An exceptionally underhanded smear lands Andrew Cuomo in hot water

DIRTY politics knows no party affiliation. Less than a week before New York’s Democratic governors’ primary, which will be held on September 13th, the state party circulated a leaflet implying that Cynthia Nixon, the progressive challenger, posed a threat to Jewish New Yorkers. The accusations—that Ms Nixon was “silent on the rise of anti-Semitism”, supported the campaign to boycott Israel and opposed taxpayer funding for yeshivas—appear to be entirely fact-free. Though Ms Nixon is not personally Jewish, she is raising two Jewish children from a past marriage and regularly attends synagogue (her rabbi, married to a prominent teacher-union boss, called the allegation a “baseless lie”). An actor-turned-politician, Ms Nixon also says she got news of her most prominent role, as Miranda Hobbes on “Sex and the City”, while preparing a Passover seder. However poorly executed, the attempted smearing of Ms Nixon illustrates two disparate truths about New York politics: some strange Albanian miasma follows around Andrew Cuomo, the sitting Democratic governor who is vying against Ms Nixon for his third term; and Jewish voters are quite important.