A glaring racial split in the contest for comptroller had both candidates campaigning furiously Sunday for black votes that could tip the outcome — just as another poll came out calling the race a dead heat.
Scott Stringer blitzed African-American churches and neighborhoods and sounded like a newly converted populist, portraying himself as a man of the people while branding opponent Eliot 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.
Stringer has two days to put a dent in Spitzer’s nearly 2-to-1 advantage among black voters.
A Sept. 4 Quinnipiac University survey said the race overall is “too close to call,” with Stringer getting 47 percent to Spitzer’s 45 percent. A Marist College/Wall Street Journal/WNBC-4 poll released Sunday night had those tallies reversed.
Overwhelming black support has helped keep the disgraced ex-governor close.
Quinnipiac, citing a “big racial gap,” shows him overwhelming his rival by 61 percent to 32 percent among black voters. Stringer, conversely, has the support of 60 percent of white voters, to Spitzer’s 36 percent.
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.”