New York State Takes $200 Million In Lottery Money Earmarked For Schools, Gives It To Horse Racing Association Instead

Buzzfeed News:

The state of New York diverted hundreds of millions of dollars from education to a scandal-plagued horse racing operator, Buzzfeed News has found.

Seven years ago, the state legislature carved out a special agreement that so far has taken more than $200 million in lottery revenue — money that otherwise goes to New York’s beleaguered schools — and given it to the New York Racing Association (NYRA), a not-for-profit corporation known for running of one of America’s most glamorous horse races, the Belmont Stakes, but also for allegations of corruption ranging from racetrack tellers laundering drug money to the chair buying the favor of a top legislator. The sweetheart deal was intended to help the racing organization regain solvency and repay a large state loan, but in the end NYRA managed to keep the loan as a gift — and to keep the sweetheart deal, too.

...

Now the Audit Director of the Office of the New York State Comptroller has told BuzzFeed News that the state agency has completed an examination of possible misuse of NYRA’s capital expenditures. The results of its audit will be released in the coming weeks.

NYSUT responds to the story:

The $200 million carveout — the full extent of which has not previously been reported — is only a tiny fraction of New York state’s overall schools budget. But according to Carl Korn, of the union representing New York state teachers, directing that money to the racing association instead of to schools has deprived teachers and students of much-needed resources.

“As this deal was being made, New York state was in the process of dramatically cutting education, leading to 30,000 job losses — roughly 22,000 in teachers,” Korn says. “And what is most outrageous is the poorest districts were hit with a disproportionate amount of these cuts.”

Governor Cuomo made one of his fundraisers, Anthony Bonomo, chair of NYRA, but Bonomo had to step down from the position when it was revealed he had given a no-show job to indicted former state Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos' son Adam and was cooperating with the feds in the investigation.

In turn, Bonomo's son works for Governor Cuomo's administration.

Here is the back story on the Bonomo/Cuomo/Skelos relationship:

In March, Bonomo gives a $50,000 contribution to Governor Andrew Cuomo’s campaign committee. A few days later, Cuomo appoints Bonomo the head of the New York Racing Association or NYRA ( a job that people close to the Administration insist he was qualified for, since he was very knowledgeable of horses and racing. Fair enough ). About a month later, Skelos and his son are slapped with federal corruption charges. And in early June, just four days before the Belmont Stakes – one of the biggest days in racing – Bonomo steps down from his position at NYRA, and presumably starts cooperating with the Feds against Dean and Adam. A month after that the new indictment drops with two new charges including personal details about Adam’s behavior. This signaled to some that federal investigators were likely getting information from Bonomo which helped build the second set of charges.

And the backstory on Bonomo's son working for Cuomo:

The son of Anthony Bonomo, a prominent insurer linked to the federal investigation of Sen. Dean Skelos and who until days ago led the New York Racing Association, began working for the Cuomo administration last year, state records show.

Anthony Bonomo Jr. started in 2014 as an executive assistant for the Office of Storm Recovery, which was launched by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo to help residents rebuild after superstorm Sandy and other recent hurricanes. Bonomo, who handles constituent services on Long Island, was hired for the $55,000 per year job in May 2014, a spokeswoman said.

Anthony is a hard worker and a smart young man who has done terrific work for the Office of Storm Recovery,a said Barbara Broncaccio, agency spokeswoman.

Now we learn that NYRA got lottery money earmarked for schools, something that was supposed to be a loan meant to help it out of financial woes, then never paid the money back because, why bother when you can just donate to candidates and keep the money (and the lottery funds carveout) instead?

Subsequent events also called into question what the sweetheart deal itself was for. According to Richard Rifkin, one of Gov. Spitzer’s lead negotiators, it was granted to keep NYRA afloat and ensure that the organization would be able to repay the state’s $105 million loan. Amid the political chaos of Gov. Spitzer’s scandal-driven resignation, New York agreed to a let the bankrupt NYRA keep the money. But it also kept the lottery carveout that was supposed to help the organization repay the loan. The carveout is in effect until at least 2033.

Soon after getting its bailout and emerging from bankruptcy, NYRA expanded its political contributions, according to online disclosures and analysis by Bennett Liebman, then an Albany Law School professor and NYRA board member who later became deputy secretary for gaming.

“In prior years, NYRA […] did not play the political game to any great extent,” Liebman writes in his analysis, which shows that NYRA became the largest political donor among gaming interests by late 2009.

Between April 2008 and the next major election in November 2010, its PAC made over a quarter million in political donations, including $50,000 to Gov. David Paterson, Eliot Spitzer’s successor, and roughly $200,000 to legislative candidates and political parties.

Governor Cuomo's New York - a cesspool of corruption and cronyism.

Funny how often NYRA is at the middle of that.

Tenant Advocates Blame Cuomo For Tying Education Tax Credit To Rent Regulation

Crains reports that tenant advocates are holding Governor Cuomo accountable for the expiration of rent regulation laws in NYC and plan to primary him in three years:

"Cuomo has alienated a massive number of rent-regulated Democratic voters by not delivering stronger rent laws this session," said one operative working with tenant groups. "His base blames him, not anyone else, for the dysfunction and corruption in Albany."

By linking rent regulation with a $150 million education tax credit proposal opposed by Assembly Democrats, Mr. Cuomo has poisoned the debate, said Jonathan Westin, director of New York City Communities for Change.

"Tenants across New York City, especially in communities of color, folks that supported the governor in his re-election, are furious at what's happening," Mr. Westin said. "Albany, and the governor specifically, are playing games with their homes."

"The only thing holding up his poll numbers are New York City liberals and communities of color," he continued. "And if he loses those, I don't know what will be left. He's completely vulnerable."

I've said before, I'll say again, it's a shame these activists didn't realize Cuomo would betray them before this, so that more damage could have been done to him in the 2014 primary.

Nonetheless Westin is right that the only thing holding Cuomo up from complete political collapse in polls is the liberal base and communities of color in NYC.

If he loses that support (and God knows, he should), he will fall below Spitzer territory in approval.

Hell, he's almost in Spitzer territory now - won't take much to put him there.

A commenter at Crains points out the real danger here for Cuomo politically:

The point is not so much that "tenant activists" would pull this off but that at the rate our esteemed governor is going that by 2018 there could be a rather formidable coalition of tenant activists, anti-frackers, parents and teachers fed up with Cuomo's education policies, people finally exhausted by the Roman level of decadence now playing out in Albany and an assortment of other moderate and liberal Democrats that a real candidate willing to show some courage, like Eric Schneiderman or Tom DiNapoli, or, yes, even Zephyr Teachout would have a real chance in a primary with a lot of energized anti-Andy voters in it.

All of this assumes he's not carted out in handcuffs as the third arrest in the "Three Amigos In A Jail" show US Attorney Preet Bharara is putting on for the state.

This also assumes that the anger activists are expressing remains undiminished by whatever deal eventually gets worked out on rent regulation.

Still, the blueprint is there to continue to weaken and finally destroy Andrew Cuomo politically - and Cuomo keeps adding to it with every betrayal and fight he wages these days.

Andrew Cuomo Approaching Eliot Spitzer Numbers In Marist Poll

A WSJ/NBC4/Marist poll released last night found Governor Andrew Cuomo with a 37% job approval rating and a 59% disapproval rating.

He's approaching Spitzer levels in these numbers.

In a WNBC/Marist poll released on January 25, 2008, former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer had a 35% job approval rating and a 56% disapproval rating.

The January 2008 Marist poll was taken before the New York Times reported in March 2008 that Spitzer patronized an elite escort service.

Comparing yesterday's WSJ/NBC4/Marist poll to the January 2008 WNBC/Marist poll, Cuomo is just two points higher than Spitzer in job approval and is three points higher in disapproval.

Think about this for a minute - Cuomo is just above pre-scandal Spitzer levels in job approval but has a higher pre-scandal Spitzer rating for job disapproval.

Quite a fall for Andrew Cuomo. 

As one commenter at the WSJ put it:

Must be quite disappointing for the ego driven governor. Never has a politician spent more on personal PR campaigns. Poor/Fair numbers have doubled from 30% to 60% in four years. Wonder who Mr. Bully will blame.

Cuomo can assuage his ego if he looks at the post-scandal Spitzer numbers from the WNBC/Marist poll released on March 11, 2008.

Spitzer had fallen to 30% job approval in that poll, 64% disapproval.

Cuomo has a job approval rating that is seven points higher than Client Number 9, a disapproval rating that is just five points lower.

Think about that for a minute - Andrew Cuomo, who hasn't been named as a client of an escort service or embroiled in a political scandal like Troopergate beats a guy who had been by just seven points on approval and five points on disapproval.

Now its possible that yesterday's Marist poll numbers were influenced by the Skelos scandal - the poll was taken the day Skelos was arrested and the day after.

Nonetheless, as I pointed out yesterday, the trend in the Marist poll for Andrew Cuomo is quite clear:

Cuomo has said aloud that he would like to run for a third term, but given the numbers he has right now and the trend over the past 4+ years, he would be no shoe-in for re-election.

A lot can happen in three-and-a-half years of course - for that matter, a lot can happen in five months.

Since the beginning of the year, we have seen both Assembly Speaker Silver and Senate Majority Leader Skelos arrested and stripped of power in their respective chambers.

Cuomo has his own ethics and corruption issues to deal with (here and here.)

Given the job approval/disapproval numbers Cuomo currently enjoys, along with his falling favorability numbers, it wouldn't take much for Cuomo to go from essentially equal to pre-scandal Spitzer to essentially equal post-scandal Spitzer in numbers.

Albany Strikes Back Against US Attorney Preet Bharara

Legislators are whining about US Attorney Preet Bharara's grandstanding tactics as federal prosecutor, particularly his penchant for press conferences and media interviews, but only two had the guts to go public with their criticism:

More than a dozen state legislators, legislative officials and other insiders interviewed by the Daily News give credit to Preet Bharara for targeting Albany wrongdoing but are fuming over what they say is the powerful prosecutor’s publicity seeking, tarring of the entire Legislature, and wading into governance issues far beyond the scope of his office.

“You want to target corruption? God bless you,” said state Sen. Diane Savino (D-S.I.). “That’s what you’re supposed to do. But the fact there’s some corruption in the Legislature does not mean we all are corrupt. And the rest of us don’t appreciate the comparison.”

 Assemblyman Nick Perry (D-Brooklyn) is one of many who agreed. “It’s totally unfair — not just to us, but to our families — to sort of cast a wide net of mud and dirt across the whole spectrum of elected officials that serve New York,” Perry said.

Savino, the IDC traitor, is coming off calling City Council Speaker Mark-Viverito an "idiot," so she's having a helluva media week herself.

But back to criticism of Bharara:

Is he grandstanding?

Absolutely.

Does he make it all about himself?

Absolutely.

Does he enjoy taunting the criminals up in Albany?

Absolutely.

Is all this worrisome?

Absolutely:

“He’s nothing but a politician with a badge,” said one Assembly Democrat. “He should be doing everything he can to root out corruption, but he should not be threatening and grandstanding, telling the world to ‘stay tuned’ and tarring everybody with a criminal brush. It’s inappropriate.”

To me, the most damaging criticism of Bharara is not the grandstanding or taunting (though I think that criticism is fair and accurate) but his failure to take on any of the systemic corruption on Wall Street.

As Michael Fiorillo has pointed out again and again in comments here at Perdido Street School blog, Bharara's only targets on Wall Street have been insider traders and Bernie Madoff - not one of the criminals who nearly crashed the economy in 2008 with their misdeeds, enriching themselves in the process, was indicted by either US Attorney Preet Bharara or the Attorney General at the time, one Andrew M. Cuomo.

Matt Taibbi had similar criticism of Bharara years ago in his seminal piece "Why Isn't Wall Street In Jail?" which aims at the close relationships between the "top cops" on Wall Street and the targets they're supposed to be policing:

Criminal justice, as it pertains to the Goldmans and Morgan Stanleys of the world, is not adversarial combat, with cops and crooks duking it out in interrogation rooms and courthouses. Instead, it's a cocktail party between friends and colleagues who from month to month and year to year are constantly switching sides and trading hats. At the Hilton conference, regulators and banker-lawyers rubbed elbows during a series of speeches and panel discussions, away from the rabble. "They were chummier in that environment," says Aguirre, who plunked down $2,200 to attend the conference.

Aguirre saw a lot of familiar faces at the conference, for a simple reason: Many of the SEC regulators he had worked with during his failed attempt to investigate John Mack had made a million-dollar pass through the Revolving Door, going to work for the very same firms they used to police. Aguirre didn't see Paul Berger, an associate director of enforcement who had rebuffed his attempts to interview Mack — maybe because Berger was tied up at his lucrative new job at Debevoise & Plimpton, the same law firm that Morgan Stanley employed to intervene in the Mack case. But he did see Mary Jo White, the former U.S. attorney, who was still at Debevoise & Plimpton. He also saw Linda Thomsen, the former SEC director of enforcement who had been so helpful to White. Thomsen had gone on to represent Wall Street as a partner at the prestigious firm of Davis Polk & Wardwell.

Two of the government's top cops were there as well: Preet Bharara, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, and Robert Khuzami, the SEC's current director of enforcement. Bharara had been recommended for his post by Chuck Schumer, Wall Street's favorite senator. And both he and Khuzami had served with Mary Jo White at the U.S. attorney's office, before Mary Jo went on to become a partner at Debevoise. What's more, when Khuzami had served as general counsel for Deutsche Bank, he had been hired by none other than Dick Walker, who had been enforcement director at the SEC when it slow-rolled the pivotal fraud case against Rite Aid.

"It wasn't just one rotation of the revolving door," says Aguirre. "It just kept spinning. Every single person had rotated in and out of government and private service."

The Revolving Door isn't just a footnote in financial law enforcement; over the past decade, more than a dozen high-ranking SEC officials have gone on to lucrative jobs at Wall Street banks or white-shoe law firms, where partnerships are worth millions. That makes SEC officials like Paul Berger and Linda Thomsen the equivalent of college basketball stars waiting for their first NBA contract. Are you really going to give up a shot at the Knicks or the Lakers just to find out whether a Wall Street big shot like John Mack was guilty of insider trading? "You take one of these jobs," says Turner, the former chief accountant for the SEC, "and you're fit for life."

Fit — and happy. The banter between the speakers at the New York conference says everything you need to know about the level of chumminess and mutual admiration that exists between these supposed adversaries of the justice system. At one point in the conference, Mary Jo White introduced Bharara, her old pal from the U.S. attorney's office.

"I want to first say how pleased I am to be here," Bharara responded. Then, addressing White, he added, "You've spawned all of us. It's almost 11 years ago to the day that Mary Jo White called me and asked me if I would become an assistant U.S. attorney. So thank you, Dr. Frankenstein."

Next, addressing the crowd of high-priced lawyers from Wall Street, Bharara made an interesting joke. "I also want to take a moment to applaud the entire staff of the SEC for the really amazing things they have done over the past year," he said. "They've done a real service to the country, to the financial community, and not to mention a lot of your law practices."

Haw! The line drew snickers from the conference of millionaire lawyers. But the real fireworks came when Khuzami, the SEC's director of enforcement, talked about a new "cooperation initiative" the agency had recently unveiled, in which executives are being offered incentives to report fraud they have witnessed or committed. From now on, Khuzami said, when corporate lawyers like the ones he was addressing want to know if their Wall Street clients are going to be charged by the Justice Department before deciding whether to come forward, all they have to do is ask the SEC.

"We are going to try to get those individuals answers," Khuzami announced, as to "whether or not there is criminal interest in the case — so that defense counsel can have as much information as possible in deciding whether or not to choose to sign up their client."

Aguirre, listening in the crowd, couldn't believe Khuzami's brazenness. The SEC's enforcement director was saying, in essence, that firms like Goldman Sachs and AIG and Lehman Brothers will henceforth be able to get the SEC to act as a middleman between them and the Justice Department, negotiating fines as a way out of jail time. Khuzami was basically outlining a four-step system for banks and their executives to buy their way out of prison. "First, the SEC and Wall Street player make an agreement on a fine that the player will pay to the SEC," Aguirre says. "Then the Justice Department commits itself to pass, so that the player knows he's 'safe.' Third, the player pays the SEC — and fourth, the player gets a pass from the Justice Department."


When I ask a former federal prosecutor about the propriety of a sitting SEC director of enforcement talking out loud about helping corporate defendants "get answers" regarding the status of their criminal cases, he initially doesn't believe it. Then I send him a transcript of the comment. "I am very, very surprised by Khuzami's statement, which does seem to me to be contrary to past practice — and not a good thing," the former prosecutor says.

I'm happy to tout Bharara's work on the blog when he's giving Cuomo headaches and heart attacks, when he's holding pressers the day after big Cuomo announcements to steal Cuomo's press coverage, and I certainly am hoping that Barara takes out the last two of the "Three Men In A Room" he mocked at an NYU law speech a few weeks ago (Skelos and Cuomo.)

But I am under no impression that Bharara is actually looking to clean up the systemic corruption in New York, for if he were, he'd been carting the criminals at Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase out in handcuffs the same way he's carting out the criminals in Albany.

Bharara is undoubtedly running for political office, despite his terse responses to the question of his political future ("No."), and as a former Chuck Schumer aide, Bharara is also undoubtedly as political as anybody else in the system.

The last few prosecutors we've had run for political office in this state (Cuomo, Spitzer and Giuliani) have all been holy terrors as politicians, problematic in their own ways.

I'm not looking forward to finding out just what kind of politician Preet Bharara is going to be if and when he announces a run for something in the future.

But I think we will find that out.

Given his smarts, his ego, his political wiliness, and his ability to garner splashy headlines, I have little doubt that he'll be successful at getting elected.

And I'm sure all those Wall Street folks Bharara and his fellow "top cops" at the SEC and the DOJ refuse to prosecute will be just as happy to have a guy like him governor as they are at having their pal Sheriff Andy in office.

To them it's all the same just so long as whomever is in power leaves them pretty much alone.

Spitzer Concedes

Weiner conceded already too - gave a shout out to his foul-mouthed communication director, Barbara Morgan.

Weiner's looking like he may end up well behind Liu, may even fall below 5%.

Stringer worked hard for this win.

He got help from the establishment and the unions - but man, he worked hard...

Spitzer Is Going To Have A Tough Time Winning If Exit Polls Are Right

A little less than half of the voters in today's primary were white.

Here are the exit poll breakdowns for the comptroller race:

Few racial divides in race for mayor, exits show. But in comptroller race Spitzer wins blacks 64-35 while whites for for Stringer 32-68
— Andrew Grossman (@A_Grossman) September 11, 2013

If nearly half of the voters in the primary were white and Spitzer lost whites to Stringer 68%-32%...

Again, just exit polls.

Right now, the race is too close to call.

But not a good sign for Eliot.

Andrew Cuomo Must Be Held Accountable For His Damaging Policies To Schools And Students

Diane Ravitch:

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo called for the “death penalty” for failing schools recently, setting off a war of words between those who believe in closing struggling schools and those who want to kill them and fire the staff.

Bruce Baker takes a different view. Here he demonstrates that Néw York has a funding system that is unfair to the schools with the neediest students.

Instead of vilifying teachers and principals and pretending to advocate for the children and families, Cuomo should look at where the money goes. It is not going to the kids who need it most.

Like all good deformers, Cuomo rigs the game against schools and teachers, blames schools and teachers for their "failures," and calls for closures, firings and charterization.

It is shock doctrine in action here in NY State and it will be a prominent part of his agenda this coming legislative session.

He must be stopped.

He must be held accountable for the mess and his fellow politicians in Albany have helped create by underfunding schools, by overwhelming them with mandates, by adding all of this testing and evaluation nonsense that a) is so complex nobody can explain it and b) takes much needed money, energy and resources away from the things that matter to students.

There is a little part of me that wonders if an Eliot Spitzer as comptroller might put a crimp in Cuomo's legislative agenda this year.

Sure, Spitzer likes charter schools and ed deform and hired a Students First shill as his p.r. guy.

But he hates Cuomo and Wall Street more -and those are the people who will push a very, very destructive agenda this next legislative session.

NY Post: Andrew Cuomo Has Most To Fear If Spitzer Is Elected

A Post analysis of what happens if Spitzer is elected:

Spitzer will take office owing nobody of consequence anything — which is another way of saying he’ll be free to settle old scores by the boatload.

And that he will do, with gusto, predict a half-dozen veteran Spitzer watchers — not one of them willing to publicly cross a man on the cusp of regaining real power, a man who long ago raised vendetta to an art form.

They expect him to be a particular vexation to Gov. Cuomo.

Cuomo succeeded Spitzer as state attorney general in 2007, when the latter became governor. Nobody thought Albany was going to be big enough for the two of them, and it wasn’t.

Spitzer, his lean frame wrapped around the soul of a wolverine, had bludgeoned his way to notoriety as attorney general. And that was the course he chose as governor.

It didn’t work. From day one, he was at war with the Legislature — discovering soon enough that the lawmakers weren’t as susceptible to bullying as the acutely publicity-averse folks who populate Wall Street.

They fought back — which in part caused Spitzer to deploy state troopers against then-Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno. But Cuomo quite publicly called a halt to that embarrassment, accelerating a dizzying fall in the polls for Spitzer and in some ways greasing the skids for his eventual resignation.

The former governor has not forgotten that.

“Eliot has Andrew’s picture taped to his bathroom mirror,” says one Albany operator. “Every morning he stares at it and says, ‘Hello. My name is Eliot Spitzer. Prepare to die!’ ”

Now, it would seem that opportunities for revenge are scarce. Spitzer is seeking citywide office, after all, and that has nothing to do with Albany.

Except that it does. Or it can be construed to — and that’s an opening an accomplished opportunist like Spitzer would negotiate without difficulty.

“The first thing I will do is audit the MTA to ensure that your dollars are spent wisely and that the cost of commuting remains as low as possible,” Spitzer said last month.

Never mind that the MTA is a state agency, and thus none of the city comptroller’s business.

No standing? No problem.

“Everybody thinks the city runs the trains, or the subways anyway,” says a politically attuned city infrastructure expert. “Of course Eliot will have his auditors all over the Transit Authority, and if Cuomo says no, they’ll go right to court.”

And to the press-release printer, too, the point being to embarrass the governor and rebuild the Spitzer legend. Never mind that the effect will be to be erode public confidence in a vital utility, which actually works pretty well.

Such thuggery paid dividends for Spitzer when he used the Martin Act like a club on Wall Street — coercing surrenders left and right, but never achieving an actual courtroom win.

So look for Spitzer to take another whack at Wall Street — leveraging the comptroller’s position as a principal custodian of the city’s five public pension funds to vex old enemies and to make new ones.

Were Spitzer not a staunch charter school supporter, had he not hired Students First shills to work in his campaign, I would probably have supported his candidacy in the end for the very reasons that the Post gives for why they're scared of him - Spitzer would look to revenge himself on Andrew Cuomo and Wall Street for all his past humiliations.

I can't think of two more deserving entities of revenge than Andrew Cuomo and Wall Street.

Alas, Spitzer's charter school support precludes me from being able to support him.

I don't think he's going to win in any case.

As I wrote earlier today, I think Stringer will eke out a very tight win based on union support, political establishment support, and the GOTV efforts both bring to Stringer's side.

Spitzer does not have that kind of operation, so you have to subtract a few percentage points from his public polling, figuring that some of those people who say they support Spitzer when the pollsters call won't actually vote tomorrow.

Still, there's a little part of me that fantasizes about Spitzer getting elected and seeing him wreak havoc on Cuomo.

I bet Spitzer might even go after Cuomo's teacher evaluation system and school funding system.

You can bet he would go at him on campaign finance and the donations Cuomo laps up from all the corporate entities but keeps hidden.

Alas, Spitzer is uncontrollable - even to himself - so it's best if Stringer wins tomorrow on the backs of the unions and the political establishment and Spitzer goes back to cable TV.

But just for a moment think about what Andrew Cuomo's face will look like on Wednesday if Spitzer is comptroller.

2013 Election: Predictions And Endorsements

Well, we're one day away from the Democratic primary.

It has been one long, long, long primary battle.

We have gone from Christine Quinn as the presumptive favorite to Anthony Weiner's toying with entering the race to the Anybody But Quinn folks launching anti-Quinn ads in April to Weiner jumping in the race in May to Weiner going ahead in the race in late June to beginning to look like a Quinn/Weiner runoff in July to Weiner's Sexting Scandal 2.0 that effectively ended his campaign to Quinn taking the lead again post-Weiner Sexting Scandal 2.0 to de Blasio beginning to gain traction in August to de Blasio gaining momentum by late August and now looking like the presumptive nominee one day before the primary.

The question is, can de Blasio avoid a runoff and if he can't, who will he face in that runoff?

I'm going to go with my gut here and say de Blasio narrowly misses 40% and is forced into a runoff in two weeks. 

Quinnipiac has had de Blasio over the 40% threshold, but Siena, Marist and the AM New York/Newsday poll have not.

As of my writing this post, a PPP poll was rumored to have de Blasio at 38% - also below the magic 40% threshold.

Quinnipiac famously got 2009 wrong, having Bloomberg up mid-teens in their last poll while he only beat Bill Thompson by 5 points.

So I'm a little leery of putting too much faith in Quinnipiac.

I think de Blasio gets somewhere between 36% and 39%, enough to crush his opponents, but not enough to avoid the runoff.

I think Bill Thompson will place second on Tuesday.

I think Thompson places second not because I think he's such a great candidate (frankly he has run almost as anemic a campaign this time around as he did in 2009 against Bloomberg) but because Quinn is such an awful one.

She's gotten hammered for months now over term limits, the slush fund, proximity to Bloomberg, etc. and all that negativity has taken its toll.

It's true that she won all the newspaper endorsements, but no one gives a crap about newspaper endorsements in a top-line race.

In the public advocate's race, in the comptroller's race, an endorsement from the Times might matter, especially if people do not know the candidates (obviously people know Spitzer, but the rest of the candidates in the two races are relatively unknown.)

The Times endorsement did not help Quinn in the least, nor did the tabloid endorsements.

She has some establishment figures, a few celebrities, some unions - those all help.

But her negatives are so high and the downward trajectory in all the public polls so steep that I don't think any of that helps her.

She comes in third in the race.

So it's Thompson and de Blasio in a runoff - a bad situation if you're a teacher hoping for the race to end tomorrow.

I don't want Thompson in a runoff because that gives the UFT a chance to screw up this race even more than they already have.

In my opinion, they endorsed way too early in the race.

With Weiner sucking up all the Anybody But Quinn oxygen in the race in May and June, I can see why they decided Thompson was the best candidate to endorse.

Nonetheless, it didn't take a genius to see that Weiner was still hiding something around his sexting scandal and that eventually it would come out.

I would have held off endorsing for a month, had I been the UFT brain trust, for that very reason.

I wrote in the late spring that the unions, the candidates needed to start attacking Weiner, get the newspapers to scrutinize his record, his sexting scandal, especially the communications he had with the seventeen year old back during his Sexting Scandal 1.0.

I thought a little scrutiny would bring him back to earth.

I was right - it did.

Again, didn't take a genius to see any of this.

Weiner wasn't answering questions straight when asked about the sexting scandal and while I thought the thing that would bring him down would have been something he did before he resigned Congress, I still thought something would eventually bring him down.

I was just hoping it would happen before Primary Day because as of early July the worst teacher nightmare was starting to come together - a Quinn/Weiner runoff to take on Lhota in the general.

Fortunately for us, Sexting Scandal 2.0 made it to TheDirty.com and the rest, as they say is history..

After Weiner imploded, Quinn took a "lead" in some of the public polls, but it was a "soft" lead based as much on name recognition as anything.

The ABQ vote was coming together once more after the Weiner implosion and there were only two places it could go - Thompson or de Blasio.

Thompson, running another poor campaign, tying himself in knots over stop-and-frisk, impressing nobody on the campaign trail with his "meet and greet" skills, was not that candidate.

Rather de Blasio, the one who ran the consistently "progressive" campaign, the one with the consistent stop-and-frisk critique, was that candidate.

Had the UFT waited even just a couple of weeks with their endorsement, they would have been able to make a different choice.

Now it's possible that the UFT was always going to go with Thompson.

NYC Educator and I had this conversation over email - with Randi on board his campaign and Tisch as his co-chair, it was probable they were going to go with Thompson no matter what.

Let's be honest, Mulgrew runs the UFT the way Randi wants him to run it - and that includes evaluation negotiations, contract strategy, and endorsements.

So it's probable that no matter what, the UFT was picking Thompson because Randi wanted him and whatever Randi wants in the UFT/AFT, Randi gets.

In the end, Randi is not going to get what she wants, however, because Thompson is not going to beat de Blasio in a runoff.

It's true that he's only polling down 12 to de Blasio in the Marist poll (Quinn is down 22 in a runoff to BdB), a lead that is not insurmountable, but that's only if you have a decent candidate trying to surmount the lead.

Thompson is not that candidate.

An awful candidate, an awful man, a crook, a phony and a hypocrite (see here, here and here.)

That's our Bill Thompson.

Plus Randi Weingarten and Merryl Tisch are shilling for him.

Can you think of two better reasons to not support Thompson than Weingarten and Tisch want him?

In the end, I think de Blasio beats him double digits in a runoff and that's that - on to the general.

As for the comptroller's race, I think Stringer wins a close one.

Spitzer's under 50%, he's acted increasingly desperate these past two weeks, indicating that his private polling is telling him he's in trouble, and while Spitzer has name recognition, he does not have a great GOTV effort.

Stringer, with union backing, party backing, certainly does have a good GOTV effort, and I think that will make the difference for Stringer come Tuesday.

As for endorsements, I am enthusiastically endorsing Letitia James for Public Advocate.

You can read my reasons for that endorsement here.

In the comptroller's race, I make no endorsement.

I wanted to endorse Spitzer, but his hiring of Students First shills and his touting of charter schools will not allow me to do that.

Stringer I cannot endorse.

Yes, I understand he appointed Patrick Sullivan to the PEP.

Let me tell you something about that appointment.

If that seat mattered, Stringer would not have appointed Patrick Sullivan.

If that was a vote needed by the deformers, you can bet Stringer would have been told by the powers that be that a deformer must get that seat and a deformer would have gotten that seat.

Because the mayor had all the votes he needed already on the PEP, the Stringer appointment (like the other borough president appointments) was superfluous to the deform movement and Stringer was allowed to appoint whomever he wanted.

In Patrick Sullivan, Stringer appointed a good man and an articulate defender of public schools.

But that's only because the fix was already in on the PEP.

So I cannot endorse Stringer for comptroller either.

He's a hack.

Therefore I endorse nobody.

In the mayor's race, I hold my nose and unenthusiastically endorse Bill de Blasio.

I don't trust de Blasio for a whole host of reasons.

First, his work with the real estate industry.

Second, his hiring of Reshma Saujani as deputy public advocate so he could use her Wall Street connections to fund raise for his mayoral campaign (see more about what an awful human being she is here.)

Third, his "Tale of Two Cities" campaign strategy is simply that - a campaign strategy.

He doesn't believe anything he is saying any more than any other politician (see here.)

So de Blasio is the best of a bad lot.

I know he is saying some good things around education, but as James Eterno can tell you, de Blasio can talk a good game about supporting public schools, and then you can never hear from him again.

So de Blasio is my "hold your nose, pull the lever and hope for the best" vote.

Not a ringing endorsement, I know.

But I'm too old and I've seen too much in this fake democracy we call America to believe in that kind of thing anymore.

Change We Can Believe in kinda disabused me of all of that.

Still, all things considered, we're in better shape than we thought we were going to be in July.

Back then, it was looking like Weiner/Quinn to take on Lhota.

I would prefer a straight de Blasio victory tomorrow to keep Mulgrew from making things worse with de Blasio than he already has.

But even if we get a de Blasio/Thompson runoff in two weeks, that's a helluva lot better than the Quinn/Weiner runoff we thought we might be getting back around July 4.

Most prognosticators do not make predictions in political races because it's so easy to be wrong.

But I figure, what the hell, so what if I'm wrong?

It's been a helluva campaign season, so why not go out with a bang?

Frankly, I hope I am wrong - I would love to see de Blasio get well over 40% tomorrow and send Thompson and Quinn off to their post-election Wall Street gigs right away.

In any case, let's hope for a decent election tomorrow, no problems with the machines and, God help us, nothing unforeseen happening as happened back in 2001.

Marist Poll: De Blasio 36%, Quinn 20%, Thompson 20%

Just out:

Bill de Blasio, the Democratic mayoral candidate whose progressive message upended his party's primary campaign this summer, has widened his lead over his rivals just days before the election, a new poll shows.

De Blasio, the city's public advocate, has the support of 36 percent of likely Democratic voters, while his closest rivals, former Comptroller Bill Thompson and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, are tied at distant second with 20 percent each, the NBC 4 New York/Wall Street Journal/Marist Poll found. 

The poll reveals that de Blasio's populist, left-wing appeal to disenfranchised New Yorkers is cutting into voting blocs that would traditionally go to his rivals.

More blacks back de Blasio than Thompson, the race's only black candidate, by 39 percent to 25 percent. And more women support de Blasio than Quinn, the race's only female and once the clear front-runner, by 34 percent to 21 percent.

The winner of Tuesday's primary needs 40 percent to avoid a runoff.

The results reflect trends seen in earlier polls that showed de Blasio gaining ground through the summer, moving from the middle of the pack to first.

"The surge is real," said Lee Miringoff, director of the Marist College Institute for Public Opinion. "Right now he's within striking distance of 40 percent. And if he doesn't reach 40 percent, he would certainly be the early favorite for the runoff."

For Quinn and Thompson, the battle is going to be a) to keep de Blasio under 40% and b) to be the second candidate in the race.

Even if one of them makes a runoff with de Blasio, de Blasio is beating them - Thompson by 12, Quinn by 22.

Only Thompson has a shot to beat de Blasio in a runoff.

Right now it's not clear either one is making that runoff with de Blasio.

De Blasio can thank Bloomberg for yesterday's "De Blasio is a racist" gift, because that ate up two news cycles from Thompson and Quinn.

I will be out with predictions and endorsements tomorrow morning, but as we see from the numbers, Thompson and Quinn are in trouble.

Oh, and in the comptroller's race:

Spitzer 47%, Stringer 45% in the Marist poll.

Spitzer's under 50%, he does not have much of a GOTV operation and Stringer has the establishment and the unions on his side.

Spitzer is in trouble in that race.

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?

Eliot Spitzer Starting To Seem Desperate In Comptroller Race

He launched negative ads today - never a good sign this late in a campaign:

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Thursday that he will not offer an endorsement in the tight primary race for New York City comptroller, a contest in which one of Mr. Cuomo’s predecessors and longtime foes, Eliot Spitzer, is seeking to defeat Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer.

Both candidates, meanwhile, introduced television advertisements attacking each other.
In a new ad that began airing Thursday afternoon, the Stringer campaign said the candidate “far outdistances Eliot Spitzer in integrity.”

“Spitzer jailed people for prostitution and financial crimes, but when he got caught doing the very same thing, he held himself to a different standard and walked away scot-free,” says the ad, which is set to begin airing on WABC, WNBC and WCBS on Thursday evening, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Earlier in the day, Mr. Spitzer released his own television attack ad, as well as a radio spot saying his opponent cut “a back room deal” to overturn term limit laws.

“Term limits: We voted for them twice to make sure no one in this city could serve more than two terms in office,” the radio ad says. “Until Scott Stringer decided to overturn it. Cutting a back room deal to hand Mayor Bloomberg a third term.”

“Look, it wasn’t just our term limits Scott Stringer took away,” the ad continues. “It was our voice.”

The radio ad will run on radio stations “on African-American radio stations,” said a spokeswoman for the Spitzer campaign.

Spitzer had been counting on lots of support from black voters and had been polling well with that demographic until recently.

Clearly now that he's running an attack against Stringer “on African-American radio stations,” he knows he's losing support within the black community.

Stringer has the unions and the political establishment.

They both have guaranteed GOTV operations.

Spitzer has name recognition and cash.

Some polls still show Spitzer with a lead, but Quinnipiac has Stringer ahead within the margin of error in their LV model.

They're expecting Stringer's voters to come out and some of the people who said they were voting for Spitzer to stay home.

That's a pretty good bet.

I'm going to make prediction based on the last Quinnipiac poll and Spitzer's recent acts of desperation like reaching out the UFT (even though Mulgrew personally attacked him in the summer) and now the attack ad on black radio stations.

Spitzer's going to lose this race.

It will probably be close, but I don't think he's going to pull it out.

Given his actions over the last week or so, Spitzer seems to be thinking the same thing.

Now We Know Why Spitzer Was Reaching Out To The UFT (UPDATED BELOW)

Yesterday I wondered why Eliot Spitzer was reaching out the UFT with a "make nice" gesture over the teachers contract.

Today, Quinnipiac shows us why:

When Quinnipiac University surveyed the field two weeks ago, they found ex-Gov. Eliot Spitzer with a dominating 19-point lead over Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer. Well, things have changed a little bit in their latest poll.

Mr. Stringer and Mr. Sptizer are now tied with 46 percent of the vote each among likely Democratic voters.

If the Quinnipiac poll is anywhere near accurate, Spitzer's got problems.

Stringer has all the unions locked up, the party establishment.

Those are guaranteed Stringer votes - the party establishment and the unions are going to use their GOTV operations to get their voters to the polls.

Spitzer, meanwhile, was polling very well in the past, but he's got to get those supporters to the polls himself.

If the race is near tied going in to Primary Day, I would give Stringer the edge in winning the race.

Spitzer, by reaching out to the UFT yesterday, is hoping to persuade them from dropping a couple hundred grand in negative ads on him next week.

Doubt the strategy is going to work.

Mulgrew seems to despise Spitzer almost as much as he despises the UFT rank and file.

But we'll see.

This election cycle gets more and more interesting, doesn't it?

First Quinn is the presumptive nominee, then Weiner enters and shakes things up,Weiner actually goes ahead in the race before imploding in scandal, De Blasio grabs the lead but he's got to bring it on home in the next 12 days.

In the comptroller's race, Stringer looked like a shoe-in before Spitzer saw Weiner polling so well and decided to enter the race half a week before the deadline to file.  Spitzer goes ahead big in the polls, horrifying the establishment and the corporate press, but now, suddenly the race is tied again.

What a year.

I suspect we will have more surprises in both the mayor's race and the comptroller's race before this is all over.

UPDATE: An AM New York/News 12 poll finds the race in a statistical tie too:

Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer and former Gov. Eliot Spitzer are locked in a virtual dead heat in the Democratic primary race for New York City comptroller, with Stringer beating Spitzer 2-to-1 among white voters, according to an amNewYork-News 12 poll results released Thursday.

Spitzer has 46 percent support among Democrats likely to vote in the Sept. 10 primary while Stringer with 43 percent support, the poll conducted by Penn Schoen Berland shows. Ten percent of voters were undecided.

Stringer has a distinct edge among white voters, 65 percent support compared to Spitzer’s 29 percent, the poll shows.

“I don’t think this is pro-Stringer. This is all anti-Spitzer,” said pollster Mike Berland. “I think we're seeing the whites rejecting Spitzer.”

Spitzer still has an advantage among black voters, 59 percent to Stringer’s 25 percent.

Spitzer's in trouble.

Stringer's got the unions walking voters to the polls for him.

Spitzer's got to get them there himself.

Maybe he can use the strategy these two BOE candidates in Alabama used to get out the vote?

Eliot Spitzer Calls For "Fair Contract Negotiations" With UFT

Looks like Spitzer wants to make nice with Mulgrew and the UFT:

NEW YORK -- Two weeks before the New York City primary, former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer (D) plans to wade into the complicated world of education policy.

According to a policy memo obtained by The Huffington Post, Spitzer, who is running for city comptroller, plans to propose auditing how the city spends money on testing and test preparation, and he wants to encourage contract negotiations that include salary increases with the United Federation of Teachers, among other things.

Spitzer is running against Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, a fellow Democrat. In New York, the comptroller oversees pension funds, investigates financial and contract-related issues, and can advise the mayor on fiscal management.

Spitzer will present his education platform at an 11 a.m. Wednesday press conference in front of I.S. 296, a Brooklyn public school. "As Governor, I fought to get New York City students and schools their fair share for the first time, and as Comptroller I will keep fighting to make sure the dollars we get are spent wisely every time," Spitzer said in a statement.

Though Spitzer representatives declined to detail his views on Mayor Michael Bloomberg's education policies, some of his proposals suggest an implicit critique of the current administration. Spitzer will call for encouraging "competitive bidding for goods and services," according to the memo, while Bloomberg's Department of Education has been criticized for awarding too many no-bid contracts.

"These are veiled criticisms of the Bloomberg administration, which relied on non-competitive processes to make awards," said Aaron Pallas, a professor at Columbia University's Teachers College.

Other proposals, such as a promise to "facilitate fair contract negotiations with the United Federation of Teachers," seem calibrated to temper attacks from labor.

Earlier this summer, labor groups united to form two political action committees to help Stringer beat Spitzer, and reportedly UFT President Michael Mulgrew personally pressured a political consulting firm to drop Spitzer as a client.

With Stringer trailing Spitzer by 18 points, according to HuffPost Pollster, the education policy announcement -- one specifically related to union friendly issues, such as concerns about standardized testing -- may be an effort to prevent the UFT and its affiliates from pumping millions into anti-Spitzer advertisements. 

Mulgrew was leading the union attacks against Spitzer.

I'm not sure these education proposals will matter to Mulgrew and the UFT leadership.

Will they matter to individual teachers?

Have to admit, seeing a proposal for "fair contract negotiations" with the UFT catches my eye.

You don't see many politicians lead with that kind of thing.

BTW, Quinnipiac poll out at 4 PM today.

NY Post: Andrew Cuomo Views Eliot Spitzer As The Enemy

From Fred Dicker:

An increasingly nervous Gov. Cuomo is considering his options to prevent the “very real’’ possibility that disgraced former Gov. Eliot Spitzer will win the Sept. 10 Democratic primary for city comptroller — and turn into Cuomo’s worst political nightmare.

With polls continuing to show the once- hooker-happy Spitzer holding a lead over uninspiring Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, Cuomo — so far neutral in the contest — is considering a last-minute endorsement of Stringer or other actions to turn the tide, Democratic insiders say.

The insiders said Cuomo has been closely following private polling data on the Spitzer-Stringer contest and will likely make up his mind about intervening no later than the Labor Day weekend.
“It’s tough to overstate how dangerous for Andrew a Spitzer victory will be, and his victory is a very real possibility,’’ said a longtime Democratic operative, who has known the governor for years.

“If Spitzer is city comptroller, he’ll be attacking Wall Street, which Cuomo needs for the jobs and revenues it produces for the state; he’ll be advocating an across-the-board left-wing agenda, which makes Cuomo nervous; and he’ll never acknowledge Cuomo as the leader of the Democratic Party, which could be worst of all if the governor runs for president,’’ the operative continued.

...

Actions Cuomo could take to help defeat Spitzer include an outright endorsement of Stringer, direct attacks on the former governor, and the mobilization of his wide network of political loyalists and campaign contributors to go all out for Stringer.

Of course, if Cuomo attempts to help Stringer and Spitzer wins anyway, the existing hostility between the two men could become even worse.

That possibility has a prominent Republican strategist predicting that a victorious Spitzer might even seek to challenge Cuomo in the Democratic primary next year in an effort to regain his old seat as governor.

“I think a Spitzer victory over Stringer will drive the governor nuts,’’ said John McLaughlin, a New York-based national GOP strategist and pollster who is working for Republican mayoral hopeful John Catsimatidis.

“I believe there’s no question that Spitzer is looking to become governor again.

“He’s looking for redemption — it’s the indirect message in his TV ads, that he wants to protect the ‘little guy.’ He’s running for higher office than comptroller.

“If Spitzer is comptroller and Cuomo looks weak at this time next year, it may well be that he’ll be more of a threat to Cuomo than any of our Republican candidates could be,’’ McLaughlin continued.

Cuomo endorsing Stringer, Spitzer winning anyway, then challenging a weakened Cuomo next year seems more like a GOP fantasy than a realistic possibility.

Still, I can see why Cuomo would be concerned about Spitzer.

If Spitzer is hiding any dirt the way Weiner was, you can bet Sheriff Andy will make sure that dirt makes it to light.

Sheriff Andy is not going to want to deal with Spitzer back on a public stage.

Can Spitzer Buy His Way Into The Comptroller's Office?

The NY Post reports that Eliot Spitzer has spent more than 10 times what Scott Stringer has spent in the comptroller's race:

It looks like Eliot Spitzer will be a financial “steamroller” this time around.
Spitzer, who’s self-funding his campaign, has put in $3.7 million since declaring his candidacy for comptroller on July 7.

What’s more, the former love gov spent $2.6 million on the race for comptroller in the last month alone — more than 10 times that of his rival Scott Stringer, new campaign finance records show.

...

 A new filing with the city’s Campaign Finance Board reveals Spitzer doled out more than $270,000 on petitioning expenses, including a $165,000 payment to consultant Jonathan Trichter.

And the money apparently made a difference. In just four days, Spitzer’s team collected more than 27,000 signatures to put him on the ballot.

The disgraced former governor — who resigned in 2008 after getting caught soliciting hookers — has also spent $2 million on TV ads.

He paid Brown Miller Group $33,000 for petitioning help and elections attorney Aaron Maslow $37,750 to make sure the petitions wouldn’t be challenged.

Spitzer — who once threatened an upstate lawmaker by saying, “I’m a f--king steamroller, and I’ll roll over you and anybody else” — has steadily filled his coffers, putting in a cool $500,000 on July 15, followed by $425,000 two days later. And on July 24, he gave his campaign $2.72 million.

Meanwhile, Manhattan Borough President Stringer has raised a comparatively paltry $310,595 and spent $173,355 in the same filing period from July 12 to Aug. 5.

Stringer, who raised about $4 million so far, received about $1.5 million in matching funds. He has $4.6 million on hand.

Last week, Spitzer told the Campaign Finance Board that he’s not planning to spend more than $12 million.

If that holds true, Spitzer has $9.4 million left to spend until the primary on Sept. 10. That’s twice the cash that Stringer currently has left in his coffers.

 We'll see if Stringer's operational support can beat Spitzer's money.

That's an awful lot of money Spitzer's dropping in just two months.

Stringer And Spitzer Agree On One Thing: They Both Love Education Reform

Scott Stringer and Eliot Spitzer had a debate this morning:

At one point in the debate Friday, which was co-sponsored by the Daily News, Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer said that if Spitzer wasn't so rich and well-connected, he would be in prison.

"Anyone who did what Eliot did would be in jail right now," Stringer said. "You engaged in money laundering," he added, referring to the former governor's 2008 prostitution scandal that forced him to resign from office. "You broke your own eggs because you engaged in illegal, illicit activity," he said.

Spitzer pushed back by saying Stringer was in Bloomberg's pocket when he helped with an inside deal to overturn term limits and give Bloomberg a third term.

Unfortunately both Stringer and Spitzer found common ground in one area: education reform.

According to the Daily News, they both pledged to help reform the public education system.

Just what we need, two guys who want to be comptroller, an office that has no power to reform the education system, who want to reform the education system.

Here's a question I have - is there any public official or politician currently running or in office who says enough with the reform?

We've had thirteen years of reforms, school closures, increased emphasis on testing, teacher evaluation reform, etc. and the system is worse than ever.

Education reform is the problem, not the solution.

Vote for either of these guys, however, and you're going to get more problems in public education, not solutions.

Maybe I'll support Kristin Davis, the madam Spitzer hired hookers from who just got arrested for selling drugs.

That kind of behavior is less destructive than the kind of reform the education reformers are pursuing these days.

Spitzer Continues To Play Coy

From the NY Post:

Eliot Spitzer evaded the simplest of yes-or-no questions yesterday — refusing for the third day in a row to deny he’s carrying on an extramarital affair.

When a Post reporter asked whether he has a girlfriend, Spitzer simply shook his head, waved his hand and let out an irritated sigh.

The once hooker-happy governor, now running for city comptroller, said he did not read The Post report yesterday detailing other candidates’ candid replies to the same question.

“If everyone else can do it, why can’t you?” Spitzer was asked. “What’s wrong with a simple yes or no? Why can’t you say yes or no?”

To that, Spitzer shook his head and mumbled something inaudible.

Good God, Eliot, just tell the freaking truth and move on.

No one really cares if you're marriage is on the rocks and you're dating someone else.

But the evasions bring to mind hookergate and make you look bad.

Just tell the truth and get on with things.

Seriously.

Mulgrew Stumping With Thompson, Attacks Weiner/Spitzer As Too Sleazy To Enter A School

UFT President Michael Mulgrew took a blunt object from his woodshed today and used it on Anthony Weiner and Eliot Spitzer:

At the ferry terminal on Staten Island, Thompson was met by U.F.T. members in blue shirts, who guided commuters over to meet him. U.F.T. president (and Staten Island resident) Michael Mulgrew was there, too.

"The buzz is being created, he's moving up," Mulgrew told me.

Mulgrew also complained about the attention being paid to Weiner and Spitzer.

"You have two candidates for citywide office that couldn't even pass the background check to be a teacher," he said. "And people are debating them as if they are serious candidates who should be given consideration where they wouldn't be allowed to step foot inside of a classroom or a school."

Mulgrew has a point, of course.

Weiner has admitted to texting with a seventeen year old, and while both he and she claim the communications were not sexual in any way, after repeatedly lying to and misleading people about his sexting habits, Weiner's credibility is not exactly at an all-time market high.

As a retired educator told him last week on Staten Island “As a former New York City Department of Education employee, 21 years as a teacher, nine years as an assistant principal, if I conducted myself in the manner you conducted yours, my job would’ve been gone."

As for Spitzer, last time I looked hiring hookers was a felony punishable by jail time and using state cell phones to hire hookers and state cars to drive you to the hotel to meet those hookers is a violation for state employees - even the governor.

Were Spitzer a teacher instead of a politician, he would have been fired from his DOE job when he was caught hiring hookers, arrested and prosecuted along with some of the other johns Spitzer himself put away.

He certainly wouldn't be entering a classroom or working in a school - and yet, if elected comptroller, he could be auditing school data while Weiner, if elected mayor, could be running the school system.

So Mulgrew has a point here about the hypocrisy of Weiner and Spitzer.

Of course, given the Mulgrew/Grady woodshed story that was never fully explained and the conflict of interest involving his sister, the NYCDOE and $11 million dollars, Michael Mulgrew shouldn't be allowed anywhere near a school either, let alone running the teachers union.

Eliot Spitzer Should Just Tell The Truth About This And Move On

Last week I posted that I thought Eliot Spitzer was less than forthcoming when asked questions about whether he had hired any prostitutes since he resigned as New York State governor.

Spitzer was getting defensive about these questions and eventually told the press “I’m done answering this question," which, given Spitzer's history with prostitutes and the circus surrounding Anthony Weiner's sexting scandal 2.0, seemed like stonewalling defiance and wishful thinking.

 At the time I wrote:

That kind of defiance around the prostitute issue raises more questions, however, and suggests that Eliot may not be as genuine and truthful as he wants us to think he is being over this matter.

Weiner has played fast and loose with the truth, claiming he told the public more sexting photos and text would surface but neglecting to note that these would be photos and sexts sent after his resignation from Congress.

The way Spitzer is responding to these questions around his use of prostitutes, now defiantly saying he won't answer the prostitute question as if it's actually an affront for anybody to ask it after we have learned of Weiner's post-resignation sexting adventures, smells fishy and suggests he may be hiding something here.

If I'm right about this and he is hiding something or playing fast and loose with the truth around his use of prostitutes, that will come out in the end.

Spitzer's has lot of enemies who want to do him in, so if he is hiding something or lying, we'll know soon enough.

But if I were him and I were trying to distance myself from Weiner and convince the public that I had truly rehabilitated myself post-resignation, I don't think I would get so testy and defensive when people ask legitimate questions over when I stopped hiring prostitutes.

 Well, sure enough, just one week later, we learn that Eliot Spitzer is hiding something:

Eliot Spitzer refused today to deny that he has a girlfriend.

The candidate for city comptroller was asked three times at a campaign stop this morning in Brooklyn about persistent rumors he is having an "extra-marital affair."

"I am so tired of the personal attacks and I've answered all those questions," Spitzer said outside the Borough Hall subway station, where he was shaking hands with voters and received an overwhelmingly positive response.

"The public cares about what I did in government. That's what I'm going to be talking about and that's what the public is going to be voting on -- based on what I did in terms of trying to clean up Wall Street, which got a lot more attention than the other things we did.

But the other things we did was just as important."

When the topic came up again, Spitzer insisted voters don't care about his personal life.

"We've said everything we can say about that and these are attacks that are coming out of left field and frankly, you know, the public cares about what the public should care about. The public frankly is a lot smarter in this regard than some folks in the media," he said.

At that point, an aide tried to end the impromptu press conference.

But Spitzer took one more question, when a reporter gave him a chance to "reject" the rumors.

"I have said everything we're going to say about this," Spitzer concluded.

Now having an extra-marital affair is different than hiring prostitutes.

This is not something that needs to be between Spitzer and the police.

This is something between Spitzer, his wife, their rabbi and some lawyers to figure out.

But just as Anthony Weiner should have been completely forthcoming about his sexting habits before he announced for mayor and gotten everything out into the open, Spitzer should have been open about this circumstance when he announced for comptroller.

Instead, like Weiner, Spitzer has played a game of rolling disclosure and cat-and-mouse on this stuff that in the end will come back to bite him.

If Spitzer wants to focus on issues in the comptroller's race, he should just come out with whatever the story is - all of it - and say "That's it, folks.  There's nothing else, we're going to move on now and get back to the issues."

Spitzer hasn't done that, however.

Rather, he's said his marriage is fine even when the tabloids have him staying at his parents' house while his wife stays in the Spitzer family house, he's said there is no validity to the rumors that his wife looking to divorce, he's said that this is all personal and none of it should matter in the election.

He's right about that last part, but alas, given his past history with hookers and Weiner's current travails, good luck getting the press to drop the scent of a Spitzer extra marital affair.

It's probably too late to do a full disclosure without turning the comptroller campaign into more of a circus than it already is.

But had he started out with a full disclosure, he might have been able to avoid some of the pain that is sure to come when this story finally is revealed and his campaign has to play clean-up for a few media cycles.

When will politicians learn that it's not the sex or the sexting or the extra marital affairs that really cause them political and personal headaches - it's trying to keep a straight face while covering that stuff up that does it?

When will humans learn that whatever we run from we are actually running toward?