Cynthia Nixon will not make the same mistake twice. As the former Sex and the City star arrived for a campaign event in Buffalo, New York this week she was greeted by a phalanx of placard-wielding supporters of her opponent, the incumbent governor of the state, Andrew Cuomo.

“Cynthia go home,” one poster said, which was a bit rough given the almost 400-mile journey she’d just made from her home in New York City. “This is upstate – nice of you to find it,” said a snarky second. Another said: “Next stop Ithica.”

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That third placard was an acerbic reference to the notice sent out by a Nixon aide the previous day inviting residents of Ithaca – not Ithica – to join her on a subsequent campaign stop. The spelling mistake was gleefully exploited by a Cuomo spokesperson who quipped that though Miranda, the character she played for six years in the legendary TV show, “never left the island of Manhattan”, you’d think she would “hire better writers than this”.

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“Very unfortunate,” Nixon conceded as she was quizzed about the gaffe at the event in Buffalo. And for good measure she correctly enunciated every letter: “B.U.F.F.A.L.O.”

Hiccups are perhaps only to be expected for a first-time candidate who cut her teeth on the stage, found fame through the small screen and has never before run for elected office. But what is most surprising about Cynthia Nixon’s audacious attempt to unseat Cuomo from the governorship he has occupied for the past eight years is how surefooted it feels.

Nixon is positioning herself boldly as the true progressive voice for New York. She calls her campaign a “people-powered insurgency”, fueled by small donors in contrast to Cuomo’s top-down bid for re-election with its $30m war chest, and her rhetoric is as targeted as much against the machine politics of New York’s dominant Democratic party as it is against Donald Trump. She has cut his polling lead from 47 points in March to 22 last month.

“We have a governor here in Andrew Cuomo who is not a progressive and is barely a Democrat,” Nixon told the Guardian in Buffalo, New York state’s second largest city. “If he wanted true progressive change he would have done it already – you can’t just play progressive in the months leading up to an election.”

Cynthia Nixon (@CynthiaNixon) I’m spending some time at @AnchorBarWings in Buffalo this afternoon with @jimjim340 and Lady Liberty. 🗽 pic.twitter.com/27wVWJiOg9

If this sounds familiar, it is: Nixon channels more than a little of Bernie Sanders. As a framing for the Nixon versus Cuomo battle, think Sanders versus Hillary Clinton – the radical outlier versus the establishment favourite.

She puts it another way: David versus Goliath.

Unlike Sanders, who ran before Trump was ascendant, Nixon has the benefit of the post-Trump bounce that is lifting her up as part of a nationwide resistance. “With Donald Trump in the White House we are going in completely the wrong direction,” she told the Guardian. “This is a terrible moment for our country, but it is also an opportunity: we are incentivized as never before in my lifetime to make progressive change.”

As a further boost, she sees her campaign as part of a related nationwide surge of radical female candidates who are shaking up the Democratic party – most recently in the figure of Stacey Abrams who is vying in Georgia to become America’s first black female governor. “Trump has been a wake-up call for women all across the country who believe, as I believe, that if we want change we have to go out and make it happen ourselves by running for office,” Nixon said.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Cynthia Nixon, far left, as Miranda in Sex and the City, with co-stars Kristin Davis, Kim Cattrall and Sarah Jessica Parker. Photograph: Craig Blankenhorn/AP

One of the interesting aspects of Nixon’s bid to become New York’s first female governor is her relationship to her own celebrity. She studiously avoids all reference to it – you will hear no mention of SATC in her campaign literature or in her stump speeches.

But being a household name is an undeniable advantage in modern politics – not every rookie candidate is given a platform on The Daily Show or endorsed by the Nation – and though she doesn’t labour the point, nor does she run from it. When the Guardian caught up with her at a campaign stop on the New York City subway, where she was berating Cuomo for the diabolical state of mass transit in the metropolis over which he presides, she smiled broadly and shook the hands of passengers who were palpably star-struck in her presence.

“I love you!” several riders said, stopping to take selfies with her. But an equal number were complimentary not towards Nixon as Miranda but towards Nixon as would-be governor. “I really like what you’re saying about the subway,” a male passenger said. “I’m a teacher and I’m really appreciative of what you’re trying to do for us,” a woman said.

That delicate balance of making the most of her fame without playing to it is more complicated in upstate New York, where voters have a more skeptical approach towards stardom. Though they share the same identity as New Yorkers, the 9 million residents of New York City and the 11 million residents of the rest of the state are in some ways chalk and cheese: voters in economically struggling upstate and western regions of New York state view the city dwellers as “flatlanders” and can scoff at their fashion trends and perceived glamour.

“That show, it did a lot to harm family values in this country,” said a man in Buffalo who asked not to be named, referring to Sex and the City.

As Nixon builds her campaign ahead of the Democratic primary election against Cuomo in September she is counting on the likelihood that most voters who bother to turn up – whether in the city or in upstate communities like Buffalo – will be committed progressives who will be receptive to her left-leaning pitch. And she believes that her long record of voluntary work, especially as an advocate for public schools, will speak louder than any of Cuomo’s attacks on her for being unqualified or lightweight.

“Cynthia is a very down-to-earth, accessible person who really understands people. She connects to people, then links that to policy and what needs to happen,” said Billy Easton, who worked closely with her at the Alliance for Quality Education where he is executive director.

In Buffalo she certainly talked the liberal talk as she addressed an art gallery full of activists. During two hours of discussion with about 50 local people she ticked off all the subjects dearest to American progressives’ hearts.

As governor she would: address racial and economic inequality and empower people in their communities; increase taxes on the super-wealthy to pay for it; decriminalize marijuana possession as one of many steps towards emptying out prisons; extend rights for undocumented immigrants; increase protections for LGBTQ people; invest in public education; toughen rent laws and combat gentrification; fight corruption and end the overweening influence of corporate money in politics.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Cynthia Nixon talks to reporters while attending the 2018 New York state Democratic convention at Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York, last month. Photograph: Justin Lane/EPA

The list may verge on the predictable, but long before she gets to the polling stations it is already having an impact. A discernible pattern has emerged – dubbed the “Cynthia effect” by pundits – whereby she proposes a new leftist policy one day and Cuomo responds with his own version of it the next.

You see that with marijuana, where the sitting governor resolutely opposed legalisation until Nixon launched her campaign and then within weeks switched to supporting it. He passively accommodated the bizarre situation whereby seven Democratic state senators side with the Republicans, maintaining a conservative grip on state government, until Nixon declared her run – and then he moved swiftly to reunite the party. He opposed giving the right to vote to 40,000 people with criminal convictions, then did a U-turn once Nixon was in the race.

Cuomo’s kneejerk reactions to Nixon’s goading should not be confused with political weakness – the wily and cunning incumbent is very far from conceding defeat. But the responses do suggest signs that we now have game on.

And as Nixon stresses, she’s not in this contest just for the “Cynthia effect”. She’s here for one reason alone: “I’m in this to win.”