Scott Stringer is taking off the gloves, launching a negative Web ad in the heated race for city comptroller that rips rival Eliot Spitzer’s “colossal failures” as governor.
The 80-second spot opens with a clip of Spitzer’s shocking 2008 resignation, with wife Silda Wall Spitzer at his side as he acknowledges patronizing prostitutes.
The narrator, speaking over somber music, then chastises Spitzer for “Troopergate,” in which he was accused of using the State Police to spy on former Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno, Spitzer’s political nemesis.
“Eliot Spitzer promised reform. Instead, he plunged Albany into political gridlock and new lows of dysfunction,” the narrator claims.
“They called it Troopergate — Spitzer using State Police to spy on his political enemies.”
Spitzer’s budgets are denounced as “a fiscal disaster” before the ad concludes: “All in all, it was a record of colossal failures.”
Spitzer campaign spokesman Hari Sevugan responded that the ad was “filled with mischaracterizations.”
He called it “another sign that the establishment is getting nervous that an independent voice fighting for the people’s interest will soon be in the Comptroller’s Office.”