It’s been a long summer for the remaining two Jewish candidates viably standing for high office in New York City. The comptroller race, once a foregone conclusion for Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, got interesting very quickly after former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer jumped into the race just days before the deadline. Spitzer immediately rocketed ahead in the polls based on his name recognition, either from his scandal or his earlier political life.
The two have been at it ever since, throwing shade at each other through the press and having some heated exchanges during the comptroller debates that not many people likely even knew existed. Yesterday, however, Stringer got a shot in the arm when, on the strength of a small flurry of endorsements for City Comptroller, he appeared to be tied with Spitzer in a new poll.
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.
While more polls are expected in the coming days, the latest numbers are sure to put an already revved-up race on overdrive.
You hear that? It’s a revved-up race on overdrive!
Of course, today another poll shows that Spitzer still enjoys a comfortable lead.
The unpredictable race, in which Spitzer chose to launch his political comeback following a prostitution scandal, took another turn when a poll released Friday by Siena College and The New York Times showed that Spitzer was the choice of 50 percent of likely Democratic voters.
Stringer, the Manhattan borough president, was at 35 percent. The poll of 505 likely Democratic voters, conducted between Aug. 19 and Wednesday, has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points
As we enter the home stretch with less than two weeks before the primary, we should expect to see some fireworks, especially as the city’s mayoral race intensifies. Right now, Public Advocate Bill de Blasio has jumped to a big lead in the Democratic primary, which means that things should get interesting in the coming days things as Christine Quinn and Bill Thompson try to secure the one remaining spot in a run-off, should de Blasio fail to reach the 40 percent threshold.
Adam Chandler was previously a staff writer at Tablet. His work has appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Atlantic, Slate, Esquire, New York, and elsewhere. He tweets @allmychandler.
