US News

‘Willy’ eyeing run vs. Gilly

So Kirsten Gillibrand, New York’s flip-flopping junior US senator, may get a serious challenger next year after all.

Republican Harry Wilson, a wealthy investor and friend of Mayor Bloomberg who ran a strong, but losing, campaign for state comptroller last year, said yesterday he’s giving “serious consideration’’ to challenging the once-moderate but now ultra-liberal Gillibrand in the 2012 balloting.

Wilson told The Post that he had ruled out running against Gillibrand until two weeks ago, when Inside Albany reported that leading GOP activists were discussing his possible candidacy.

“Since the Inside Albany report two weeks ago, Harry has been inundated by Republicans and Democrats encouraging him to run,’’ said Wilson spokesman Bill O’Reilly.

Until then, said O’Reilly, Wilson “had not planned to run’’ against Gillibrand.

But now, “he is giving it serious consideration,’’ said O’Reilly, noting that Wilson and his family are “thinking through whether to make this run or not.”

O’Reilly said that Wilson wouldn’t make a final decision until early next year, but noted he has the skills and “bipartisan credibility to make a major difference in Washington.’’

Several public-opinion polls have recently shown Gillibrand with less than a 50 percent approval rating and with a large number of voters saying they know little about her.

Gillibrand was plucked in 2009 by then-Gov. David Paterson from the relative obscurity of being an Albany-area congresswoman to replace Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, who had been named secretary of state by the then-newly elected President Obama.

Gillibrand then cruised to an easy electoral victory over former Westchester US Rep. Joseph DioGuardi last year, winning the right to complete the last two years of Clinton’s term.

Wilson, who was raised in upstate Johnstown, once served on President Obama’s automobile-industry restructuring task force and was recently made a member of the advisory committee of the federal Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp., an independent agency that insures private pension plans.

Nassau Comptroller George Maragos has announced he’ll seek the Republican nomination to challenge Gillibrand, but few in the talent-pool-challenged GOP see him as a credible candidate.

“There’s no doubt that Wilson would be our best candidate. He’s sharp, credible and wealthy, has friends in high places, and he made a strong run for state comptroller last year,’’ said one of the state’s GOP leaders.

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While journalists are quick to expose conflicts of interest that could influence political leaders, some often-sympathetic reporters covering the Occupy Wall Street movement might want to look in the mirror.

Those are the journalists belonging to the Newspaper Guild, a national union that represents many journalists in the state, including some at The New York Times.

The Guild is a branch of the CWA, or Communications Workers of America, one of the strongest supporters of the Occupy effort in the nation.

The union’s home page on the Web, for instance, proudly declares, “CWA Supports the Occupy Movement.’’

And it also declares, “CWAers have joined with the Occupy movement across the country to stand up against the destructive power of corporate greed.”