Tennessee transplant and former US Rep. Harold Ford Jr. announced last night he has decided not to challenge unelected incumbent Kirsten Gillibrand for her US Senate seat.
Sources said Ford, who comes from a deeply connected line of powerful Southern Democrat pols, had a meeting last week with state Democratic Party leader Jay Jacobs, who’d been openly backing Gillibrand.
Jacobs — who requested the sit-down — extended an olive branch and told Ford that he thinks he’d be a great candidate, but not this year.
Jacobs later said he was “gratified by Ford’s decision” to drop out, and added that it took “a measure of character.”
The Post broke the story on its Web site last night.
For the past two months, Ford has been travelling the state and engaging in a war of words with Gillibrand, who was selected by Gov. Paterson to fill Hillary Rodham Clinton’s Senate seat.
Gillibrand’s spokesman, Glen Caplin, vowed, “No matter who her opponent is this fall, she will wage a vigorous campaign on her strong record and her vision for New York.”
Gillibrand has been widely criticized for a lackluster performance in the Senate and has had weak approval ratings in recent polls.
But Ford failed to catch on with many Democratic leaders.
He conducted a poll less than a week ago to measure his support.
It was believed to have shown a difficult path to the nomination for Ford — who received massive Wall Street compensation and voted twice for a constitutional ban on gay marriage, two problematic issues.
Privately, many of Ford’s boosters were caught off guard by his decision, having gotten no heads-up it was coming — and they believed he really planned to run.
As recently as Saturday, Ford challenged Rep. Charles Rangel in a meeting with black and Hispanic lawmakers over the federal health-care bill, and continued slamming Gillibrand until the bitter end.
But Ford wrote in a New York Times op-ed piece today that if he ran, “the likely result would be a brutal and highly negative Democratic primary — a primary where the winner emerges weakened and the Republican strengthened.”
The New York state GOP released a statement saying voters should have had a choice, and adding, “Mr. Ford’s decision comes at the expense of voters who are being denied the features of a true democratic system.”
Potential GOP candidates for the seat are Port Authority board member Bruce Blakeman; financial expert David Malpass; Dan Senor, the husband of CNN anchor Campbell Brown and a former foreign-policy adviser to George W. Bush; and real-estate mogul and publisher Mortimer Zuckerman.