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Shortly after the 2006 election, Milano The New School for Management and Urban Policy invited senior strategists from the campaigns for New York attorney general and governor and the journalists who covered them to discuss the races. The forum followed a similar discussion convened by Milano after the 2005 New York City mayoral campaign. The focus was on how campaign decisions reacted to events, how decisions were made, and why. In addition, our intention was to leave a historical record of elections in our city and state enabling us to turn back to them in the future, compare strategies over the years, and learn from the differences and similarities.
The race for governor was vastly different from the mayor’s race. While Mayor Bloomberg, like Eliot Spitzer, ultimately won his election with a substantial majority of the vote, he did not start out with a substantial lead in the polls. The 2005 election year also featured a competitive, and at times, nasty Democratic primary. Not so in 2006. Eliot Spitzer was a juggernaut from the moment he quietly announced he was running for governor a full two years before the election. He had established a national reputation as attorney general for taking on Wall Street and many observers thought that his “Mr. Clean” image was just what the state capital—notorious for secrecy and dysfunction—needed. Despite a spirited challenge in the primary by Nassau County Executive Tom Suozzi, Spitzer’s path to the nomination and the Governor’s Mansion seemed largely unobstructed. He was able to run as both an agent of change and as an incumbent.
Additionally, it was noted that New York’s senior senator, Charles E. Schumer, had at one time expressed interest in running for Governor but decided early on that he would remain in the U.S. Senate. This, too, had a profound effect on the Democratic field.
After Governor Pataki’s announcement that he would not run for a fourth term, jockeying for the Republican nomination began immediately, with early attention focusing on former Massachusetts Governor William Weld. Originally from Long Island, Weld had returned to New York after serving nearly two terms as an extremely popular moderate Republican in the Bay State. Weld—a Harvard educated, charismatic lawyer who reporters appreciated for his wit and unguarded comments—stood in stark contrast to the serious, precise, and lawyerly bearing of Eliot Spitzer. As we learned in our discussion, Weld’s lack of understanding of how primaries work in New York led to his being outmaneuvered by the lesser-known John Faso. Faso assiduously courted the county chairs and ended up with the nomination. He has since returned to the private sector. A number of the observers in the room expressed the view that we have probably not heard the last of Bill Weld, since he would certainly like the option of running for Hillary Clinton’s senate seat should it become vacant after the 2008 election.
Despite stark differences in their campaign platforms, the contest between Spitzer and Faso didn’t generate many sparks. The election was portrayed in the press from the beginning as Spitzer’s to lose, and Faso had a hard time breaking through that inevitability. Faso’s serious style and message almost exclusively focused on taxes, and left him little opportunity to highlight the differences between himself and Spitzer. For example, on social issues such as same-sex marriage, Spitzer and Faso parted ways. John Faso did not believe it an important issue though clearly it would have scored him some points. At the roundtable, there was criticism of the way the press covered this race. By continually referring to John Faso as trailing by 50 percentage points, it made it very difficult for the challenger to ever gain any momentum. We hope this is one of the lessons learned from our review of the campaign.
Because of the lack of competitiveness in the governor’s race, we decided to add to our review an office that doesn’t normally attract much attention, but in 2006, it was the one to watch.
Jeanine Pirro, the former Westchester County District Attorney, was the only candidate for the Republican nomination. She switched to the attorney general’s race after some initial stumbles in her attempt to take on Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton. Pirro was popular with Republicans statewide—she was moderate on social issues, telegenic and articulate, and her toughon- crime rhetoric appealed to suburban voters. But she also had baggage in the form of a convicted felon husband. His past and present mistakes came back to haunt her again and again on the campaign trail.
The Democratic primary featured two well-known candidates—former New York City Public Advocate Mark Green and former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Andrew Cuomo. The race also featured Charlie King, a longtime Democratic Party activist who had worked under Andrew Cuomo at HUD, and a first-time candidate, Sean Patrick Maloney—an openly gay lawyer who had also served in the Clinton administration. Cuomo led in the polls in the period leading up to the primary and general elections. But there was a sense among reporters covering the race that his fortunes could change, and that if he ended up with the party’s nomination he would face a spirited challenge from Pirro.
Pirro did indeed run an aggressive campaign but she was severely hobbled by the announcement of a federal investigation alleging that she had illegally attempted to wiretap her husband in order to uncover whether he was having an extramarital affair. Pirro’s private life served as fodder for the tabloids for days, while Andrew Cuomo remained quiet, largely refusing to engage on the topic. Pirro confronted the allegations head on and demanded an investigation into the source of the information that had been leaked to the press. Ultimately, she didn’t lose much ground in the polls, but the distraction prevented her from closing the large gap that stood between her and the first-born son of former Governor Mario M. Cuomo.
What follows is a transcript of the two roundtable conversations (edited lightly for comprehension). We hope that you find the dialogue as informative, useful, and thought-provoking as those of us around the table and in the room did.
— Dean Fred P. Hochberg
Milano The New School
for Management and Urban Policy |
