Cynthia Nixon has promised to raise taxes on the rich to increase funding for public schools and mass transit, and she supports a single-payer health care system. | AP Photo Cynthia Nixon: I’m a democratic socialist

ALBANY — Gubernatorial candidate Cynthia Nixon considers herself a democratic socialist, she told POLITICO on Tuesday.

Nixon, an actor best known for her role in “Sex and the City,” is running a left-flank challenge to Gov. Andrew Cuomo in a Democratic primary this September. She has promised to raise taxes on the rich to increase funding for public schools and mass transit, and she supports a single-payer health care system.


Nixon spokeswoman Lauren Hitt said that the campaign has been in touch with members of the Democratic Socialists of America, which backed Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as well as Julia Salazar, a state Senate candidate in Brooklyn who has cross-endorsed Nixon. In an email passed along by Hitt, Nixon told POLITICO that she sees herself in their vein.

“Some more establishment, corporate Democrats get very scared by this term but if being a democratic socialist means that you believe health care, housing, education and the things we need to thrive should be a basic right not a privilege then count me in,” Nixon wrote. “As Martin Luther King put it, call it democracy or call it democratic socialism but we have to have a better distribution of wealth in this country. I have long stood in support of a millionaires tax, Medicare for all, fully funding our public schools, housing for all and rejecting all corporation donations — all of which align with democratic socialist principles.”

Nixon's campaign against Cuomo, who has governed as a fiscal centrist, has won support from offshoots of Sen. Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign, including Our Revolution and its New York affiliate, the New York Progressive Action Network.

But until Tuesday, her campaign has not publicly embraced the socialist label as other political figures have — including Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez, who has endorsed Nixon.

During an interview with The Dig podcast, Nixon said she disagreed with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s negative response to a question about whether Ocasio-Cortez’s surprise primary victory over Rep. Joe Crowley meant socialism was ascendant in the Democratic Party.

“I think Nancy Pelosi is dead wrong, I think that is exactly what is happening,” Nixon said. “I think that of course wealthy people and big corporations have always had an outsized influence on American politics and world politics, but at this moment, when you look at what the agendas of corporations are and you look at governmental policies, there is almost no daylight between them.”

Dutchess County Executive Marc Molinaro, the Republican gubernatorial nominee, said Nixon’s position was out of step with New Yorkers.

“Millionaires like Cynthia Nixon may be able to dream about socialist paradises, but here in the real world, people can't afford the taxes they have,” Molinaro stated. “New York spends too much as is. If Ms. Nixon thinks socialism is the answer, she should ask the people of Venezuela.”

Nixon's opponent, Cuomo, has supported increases to education funding, spoken in more recent years about income inequality and pushed to raise the minimum wage to $15. The governor, particularly during his first term, boasted that he has cut income taxes for all New Yorkers since taking office — including those making more than $1 million a year — and eliminated the estate tax.

“How do you fix taxes? You reduce costs. How do you reduce costs? You reduce expenses. And you go to work and you make that government work better, and more efficiently and more effectively,” the governor said in 2014, accepting an award from the Tax Foundation. “The ultimate reality of all of this is the unemployment has gone down to 6.2 percent. … That is major good news for the state of New York and it is proof positive that we are heading in the right way and these financial policies we’ve extended for the state.”

Cuomo is the only governor to have been endorsed by the Business Council of New York State and his campaign chairman, Bill Mulrow, is an executive at the Blackstone private equity firm. But Cuomo has the support of the New York State AFL-CIO as well as almost every major union.

At the Democratic State Convention in May, Cuomo said his administration and campaign are based on delivering results for working people.

“We are not a party of words, we are a party of action,” the governor said. “Our platform is not theoretical, it is practical. We are not a party of elitists who are promulgating conceptual bromides. We are the party that enacts real life solutions for real people with real problems in real time.”

Erie County Democratic Chairman Jeremy Zellner, who is supporting Cuomo, said the governor’s record is what’s important.

“I don’t want to get caught up in the labeling between socialist or capitalist,” he said. “I think the governor has done a very good job of being a progressive and tackling the inequality that’s out there with the minimum wage increase and his other actions.”

A Cuomo 2018 spokesman did not immediately comment.