Hevesi lead dwindles
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- November
- 3
This morning’s Siena poll finds Comptroller Alan Hevesi’s lead has almost completely melted away. The Democrat, battered by a scandal over his use of a state-paid driver for his wife, went from polling 52 percent to 25 percent against Republican Chris Callaghan last month to 39 percent to 35 percent now.
Steven Greenberg, the poll spokesman, said Hevesi was “defining the political term free-fall.”
Last month, Hevesi’s favorable rating was 41 percent, and his unfavorable rating 21 percent. His favorables have now dropped to just 27 percent, and 46 percent see him in an unfavorable light. More people (27 percent) than in October (18 percent) call what Hevesi did “unforgivable.” Another 49 percent call it “inappropriate.”
Still, 61 percent said they didn’t know enough about Callaghan to have an opinion of him.
Other Democrats retain their comfortable margins over their GOP opponents. Eliot Spitzer has a 45 point lead over John Faso, U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton leads former Yonkers Mayor John Spencer by 37 points, and former HUD Secretary Andrew Cuomo tops former Westchester DA Jeanine Pirro by 21 points, a better showing than last month.
The poll, of 500 “likely” voters, has an error margin of plus or minus 4.4 percentage points.
It comes on top of a NY1/Newsday poll released last night that put the candidates 10 points apart, with Hevesi leading Callaghan 48 percent to 38 percent, though by their analysis the race appeared to be stabilizing. Of those polled, 36 percent said Hevesi should resign, 17 percent said he should pay an additional fine, and 34 percent said the apology and $83,000 he had paid already as reimbursement to the state were sufficient.
It also comes as Hevesi releases what may be his “hail Mary” spot, a stripped-down ad in which he speaks directly to the camera. I saw it last night; Ben Smith at the Daily News, via a reader, had this approximate transcript:
“Concern for my wife led me to make a stupid mistake. I’m truly sorry. I’m a good Comptroller who did a dumb thing. If you give me a chance to keep serving you in a job I love, I’ll owe you everything and the politicians nothing.”
This entry was posted
on Friday, November 3rd, 2006 at 10:24 am by Liz Anderson.
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