Lady Business: Cynthia Nixon, Serena Williams, and who gets second (and third) chances

Hello and welcome to Lady Business, a weekly newsletter about women, the business world, and all the ways they overlap. You can sign up for Lady Business and read previous issues here. This is the forty-second issue, published September 13, 2018.
 

Endorse-meh

Happy New York primary day, for those of you in my state! Should you ever run for office, may you never be the recipient of an endorsement that starts like this:

In his two terms as governor, Andrew Cuomo has had significant accomplishments. But he has done little to combat the corruption in the Legislature and his own administration, and he has allowed the subway system, the foundation of the New York City economy, to rot.

Well. It’s not like he needs the subway to get around, or anything:

Taxpayer-paid flights are commonplace for Mr. Cuomo, who took 195 trips in state planes and helicopters in 2017, according to an examination of state records. His travels reflect an active governor in a big state who has used aircraft liberally — as many as four flights a day, for distances long and short — and who is entitled, like previous governors, to fly the fleet by law.
 
… The last time he rode the subway was 20 months ago, christening the new Second Avenue subway line on Dec. 31, 2016.

But hey, his subway-riding opponent likes funky bagels and also, as the New York Times editorial board points out, doesn’t have “experience in government or management of any sort.” Far better to argue that, um, Cuomo “scents a change in the wind” (really) and “merits one more chance to serve New York and fulfill his potential.”

Hahahaha, right, so, let me get this straight: Don’t give the inexperienced lady a chance. Instead, do give a third chance to the guy whose “failures threaten to eclipse his record of accomplishments”? (Still an endorsement!)

It’s almost like we live in a world where male tennis stars get to kick balls at umpires with no consequences, while women get dramatically punished for similar outbursts. But now I’m just seeing double standards everywhere, like the hysteria-prone lady I am!
 
Look, I get the knocks on Cynthia Nixon: She is inexperienced at governing, and she is a TV star, and that’s a PTSD-inducing combination in the Trump era. But she also has a track record of political activism and of working hard to listen to the people she wants to represent -- which the New York Times was chronicling five years ago, way before this campaign for New York governor. From 2013:
 

In the last two years, Ms. Nixon has traveled around the country to campaign in states where amendments to legalize gay marriage were on the ballot. She has gone to Washington to speak for Planned Parenthood and to protest rollbacks of Roe v. Wade. She went to Florida and Virginia on behalf of President Obama’s re-election effort and to Minnesota, on behalf of Al Franken, a senator from that state. “She’s not dabbling at all,” Mr. Franken said in a phone interview. “We had given her material on what I had done, but she really internalized it and put it together in her own way. She knows what she is talking about.”
 

(See! She has so much campaign experience she even has some now-embarrassing endorsements on her record!)
 

And, with her spouse, Christine Marinoni, the former New York director of the Alliance for Quality Education, Ms. Nixon has been a tireless advocate for increasing financing to New York City’s public schools.

Also: “Ms. Nixon’s work as an activist dates back to roughly 2001.”

Granted, part-time activism is not the same as full-time holding office, and campaigning is not the same as governing. And I’m generally very pro-experience in my politicians; I want someone representing me who knows what she’s doing, and who already has relationships with the people she needs to work with to govern effectively, and who's probably a little compromised because that's what governing is, making compromises and practical decisions that don't always sound great in campaign soundbites.

But what happens when the experienced man who knows what he’s doing uses his relationships to "allow petty enmity and political grievance to distract him from his commitment to public service"? (Yep, still that endorsement!) When "his ethics record remains a black mark"? (Vote for Cuomo!) When his closest aide has been "convicted on corruption charges"? (Hold your nose!) 

What do you do, in short, when a sitting governor has had eight years to prove himself--and instead chooses to fly in his helicopter above the millions of taxpayers who are waiting for him to fix their crumbling public transit system? What’s a bigger risk then: Giving a first chance, or a third?

Lady Bits

--Credit to my friend Steph for the above section header/extremely apt description of the NYT's tepid Cuomo endorsement

--Speaking of who gets multiple chances: “People stopped giving me a chance. And it hurt.” The Washington Post goes long on Mike Isabella, the chef and restaurant owner who went from a repellent Top Chef turn to opening several DC restaurants to overexpansion, bankruptcy, and, oh yeah, allegations of “extraordinary” sexual harassment.
 
--I have some mixed feelings about Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, the two-part, pricey professional fanfic on Broadway. It was a lot of fun as a one-night play, but by the second night it started to feel like a cynical attempt to cash in on my fannish nostalgia without offering anything fresh. Especially since the play adopted a lot of the movies’ worst tics, including Buffoon!Ron, and sidelined most of the women in favor of telling the umpteenth post-Star Wars story about heroic boys with daddy issues. (That, at least, is a problem carried over from JK Rowling’s original books; Hermione is great there, and Ginny turns into a stealth interesting character, but most of the other women get second-class and/or Sainted Dead Mom status.)
 
--Are there Darwin Awards for writers? Let’s please give one to the woman who published an essay called “How to Murder Your Husband,” and who was then  arrested for, well, you know.

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