New York gubernatorial candidate Cynthia Nixon speaks about her campaign finance reform plan during a small news conference Image by Getty Images

(JTA) — New York gubernatorial candidate Cynthia Nixon called on her primary opponent, sitting Gov. Andrew Cuomo, to apologize for a mailer paid for by the state Democratic Party headed by Cuomo which questioned her support for issues important to Jewish voters.

Nixon, who is gay and attends Congregation Beit Simchat Torah, an LGBT synagogue, announced her bid for the Democratic nomination for New York governor in March. The primary is scheduled for September 13.

Cuomo has said that he had no knowledge of the mailer and said through a spokeswoman that the language was “inappropriate.”

Forwarding the News

Thoughtful, balanced reporting from the Forward and around the web, bringing you updated news and analysis each day.

Terms(Required)

I agree to the Forward's Terms of Service and Privacy Policy

Email(Required)

“I am the mother of Jewish children,” Nixon, who is raising her children Jewish, said in a statement late on Sunday. She questioned how Cuomo could not know about the mailer and called on him to apologize, urging him to record a robocall to go out to voters apologizing for “calling me an anti-Semite,” the New York Times reported.

“With anti-Semitism and bigotry on the rise, we can’t take a chance with inexperienced Cynthia Nixon, who won’t stand strong for our Jewish communities,” the mailer sent Saturday to some 7,000 Jewish households, said. It also states that Nixon is “against funding for yeshivas,” supports “BDS, the racist, xenophobic campaign to boycott Israel” and has been “silent on the rise of anti-Semitism.”

In an interview on Tuesday with the Time On Politics reporter Lisa Lerer, Nixon said of the mailer: “I thought it was disgusting and cynical and really surprising that Andrew Cuomo’s New York State party would stoop to this kind of fear-mongering and lies. To use this in this nasty and untruthful way — it’s really Trumpian.”

She added that she thinks Cuomo knew about the mailer despite his denials.

Meanwhile, the New York Post reported on Tuesday that a Cuomo campaign official had pitched a story to a reporter at the newspaper about Nixon’s opposition to Israeli settlements and her support of the BDS movement against Israel a day before the mailer was delivered.

The email pitch included excerpts of news reports from 2010, detailing how Nixon was among about 200 American celebrities — including many Jews — who signed a letter supporting a boycott by Israeli actors, directors and playwrights of a new theater in the West Bank settlement of Ariel.

The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.

Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.

This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

2X match on all Passover gifts!

$90 → $180 $180 → $360

$360 → $720

Other amount