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Cuomo and Green Grab at Spitzer for Dear Life

Jostling at Parade, Attorney General Foes Grapple for Photo Ops; Eliot Chilly, Neutral

 

By Jason Horowitz

Eliot Spitzer didn’t set out to endorse anyone at Monday’s West Indian Day Parade. But Mark Green had other plans.
 
Emboldened by last week’s New York Times endorsement in the bitterly fought Democratic primary race for State Attorney General, Mr. Green—dressed in glaringly white tennis sneakers to match his gleaming teeth—nudged his way through the marchers until he was right up alongside Mr. Spitzer.
 
“I’m marching just part of the way with Eliot,” Mr. Green explained as he walked the route among television crews and flashing cameras. “Symbolically.”  
 
With the coveted Times endorsement now out of play, Mr. Spitzer’s blessing is the last, and perhaps decisive, prize in this final week of what has been by far the most competitive—and maliciously fought—statewide race. Mr. Green, who can be almost pathologically verbose, has privately told anyone who will listen that Mr. Spitzer supports him and detests his nakedly ambitious opponent, Andrew Cuomo. Mr. Cuomo, the front-runner, whose handlers have so far managed to muzzle his brasher self-promotional instincts, has made every effort to demonstrate that his highly public feuds with Mr. Spitzer—dating back to the time when the two viewed each other as inevitable rivals for higher office—have long since been settled.
 
“There is a reflected glory that they would like to capture, an image and reputation that has been strong enough to catapult him into front-runner status in the Governor’s race,” said Lee Miringoff, the director of the Marist Institute for Public Opinion.
 
“They would like to be ticket mates,” Mr. Miringoff added.
 
For his part, Mr. Spitzer—the overwhelming favorite to become the next Governor of the State of New York, and this year’s undisputed golden boy of state politics—insists that he won’t be getting involved in their squabbles. 
 
“I’m not doing anything in the A.G.’s race, and I think people know that,” he told The Observer as he prepared to parade down Eastern Parkway among a crush of supporters. “I’m not saying anything or doing anything.”
 
But that hasn’t discouraged the two candidates, who have engaged in a fiercely competitive tug-of-war for use of his imagery and voice in ads, and even for spots next to the attorney general at luncheons, press conferences or parades.
 


Mr. Cuomo sent out campaign flyers last month about his desire to fill Mr. Spitzer’s “very big shoes,” while Mr. Green has made the attorney general’s lawsuit against Mr. Cuomo’s office at the Department of Housing and Urban Development a lynchpin of his negative campaign against Mr. Cuomo.
 
The stakes have been even higher when it comes to employing Mr. Spitzer’s lantern-jawed, beady-eyed looks in pricey television ad campaigns, leading to almost ludicrously picayune arguments between the candidates over virtually every Spitzer reference.
 
On Sept. 2, Mr. Cuomo released a new negative spot, featuring a photo taken with Mr. Spitzer when the two men were endorsed on Aug. 27 by an association of black law-enforcement officials on the steps of City Hall.
 
In an extraordinary display of political bravado, the ad also cited Mr. Spitzer’s praise of Mr. Cuomo’s “tremendous work” on gun control—an issue the two men actually fought over bitterly several years ago. (The full quote from Mr. Spitzer actually made the point that the former H.U.D. Secretary had worked to “continue and expand the effort” that Mr. Spitzer, by implication, initiated.)
 
At the parade on Sept. 4, the ad—and specifically, that quote—seemed to be all that Mr. Green wanted to talk about. He insisted angrily that the ad’s use of the quote was “intentionally misleading” and left Mr. Spitzer’s side on the parade route to make the point to The Observer. “Spitzer and Cuomo fought over gun reform and didn’t cooperate over gun reform.”
 
Clearly exercised, Mr. Green then strode over to the attorney general’s side and began talking to him heatedly, arms flailing. Mr. Spitzer only shrugged, shook his head and turned his shoulders, giving Mr. Green the back of his gold “Grand Marshal” sash.  
 

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You may reach Jason Horowitz via email at: jhorowitz@observer.com .

This column ran on page 1 in the 9/11/2006 edition of The New York Observer.

 
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Mark Green with Eliot Spitzer.





 

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