If it hadn't been for Eleanor Roosevelt, Cynthia Nixon might not have been charming Obama supporters in Ybor City today.
The Tony-, Emmy- and Grammy-winning actress best known for playing Miranda in Sex and the City told volunteers packed into the small Ybor field office that before this trip she'd already given money to Obama and talked him up to her friends. But "the thing that got me off my butt," she said, was "an amazing speech" given by Michelle Obama at a fundraiser in NYC a few weeks ago.
The centerpiece of the event was a performance by "presidential actors" — performers who had played either a President or a First Lady and who also were supporters of Obama. Directed by Mike Nichols with readings adapted by playwright John Guare, it was quite the stellar group: Sigourney Weaver, Sam Waterston, Chris Rock, Geena Davis, Cherry Jones, James Earl Jones, Jeffrey Wright, Blair Underwood — and Nixon, who played FDR's Eleanor in Warm Springs (with Kenneth Branagh) on HBO.
After the performance, said Nixon, Michelle Obama "just started talking numbers to us. She referenced North Carolina where he won by 140,00 votes last time, and she broke that down for us — she said that's about five votes per precinct. And when you think about that, that kind of thing that you can hold in the palm of your hand — that you reach five people, that can be a precinct won in some cases. We know how important Florida and Ohio are, we know that without them Romney can't win, and we know that it's going to come down most likely to a few thousand votes."
This article appears in Nov 1-7, 2012.