“Sex and the City” actress Cynthia Nixon is running against Gov. Andrew Cuomo for NY governor. They’re meeting for their only debate on Wednesday. And despite Nixon’s years as an actress in front of lights, she wants the air conditioning in Hofstra University’s debate hall cranked up to 76 degrees. The Guv, however, likes chilly rooms.

But air conditioning is sexist, you see, so Cuomo must be a misogynist.

Team Nixon sent out an email complaining that offices are “notoriously sexist when it comes to room temperature, so we just want to make sure we’re all on the same page here.”

Yes, she’s digging out that complaint. Poor, poor women working in male-dominated offices. Temperatures there are supposedly set according to the comfort levels of middle-aged men. Enter the compulsive need of progressives to build some kind of social justice platform, and voilà — we have an issue about nothing.

But, science! they say. And male patriarchy! From the whiners at the feminist website Jezebel:

“Over at The Washington Post, writer Petula Dvorak theorizes that intensely cold office temperatures are yet another example of the patriarchy dominating an environment.”

CNN even discussed this pressing issue in a rather droll clip:

(I find it amusing that no one considers middle aged women who work in offices — women who are going through menopause and would probably like a little relief from hot flashes. Don’t they count?)

By now I’m more than ready for fall, and that’s partly because of air conditioning. Yes, I’m one of those women who freezes in nearly every public building in the summer, so I’m always taking jackets and sweaters with me. My sainted mother was exactly the same way. I’m constantly bewildered by those young things in restaurants and malls who sashay around in barely there shorts and tank tops. Don’t they get cold?

Or maybe they didn’t get that office memo about air conditioning being sexist.

But let’s face it — Cynthia Nixon’s complaints have nothing to do with AC. The woman has lived much of her professional life under the lights of an HBO set. She knows that it gets stifling on a stage and in a debate hall packed with people. She knows fully well that Hofstra U. needs to crank that AC down for the debate. This kerfuffle has nothing to do with Cynthia Nixon being a “victim.”

But it has everything to do with slapping at Andrew Cuomo, who wants only one debate. On top of that, he refuses to shake Nixon’s hand. As Nixon’s team complained, “This time we were finally given the opportunity to debate but only by his rules, including no handshake.”

Cynthia Nixon, instead, is tapping into identity politics. She’s sending out a bat signal to trigger her progressive, socialist base that Andrew Cuomo is a Neanderthal who likes to freeze women in his preferred chilly environment. And he won’t shake hands with them, either.

But Cuomo also likes to dabble in identity politics. Remember his own dog whistle when he said that “America was never that great”?  Because “discrimination, segregation, sexism, isolationism, racism”?

Cynthia Nixon and Andrew Cuomo are really two sides of the same leftist coin. A pox on both their houses. But isn’t it fun to watch progressives try to out-trigger each other?