Poll: Spitzer tumbles into tie for NYC comptroller

(AP) Poll: Spitzer tumbles into tie for NYC comptroller
By JENNIFER PELTZ
Associated Press
NEW YORK
Support for Eliot Spitzer’s return to politics has plunged less than two weeks before the city comptroller primary, a poll showed Thursday, putting the scandal-tarnished former governor in a tie with Democratic rival Scott Stringer.

Stringer, who’s Manhattan’s borough president, and Spitzer each got 46 percent of the vote in the Quinnipiac University survey of likely Democratic primary voters. Spitzer had previously had double-digit leads.

The latest numbers are sure to put an already revved-up race on overdrive.

Since Spitzer unexpectedly leaped into what had been a staid race in July, he and Stringer have traded barbs about each other’s political records and personas, and Stringer hasn’t been shy about raising Spitzer’s past as a governor who resigned amid a 2008 prostitution scandal.

“Public polling is catching up to what we are seeing on the subways and streets. New Yorkers are looking for a comptroller with a proven record of honesty, integrity and putting the middle class first,” Stringer campaign manager Sascha Owen said in a statement Thursday that noted that Spitzer “left office in disgrace.”

The Spitzer camp said it was comfortable with where the race stood.

“We’re confident that New Yorkers will choose to elect an independent voice to the comptroller’s office,” Spitzer spokeswoman Lis Smith said in a statement.

Spitzer built a reputation for taking on problematic Wall Street practices as attorney general before his stint as a dynamic if sometimes abrasive governor. He has been asking voters to forgive his admitted involvement with prostitutes and look instead at his plans to make the comptroller’s office more of a force for pushing to change corporate behavior.

Stringer, a longtime state assemblyman before becoming borough president, says he has both the policy experience and the interpersonal skills to be the city’s chief financial officer.

He portrays Spitzer as arrogant. Spitzer paints him as ineffective. Their campaigns regularly joust over issues ranging from Spitzer’s decision to self-finance his campaign to Stringer’s support for changing term limits when Mayor Michael Bloomberg sought a third term.

Spitzer had been enjoying huge advantages in polls just two weeks ago: a 56-to-37 percent lead in a Quinnipiac poll, and 54 percent to 36 percent in an NBC 4 New York/Wall Street Journal/Marist poll, also of likely Democratic voters.

In the weeks since, Stringer has garnered several endorsements, including those of The New York Times, the Daily News and the New York Post.

The political and media world “has jumped on Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer’s bandwagon, helping him `poll-vault’ from 19 points down to dead even in just two weeks,” said Quinnipiac polling director Maurice “Mickey” Carroll.

The university’s latest poll surveyed 602 likely Democratic primary voters between Aug. 22 and Monday. It has a sampling margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.

The primary is Sept. 10. The general election is Nov. 5.

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