Charlie King, Democrat candidate for Attorney General, will drop out of the race today, the Journal News reports this morning. King wasn't very well known and hence his polling numbers have been very low while the media has completely focused their coverage on the two big names, Andrew Cuomo and Mark Green. That is a one-two combination that didn't help his campaign. All New Yorkers wish him well.
The Democrat race for Attorney General may have taken a weird and nasty turn last night at the NY1's A.G. debate. Mark Green openly accused front-runner Andrew Cuomo of "poisoning children" as head of the Department of Housing and Urban Development because pesticides were used by some government workers to combat bugs and weeds.
This is typical of Mark Green --- he gets extremely shrill when he knows he is behind. His campaign doesn't have the legs that he thought it would and he needs to drag the front-runner back to the pack. But to make this type of accusation is probably more than shrill. It is sickening.
I love negative campaigning as well as the next person, but to accuse someone of poisoning children, it is just below the belt.
Charlie King and Sean Patrick Mahoney, the two other candidates in the race who receive scant media coverage, said that Green's attack would only help one person: Republican Jeanine Pirro, their potential November opponent who has benefited in recent polls from Green's "slash and burn" campaign tactics against Cuomo.
Charlie King, a former employee of Cuomo's HUD administration who was his 2002 gubernatorial running mate, and Sean Patrick Maloney, an investigative lawyer in Manhattan and former aide to President Bill Clinton, stressed that Green's "negative" campaigning is bad for their party. "Mark should knock it off," Maloney said. "It hurts Democrats. I realize this is a contact sport. It's not because I think Andrew Cuomo candidate is the best candidate in this race ... I don't think he's the best candidate on this stage, or even the second-best. We will not beat Jeanine Pirro with this."
Maloney is right.
MORE on the debate: check out the New York Post.
The New York Press blog The Fifth Estate noted a misadventure in campaign fundraising.
Attorney General candidate Charlie King sent a letter to the donors of his soon-to-be opponent and once-upon-a-time U.S. Senate candidate Jeanine Pirro, reminding them that they can ask for their money back.
"Dear Pirro for Senate Contributor," Charlie opens with.
"[W]hether you like it or not, you have unwittingly contributed to her new campaign for New York State Attorney General...Since Ms. Pirro backed out of her bid for the Senate, it seems only fair for donors like you to be given the same opportunity to back out as well."
Azi at The Fifth Estate rightfully popped a question right back at King's operation about Andrew Cuomo's use of gubernatorial funds for his own Attorney General bid.
"Do you know whether Cuomo gave his gubernatorial campaign donors the chance to opt-out of his AG campaign," asked Charlie's spokesman Simon Brandler. "We assumed that he did."
Not the right answer.
Post script:
Jeanine Pirro had the right answer.
She won't be using any of her money from the U.S. Senate race for the Attorney General campaign. She's starting from scratch with a clean slate (see above story).
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