Daily News Hits Spitzer On Money Spent On Campaign - But What About Bloomberg?

From the Daily News:

With the polls showing a surge in voter support for Scott Stringer in the Democratic race for city controller, Eliot Spitzer is pouring money — big money — into his redemption drive. Desperation to win has trumped principle.

No surprise there.

On Aug. 30, this column challenged Spitzer to keep faith with his long-stated support for campaign finance reform. He has repeatedly backed public funding of political races to eliminate corruption and to level the playing field for all candidates by setting spending limits.

Manhattan Borough President Stringer is paying for his race with small donations plus matching funds awarded by the city’s campaign finance system. The rules limit Stringer to spending $6 million, and that’s quite enough.

Spitzer entered the race after the deadline to join the voluntary system and is free to spend what he likes. He is aided in that regard by the fact that he comes from a family of high wealth thanks to the real estate business built by his father.

When last we wrote, official filings showed that Spitzer had dipped into his considerable wallet for $3.7 million. Updated documents showed that as of 4 p.m. Thursday, Spitzer had boosted his contributions to $10.3 million and had spent $8.9 million.

Those numbers are likely to rise as Spitzer attempts to buy his way into an office that he took for granted. He and Stringer are on the air with attack ads: Stringer focusing on Spitzer’s betrayal of his oath of office as governor, Spitzer knocking Stringer on a term limits issue. Both are fair game.

What’s not fair game is Spitzer’s push to leverage his wealth to overwhelm Stringer with commercials. He used to swear by campaign reform, but not now.

Worse, Spitzer went so far as to attack Stringer for accepting public-campaign financing. Then he offered an utterly bogus explanation for refusing to limit his own personal spending: He claimed that the business community was planning to run anti-Spitzer ads as payback for Spitzer’s Wall Street crackdown.

Such a blitz never materialized, partly because corporate leaders feared running afoul of Securities and Exchange Commission rules, which prohibit financial houses that deal in municipal securities from funding the political races of officials responsible for selling those securities. That covers the controller.

Don’t get us wrong. Rich candidates are free to finance political races to whatever extent they like. Mayor Bloomberg is a case in point. What’s galling is that Spitzer was once a vocal advocate for giving candidates an equal financial shot.

It turned out that he meant all candidates but one: him.

I get it - so Spitzer is not allowed to spend all the personal wealth he wants to spend on his race but Michael Bloomberg is.

And that's because Bloomberg has never been for campaign finance reform but Spitzer once was.

Yeah, that makes sense.

No, wait - actually it doesn't.

Hit out at Spitzer all you want for trying to buy his race, DNers.

But don't give Bloomberg a pass for doing the same thing.

Doesn't matter if the candidate once expressed support for campaign finance reform or not.

Throwing gobs of their own wealth into races is obscene.

End of story.

You ever notice how the men writing the editorials (and they almost always men) twist themselves into pretzels when they write these things?