brendan Cheney and Gloria Pazmino contributed to this report.