A new poll has Scott Stringer jumping to a seven-point lead over Eliot Spitzer in the race for city comptroller, after a glaring racial divide had both candidates campaigning furiously for black votes Sunday.
The Quinnipiac survey shows the Manhattan Borough President supported by 50 percent of voters, compared to 43 percent for the disgraced ex-governor. It was Stringer’s best showing in the campaign.
The poll, released Monday, put Stringer ahead among white voters by 65 to 31 percent, while Spitzer was leading 58-30 percent among black voters and
51-44 percent among Hispanic voters.
Quinnipiac polling director Maurice Carroll said the results revealed that Stringer “has the momentum” despite Spitzer’s “huge publicity blitz.”
“He’s not home free, but he looks to be on the plus side of the racial split with a big white vote offsetting the almost as big black vote for Spitzer,” Carroll said.
On Sunday, Stringer blitzed African-American churches and neighborhoods and sounded like a newly converted populist, portraying himself as a man of the people while branding Spitzer as an out-of-touch aristocrat.
“The rich and powerful . . . live by a different set of rules,” Stringer said at Brown Memorial Baptist Church in Brooklyn, appearing alongside Rep. Hakeem Jeffries.
“The rest of us have to struggle every day to put food on the table, to see if you can pay rent, pay a mortgage.”
Stringer also touted his Haiti earthquake relief efforts in a visit to New Jerusalem Church of the Nazarene, a Haitian-American parish in Brooklyn.
But overwhelming black support has helped keep the disgraced ex-governor close.
Spitzer is finding a sympathetic audience among black voters for his outcast status and his would-be tale of redemption.
To solidify that support, he toured African-American communities in Queens and Brooklyn on Sunday — an electoral last lap that will wind up on Tuesday at the Spitzer campaign’s election-night party at MIST Harlem.
Spitzer went to Church of the Open Door in Brooklyn on Sunday and reminded parishioners of his résumé as attorney general and governor.
“When I stood up for immigrants’ rights and low-wage workers, putting money in the educational system of our city schools, I did it because I thought it was right,” Spitzer said.
“And I pumped more money into public housing than any other governor, because if we don’t have housing, this city isn’t going to survive.”
At a street fair in Rochdale, Queens, one voter, Tamar Ogburn, 46, shook hands with Spitzer and said after that Spitzer’s downfall in a prostitution scandal wasn’t reason enough to vote against him.
“You know there’s a Scripture that says he who is without sin, let him throw the first stone,” Ogburn said. “And that’s none of us. None of us are in that position to throw stones at anyone.”
Tracey Irvin, 46, of Rochdale, remained undecided, but said a candidate’s moral lapses matter less than accomplishments in office.
“To be quite honest, I don’t know who I’m going to vote for. I will know Tuesday morning,” she said. “I’m taking into account what everybody involved has done in the past as far as government is concerned. I try not to get emotional about personal matters or things of that nature.”