For NYC matchmaker Bonnie Winston and her attorney husband of 24 years, Kenneth Sugarman, a typical night in the bedroom of their NoHo penthouse is reserved for one particularly spicy activity — flipping channels between FOX News and CNN.
The bipartisan pair, Winston, 63, identifies as a “staunch Republican” and Sugarman, 71, a lifelong Democrat, make it a point to maintain respect and space for one another’s divisive political views.
They start with the time they allot to the other’s news network preferences while watching late-night TV together.
“(Ken) will watch the BBC or CNN, and then I look at him, and I’m, like, ‘My turn!’” Winston, who is registered as an Independent but plans on making the red switch, and lovingly calls her husband a “shameless liberal,” told The Post.
“Then we click on FOX, and I watch FOX. We’re pretty fair with one another.”
Winston and Sugarman are, in theory, a political odd couple.
And not just because there is a stark decline of mixed-party marriages — with just 23% of couples holding different party affiliations, and of that, only 8% made up of a Democrat and a Republican, according to a 2024 University of Michigan study.
Statistically speaking, male voters lean overwhelmingly Republican, while women lean overwhelmingly Democratic.
But recently, a new brand of power couples — left-leaning man, right-leaning woman — has emerged.
Former liberal Google co-founder Sergey Brin, who backed President Barack Obama’s re-election bid in 2012, has recently come out in support of the right.
While some insiders assume his outspoken “MAGA girlfriend,” wellness guru Gerelyn “GG” Gilbert-Soto, to be an influence behind the shift, as Gilbert-Soto told The Free Press that if she could control Brin, she would be “married with a baby right now.”
While Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos’ longtime democrat wife, Nicole Avant, raised eyebrows when she was spotted attending a private event last month for California GOP gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton.
Despite their opposite ends of the political spectrum, these couples manage to maintain marital bliss by agreeing to disagree.
“When watching TV, we have different political views, but we like the same kind of people,” Sugarman explained. “I don’t think political views shape the person as much as they are painted out to … When I meet somebody, that’s definitely not the first thing I’m focused on.”
Somewhat ironically, politics actually united the couple who first met in May of 2001 when they sat in the same East Hampton sports bar to watch an NBA finals game between the 76ers and Lakers.
Shortly after the bipartisan couple tied the knot a year later, Winston — who appreciated her hubby’s “‘60s’ social consciousness” — marched with Sugarman in a Big Apple protest against the war in Iraq.
In 2007, when President Obama was running for his first term and held a fundraiser at Manhattan’s Grand Hyatt Hotel, Winston bought 20 of the $99 tickets for herself and a large group of friends.
Ever the superfan, she had a batch of “Obama Mama” T-shirts made — and created a website with the title, “Barack, You Rock.”
Despite her democratic enthusiasm, Winston’s views eventually deviated from her beloved partner’s, especially after the Oct. 7, 2023, events, when Hamas launched its attack from the Gaza Strip into Israel.
Although neither observes religious holidays, both Winston and Sugarman are Jewish, so the matchmaker felt especially shaken by the sharp rise in NYC’s antisemitism — and felt that President Trump was the primary politician who could help.
“At NYU, one of the girls who works for me was graduating, and there was a flag hanging [at the school] with a swastika on it,” she continued, referencing the recent disturbing display at the university’s Steinhardt building. “It’s frightening. It scares me.”
“I think the president has Jewish kids and grandkids — and that the governor [Kathy Hochul] is doing nothing, the mayor [Zohran Mamdani] is doing nothing,” added Winston, referring to the president’s daughter, Ivanka Trump, who converted to Judaism in 2009 before marrying now-husband Jared Kushner, and is raising three children as Orthodox.
She bravely shared her change in political loyalties with friends and family in the fall of 2023, but she admitted to The Post that at first, she felt “a little trepidatious” to tell her true-blue hubby.
“He had to process it — it wasn’t immediate acceptance,” said Winston. “But that’s who he is. He thinks about things more, whereas I’m more impulsive.”
Sugarman recalled that he felt “initial shock and surprise” at the news — but that he eventually accepted it, calling Winston “still the same woman I always loved, but with some ill-founded opinions that I disagreed with.”
“My wife and I are still compatible because we accept each other’s views,” Sugarman explained to The Post, adding that in a hypothetical world where he was single again, he wouldn’t knock the idea of dating across party lines.
In fact, there’s “even something attractive in opposites,” he confessed.
“I would rather have a political discussion with someone who disagrees with me than hear a Democrat like myself have an endless rant about Trump,” he explained.
“I love America because everyone has the right to express their opinions … It’s OK to make fun of President Trump, but people are hyper-focused on everything he does and pre-judge his every action, which isn’t fair to anyone in politics or any human.”
That isn’t to say that the NoHo couple’s political disagreements have never led to trouble in paradise.
When Winston told her husband she was voting for Republican mayoral candidate Curtis Sliwa in the 2021 NYC election, he initially assumed she was joking around and, according to Winston, thought she was “off her rocker.”
Certain members of Sugarman’s family were also unsure how to react to Winston’s shift in politics, asking Sugarman about bringing up the POTUS with his wife.
“I answered, ‘Don’t discuss it,’ and they don’t,” quipped Sugarman.
Ultimately, both Sugarman and Winston, who stress to their three progressive-leaning adult children to “vote on what’s important to them,” were adamant that they respect one another’s viewpoints and how the other came to arrive at them, even when they don’t necessarily understand or agree.
To that end, the pair remain “surprised” and bemused when the harmony and strength of their purple partnership shocks others in their lives.
“My husband is a well-educated attorney,” said Winston. “He’s one of the good guys who chose his profession because he had an altruistic motivation.
“He roots for the underdog, and when he sees injustice, he does his best to help … His opinions are thought out, and although I don’t agree with him politically, he makes a strong case for why.”
“I can accept [Bonnie’s] point of view — I can see where she’s coming from,” said Sugarman. “You’re not going to change someone else’s point of view, so either accept it, or avoid talking about it … I’m not going to change her opinion.”
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