STONE COLD IN NEW YORK
If, as many suspect, New York Democratic gubernatorial nominee
Carl McCall finishes third to Gov. George
Pataki and independent businessman Tom
Golisano on election day, look for Rep. Charles
Rangel to stir the pot inside the Democratic Party. Rangel
hit the roof when told of DNC chair Terry
McAuliffe’s comments to the New York Times that
the national party was pulling funds from McCall. (That money, by
the way, is headed to Florida and Bill McBride’s
campaign, which after a surge has slipped in the polls in the past
week.)
Rangel has hinted to political allies in Harlem that the
national party is abandoning McCall, a longtime friend and
political ally in New York City, because McCall is
African-American, and that he will look for ways to make McAuliffe
and the DNC’s life miserable in the aftermath of the November
elections. “Six months ago, McAuliffe had given up on Florida,”
says a Harlem businessman who has donated to both Republican and
Democratic candidates. “Now he’s taking money that we helped raise
for our election and giving it to someone else? Do you think he
does that if Andy Cuomo is running? Do you think
he tells the New York Times about it? I don’t think
so.”
McAuliffe’s relationship with the African-American wing of the
Democratic Party has been an uneasy one. He has quietly cut many
ties the party had with the Rev. Jesse Jackson,
using him less and less on the campaign trail. He also refused a
request from Georgia’s Rep. Cynthia McKinney that
the party block the primary challenge to he re-election. Many
inside the Congressional Black Caucus blame the DNC for McKinney’s
landslide defeat. As well, throughout this campaign cycle,
McAuliffe has avoided linking his party to prospective presidential
candidate, the Rev. Al Sharpton. When the DNC held
a “get out the vote” rally in New York City earlier this year,
Sharpton was noticeably excluded from the speaker list.
But some of the criticism doesn’t hold. McAuliffe was one of the
party people who pressed pal Bill Clinton into
pushing Cuomo out of the race, giving McCall a clear shot at
Pataki. And in this campaign, McCall and his supporters really have
no one to blame but themselves. Ten years ago, McCall’s star was
ascending and he appeared poised to become an Empire State power
player for years to come. But his campaign has been badly managed,
his fundraising has been poor and he has been dogged by minor
scandals. And for a seasoned candidate, McCall has performed poorly
on the stump. Audiences have been less than enthusiastic toward
him.
Adding to the McCall malaise is the performance of third-party
candidate Tom Golisano, whose campaign is being
managed by former Nixon and Reagan campaign adviser Roger
Stone. Because of ideological conflicts and a long
simmering war between Stone and the Pataki administration over
Indian gaming issues and an ethics investigation into Stone’s
lobbying activities in Albany, Stone has made it his mission in
life to serve as a thorn in the side of Gov. George
Pataki. And in Golisano he’s found the perfect candidate
to really wreak havoc. As it stands, Golisano is running second in
most state polls, and in some polls focusing on the upstate vote,
he is actually running ahead of both Pataki and McCall.
A third place finish for the Democratic candidate would be a
huge embarrassment for the national party, which had touted its
gubernatorial victories across the country as keys to a successful
campaign season.
LIGHT IN THE FORRESTER
Don’t count Doug Forrester out of the New Jersey
Senate race just yet. True, with almost no campaigning, and almost
exclusively on name recognition, Democratic fill-in Frank
Lautenberg has pulled to a 48-37 percent lead in the
polls. But that 15 percent remain undecided is a big enough number
to give Forrester some hope. Some. “It’s awfully tough, especially
for a guy like Forrester, first time in a campaign, not a terribly
exciting speaker,” says a New Jersey Republican operative. “But
Lautenberg isn’t lighting things up either.”
The majority of undecideds claim to be independent voters, which
in this election gives the edge to Forrester. “If they can be
swayed in a positive manner, they would probably go for the guy who
isn’t a has-been,” says the operative. “But Forrester has to give
them a reason to pull the lever for him.”
The Republican National Committee intends to plunk down at least
a million dollars in TV and radio advertising for the last week
before election day in a last minute drive to pump up Forrester’s
visibility.
