Scott Stringer (Splash News)
Game on!
The formerly lopsided race for comptroller between little-known Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer and disgraced former Gov. Eliot Spitzer is suddenly even-steven, the latest poll numbers show.
In the span of just two weeks, Stringer has managed to accumulate a slew of endorsements and wipe out a daunting 19-point deficit, matching Spitzer with 46 percent of the support among those surveyed by Quinnipiac University pollsters.
Spitzer, who had been well ahead since unexpectedly jumping into the race last month, had a commanding 56 to 37 percent lead on Aug. 14 in the same poll.
Although the polls of likely Democratic voters have varied throughout the campaign, Stringer’s surge is well-timed, coming 12 days before the primary.
“Spitzer’s been running against nobody, in the sense that Scott has been really unknown,” said Doug Muzzio, a professor of public affairs at Baruch College.
“So what’s been happening is Spitzer’s been pounded, and now the name-recognition gap — I imagine it’s still there — it’s closed.”
Even so, Muzzio expressed wonderment at the sharp swing.
“The polling’s been rather erratic and rather surprising,” he said.
Stringer only recently began to tackle voters’ unfamiliarity with his name, particularly in the outer boroughs, by launching a series of campaign ads.
A veteran of city politics, but one who hasn’t garnered splashy headlines over the years, he has been arguing from the get-go that Spitzer was riding a wave of notoriety.
Spitzer resigned as governor in 2008 after he was caught soliciting prostitutes across state lines, but the feds didn’t charge him with any crimes.
That hasn’t stopped Stringer from repeatedly saying Spitzer belongs in jail — a point the borough president’s campaign drove home in mailers that sparked a heated back-and-forth between the rival camps.
Stringer’s recent fliers show an image of a smug-looking Spitzer beside the headline, “Anyone else who committed Eliot Spitzer’s crimes would go to jail.”
Spitzer spokeswoman Lis Smith responded by essentially calling Stringer a coward for not putting his name anywhere on the negative postcards.
“It’s sad that Scott Stringer’s not man enough to put his own name on these false attacks,” she said.
Stringer’s spokeswoman seized on that phrasing, saying, “Nobody in this city needs a lesson in manhood from Eliot Spitzer.”