In months, N.Y. politics go from red hot to ice cold
ALBANY, N.Y. -- New York pollster Lee Miringoff thought there would be two hot poll questions for New Yorkers this fall:
1. Which presidential candidate from New York would carry the state in November, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton or former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani?
2. Whom should Gov. Eliot Spitzer appoint to the Senate to fill Clinton's term if she goes to the White House?
To say things didn't work that way is one of the great understatements of modern New York politics.
Clinton lost the Democratic nominating contest to Barack Obama. Former GOP front-runner Giuliani failed to win a single Republican primary or caucus despite spending tens of millions of dollars.
Even if Clinton had won, Spitzer wouldn't have been the one deciding who'd replace her. The Democrat resigned as governor in March after he was linked to a prostitution ring.
"A lot can change in six months," Miringoff says. And so New York is back in the role it has played in presidential elections for the past 20 years.
"In presidential politics, New York's votes are already assigned," says Maurice Carroll, a former longtime New York City newspaper political reporter now doing polling on New York issues for Quinnipiac University in Connecticut. "So why should either Obama or McCain give much attention to New York, except for the money, except for the publicity?"
Peter LaMassa, 39, of Massapequa, Long Island, says he doubts the presidential candidates will even bother running many campaign ads in New York.
"It makes you question the whole electoral process," says LaMassa, who works in financial services. "I think it's sort of disappointing that only the battleground states get all the attention. It makes some states irrelevant and others so important."
Even with polls tightening to show Republican John McCain might have a chance to carry the state against Democrat Obama — a Siena (College) Research Institute poll released Monday had Obama up 46%-41% — New York is still irrelevant, Baruch College political scientist Douglas Muzzio points out.
