title: How to align rows in matplotlib legend with 2 columns
body: <p>I have an issue where some mathtext formatting is making some labels take up more vertical space than others, which causes them to not line up when placed in two columns in the legend. This is particularly important because the rows are also used to indicate related data. </p>
  
  <p>Here is an example:</p>
  
  <pre><code>import matplotlib as mpl
  import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
  import matplotlib.mathtext as mathtext
  mpl.rc("font", family="Times New Roman",weight='normal')
  plt.rcParams.update({'mathtext.default':  'regular' })
  plt.plot(1,1, label='A')
  plt.plot(2,2, label='B')
  plt.plot(3,3, label='C')
  plt.plot(4,4,label='$A_{x}^{y}$')
  plt.plot(5,5,label='$B_{x}^{y}$')
  plt.plot(6,6,label='$C_{x}^{y}$')
  plt.legend(fontsize='xx-large', ncol=2)
  plt.show()
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>This generates a figure like so:
  <a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/Rmp2x.png" rel="noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/Rmp2x.png" alt="enter image description here"></a></p>
  
  <p>For a while, I was able to "fake it" a bit by adding some empty subscripts and superscripts, however this only works when the plot is exported to pdf. It does not appear to work when exporting to png. How can I spread out the first column of labels so that they line up with the second column? </p>