For the candidates racing to catch Andrew M. Cuomo, there are two imperatives on the debate stage Wednesday night: rattle the front-runner and find a way to stand out.
Cynthia Nixon, the actress and activist, engaged in a rather fractious primary debate with Mr. Cuomo when she ran against him for governor in 2018. She had some advice for his current challengers.
She urged them to confront Mr. Cuomo with his record, including his handling of nursing homes during Covid and the allegations of sexual harassment that ended his governorship (he denies them).
“He is not actually used to people calling him on stuff,” she said by phone from Paris, where she was promoting the new season of “And Just Like That … ,” a sequel to “Sex and the City.”
“He withers in the sunlight of facts,” she added.
Ms. Nixon said she had found that Mr. Cuomo, who excelled as a backroom deal-maker as governor, was less effective at defending his policies or speaking to the experience of voters when they debated on live television.
“I am not a politician by profession. It was obviously a very intimidating thing for me,” Ms. Nixon said. “But once I got out there on the stage and we started to interact, I was really stunned by not only how terrible he is on his feet, but how wildly unprepared he was.”
Though Ms. Nixon was thought to have held her own against Mr. Cuomo, she did not meaningfully erode his lead. He went on to beat her in the primary by 30 percentage points.
In this year’s Democratic primary for mayor, she plans to rank Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani and Brad Lander, the city comptroller, in that order, and is deciding which other candidates to include on her ballot.
Rich Azzopardi, a campaign spokesman for Mr. Cuomo, called Ms. Nixon’s account of the debate “revisionist history.”
“He won that debate and he won that election — just like that,” he said.
Nicholas Fandos is a Times reporter covering New York politics and government.
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