So this is what a contested primary for governor in New York looks like.

From the time she declared in March, Nixon showed a taste and a talent for political invective, questioning “the old boys club” that runs Albany and whether the governor was “a real Democrat,” and promising to be a double-barreled trailblazer: the state’s first female and gay governor.

For his part, Cuomo, a savvy political centrist seeking a third term, has had numerous institutional and financial advantages, including a war chest that topped $31 million at one point — enabling him to spend nearly $500,000 per day on the race as of late August.

He also has been able to tout an impressive list of accomplishments in his seven-plus years in office, including a hike in the minimum wage, paid family leave, a strong gun control law and the legalization of same-sex marriage, a 2011 landmark that Nixon praised at the time.

Nixon has trailed in every public opinion poll since her candidacy was announced, with the latest survey showing Cuomo with a whopping 41-point lead. But in recent days, the governor’s mojo has been battered by questions centered on his campaign’s involvement in a piece of campaign material that falsely accused Nixon of anti-Semitism.

Questions were also raised about whether his administration had pushed for the final span of the Mario M. Cuomo Bridge to be opened before the primary; the opening was then delayed because of concerns that the old structure had destabilized, and was possibly endangering the new bridge.

Indeed, on Wednesday, Nixon continued to try to capitalize on the governor’s late missteps, handing out flyers to subway commuters in Queens — she has made Cuomo’s leadership of the failed transit system a central part of her campaign — and standing with Jewish leaders near City Hall to protest the false campaign flyer.

By contrast, Cuomo did not release a public campaign schedule until midafternoon, with a single event listed: a rally in Brooklyn on Wednesday night. But Cuomo also attended two get out the vote sessions earlier Wednesday, though they were not formally announced.

A respected actress known from her turn as Miranda in “Sex and the City,” Nixon was helped in the initial stages of her candidacy by her celebrity, though that background also opened her to a potent line of attack from the Cuomo campaign that she lacked the experience to run a state with 250,000 employees and a budget of more than $160 billion.

Highlighting her inexperience did lead to a memorable misfire early on, when one of Cuomo’s supporters, the former City Council speaker, Christine Quinn, called Nixon “an unqualified lesbian,” a phrase that Nixon co-opted as a rallying cry and a fundraising tool.

Despite seemingly laughing off the challenge at first — suggesting Nixon was a second-tier star — Cuomo appeared to sense the threat of a left-wing challenger and the progressive bend in his party, and he spent heavily in recent weeks to thwart any late charge by Nixon. Even so, he largely avoided mentioning Nixon — preferring to cast his campaign as a fight against President Donald Trump, who is deeply unpopular in his home state.

But during their sole face-to-face meeting during the campaign, a late August debate, the disdain between the two candidates was evident. Nixon attacked Cuomo repeatedly, often cutting him off, resulting in a memorable exchange, though one that did not seem to move the needle.

“Can you stop interrupting?” Cuomo said.

“Can you stop lying?” Nixon replied.

“As soon as you do,” he answered.

While he has feuded with labor groups in the past, Cuomo is banking on a powerful coalition of unions to help stave off Nixon’s grass-roots campaign. Those surrogates have also provided some of the more indelible quips of the campaign, including a moment in May when the president of the Transport Workers Union International called Nixon “a rich, Prosecco-sipping Manhattanite masquerading as a progressive.”

Still, not all labor lined up with Cuomo: One early flashpoint in the campaign came in April when Nixon snagged the endorsement of the Working Families Party, a small but influential group built by labor groups and activists that had supported Cuomo in the past. (In a sign of the governor’s often blunt political skills, he applauded and supported two major labor groups that abandoned the WFP after their decision to back his challenger.)

Nixon and her supporters have also found inspiration in a series of wins by insurgent candidates whose rhetoric resembles her own, most importantly Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who scored a stunning victory over Rep. Joseph Crowley in a Democratic primary in June, just a day after she and Nixon endorsed each other.

Other long-shot victories have also given hope to her underfunded campaign: Andrew Gillum in Florida, Ayanna Pressley in Massachusetts. Nixon campaigned with Ocasio-Cortez on Wednesday in the Bronx, calling on supporters to seize “the progressive moment we’re in.”

In the closing days, the idea of an upset was bolstered by the bad news surrounding Cuomo, though Nixon’s choice of bagel during a campaign event at Zabar’s also garnered outsize attention, which her campaign seized on, using it as a fundraising tool.

In a radio interview on Tuesday, Nixon offered a defense of her taste in bagels that might well serve as a message to voters on Thursday as well.

“Don’t knock it,” she said, “if you haven’t tried it.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

Jesse McKinley © 2018 The New York Times