Actress Cynthia Nixon Launches New York Governor Race Campaign

NEW YORK: Cynthia Nixon, the Sex and the City"actress running for New York governor, kept her political dreams alive Thursday by collecting enough signatures to contest the Democratic Party primary against the two-time establishment incumbent.

The 52-year-old education and gay rights activist, and award-winning stage and screen actress, is part of a progressive wave of insurgent candidates hoping to rebrand the Democratic Party and its fight against President Donald Trump.

Four months after launching her bid to become the first woman and first openly gay governor of America's fourth most populous state, Nixon announced in Brooklyn on Thursday that she had collected 65,000 signatures.

She needed 15,000 to get her name on the Sept 13 ballot against Governor Andrew Cuomo, the son of a former governor who served in the Clinton administration and is considered a Democratic presidential hopeful for 2020.

"Today, across New York, people want change. We're sick of centrist, corporate Democrats who take money from the likes of Donald Trump," Nixon said Thursday, paying tribute to "more than 3,500 volunteers" who worked on her behalf.

Nixon is running a left-wing, outsider insurgent campaign championing economic equality and eschewing big business. She is calling for better public schools, more affordable housing and women's healthcare protections.

She has called for the legalisation of marijuana and attacked Cuomo over the crisis-plagued subway system. Her characterisation of US immigration agency ICE as a "terrorist organisation" earned a rebuke from the Trump White House.

It is a brand of politics finding traction among younger urban liberals, disillusioned with their party elite in the age of Trump and...