Who stretched the truth? A Nixon-Cuomo fact check

The Cuomo-Trump relationship

Cuomo has seemingly sought to make the race less about Nixon and more about President Donald Trump, who has dismal approval ratings in his home state. Cuomo said he was “in a fight” with Trump and said the president uses Twitter to attack him “weekly.” “Know me by my enemies,” the governor said in the early moments of the debate.

But while Cuomo has recently been on the receiving end of some negative attention from the president’s Twitter account after saying that America “was never that great,” the governor has not always been on Trump’s bad side.

Indeed, the two men have known each other for decades — Trump even recorded a video for the governor’s 1990 bachelor party — and Trump has given tens of thousands of dollars to the governor’s political campaigns. Cuomo has declined to return those donations, saying he wants to use the money to fight the president’s agenda, earning Nixon’s scorn.

#Cuomo’s MTA: Albatross or accomplishment?

Nixon has consistently attacked Cuomo for his stewardship of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the state agency that runs the delay-ridden subway system and which the governor effectively controls.

Cuomo has countered that he has made a record investment in the MTA, and that New York City needs to pay its fair share for the repairs on the ailing system. Nixon argued strenuously that Cuomo had allowed the subways to deteriorate, saying he “stole hundreds of millions” of dollars from the system. “He used the MTA like an ATM,” Nixon said.

An investigation by The New York Times found that Cuomo had, in fact, steered money away from the system — including using $5 million to assist state-run ski resorts struggling after a warm winter.

Disclosing personal tax returns

Cuomo aggressively and repeatedly attacked Nixon over her tax returns, saying at one point that “only Donald Trump has done less transparency than my opponent” and accusing her of only putting out the returns late in the campaign for three hours “on a Friday.”

Nixon did release five years of her taxes last week, on a Friday, but had released last year’s returns in early May. Cuomo also suggested that Nixon was using “tax loopholes” to avoid paying taxes, citing her use of an S corporation to handle her acting career.

While that might qualify as a loophole, it is also legal. Nixon also noted that Cuomo had not released his taxes during his 2010 run for governor.

Cuomo: Friend or foe of labor?

The governor at one point said he was “never at war with labor,” but had promised during his successful run in 2010 to take on the state’s powerful unions, promising to rein in state workers’ wages and pensions.

In 2014, several major unions — including the New York State United Teachers, the Public Employees Federation, and the AFL-CIO — declined to back his bid for a second term; the PEF endorsed his primary opponent, Zephyr Teachout.

This election cycle, however, Cuomo has mended many of those relations, solidifying his support among unions and applauding and encouraging an April exodus of two major unions from the pro-labor Working Families Party after they backed Nixon.

Did the governor foster a culture of corruption in Albany?

Cuomo’s administration has been buffeted by the dual-barreled convictions of one of his closest aides and friends, Joseph Percoco, and the overseer of his most prominent economic development program, Alain E. Kaloyeros.

Nixon’s suggestion that Cuomo might have known about the misdeeds of Percoco, however, seems unsupported by the facts: Federal prosecutors who tried the former aide never accused Cuomo of wrongdoing.

Cuomo said he had wanted campaign finance reform and other ethics reforms, but had been stymied by a Republican Senate. While that is technically true, Cuomo had long tolerated a group of rogue Democrats in that chamber, the Independent Democratic Conference, who collaborated with the Republicans to help them rule the Senate.

Nixon also pointed out that the governor has been a frequent beneficiary of the so-called “LLC loophole,” which allows limited liability companies to contribute an almost unlimited amount to political campaigns.

Nixon: A political insider?

The governor accused Nixon of using her friendship with Mayor Bill de Blasio to gain favors for her friends. At the behest of Oskar Eustis, the director of the Public Theater, in 2014, Nixon asked de Blasio to have helicopters stop flying over Shakespeare in the Park. Eustis had complained the noise from the helicopters was ruining the performances.

Nixon defended her request as “a favor to the people of New York.”

Cuomo then suggested Nixon used her clout to help Sarah Jessica Parker, her friend and co-star in “Sex and the City.”

“How about for the teahouse for Sarah Jessica Parker, that wasn’t a favor?” the governor said.

Nixon said she had no idea what Cuomo was referring to. But in a recent City Hall release of email records, it was disclosed that Nixon passed along an email from Parker, which included a message from the owner of Tea & Sympathy, a shop in the West Village, who feared losing her lease over a dispute with her landlord. De Blasio’s chief of staff at the time said he would look into the issue.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.