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November 9, 2009

Voter anger opens a door for GOP's Lazio

By MICHAEL GORMLEY

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — The wave of voter anger aimed at incumbents in last Tuesday's off-year elections is just what an against-all-odds campaign in New York's governor's race needed.

Two weeks ago, Republican candidate Rick Lazio was quietly running an uphill campaign for the 2010 race. He faced a rising Democratic wave in New York, with every statewide office held by Democrats, rising party enrollment and a Democrat in the White House. Lazio even called his effort "the little engine that could."

But the Election Day vote that ended the tenures of suburban county executives, legislators and two governors gave steam to Lazio's outsider campaign.

"Tuesday was, to me, very much a validation of my message," Lazio said. "Government has become unresponsive, unaccountable and the people have lost faith."

Bad times forcing governments with little choice but to further raise taxes on a recession-battered public fueled the anger.

"Clearly, economic discontent is running extensively throughout the electorate as are the winds of change," said Lee Miringoff of the Marist College poll. "If your first name is 'governor' right now, it makes it hard."

That's the opening for Lazio, a former congressman from Long Island who challenged Hillary Clinton in her first U.S. Senate race. Still, polls show his statewide recognition is low, and even leaders of his own party are holding back support, waiting to see if Rudy Giuliani is going to run.

"People don't know who he is, so there is not great name recognition there," Miringoff said. "So this is all potential."

Lazio's platform of curbing spending and cutting taxes, however, was the one that won much of Tuesday's upsets over incumbents, many of whom turned to tax increases as a last resort while the recession destroyed revenues.

"That's the front of the front of the wave that hit the shore this past Tuesday, and it's going to continue to crest over the next year," Lazio said. "That's what we're going to ride into office."

In his way is Democratic Gov. David Paterson. On Friday, he launched a surprise first strike by releasing the first TV ad run of the campaign. Paterson wants to use it as part of a last-minute effort to stave off a run by Attorney General Andrew Cuomo for the Democratic nomination.

Paterson's success would also help Lazio. Polls show Lazio's best chance is against Paterson, not the far more popular first-term attorney general who, so far, hasn't said he'll challenge his party's incumbent governor.

More bad news for a grumpy electorate came Friday: Unemployment nationally hit double digits for the first time since 1983 at 10.2 percent — and is likely to go higher. That will further sap consumer confidence and spending to fuel a recovery.

If the recession lingers, voters will likely seek new management in the only place they can effect change: Albany.

That could further turn voters to Lazio, in an otherwise all Democratic state government, said Gerald Benjamin, a political scientist and former dean at the State University of New York at New Paltz.

"You clearly have a disgruntled, disaffected, fearful, angry electorate out there," said Doug Muzzio, a politics professor at New York City's Baruch College. "Who knows how disgruntled, angry and fearful they are going to be months from now? ... but if you are an incumbent, watch out. And if you are an incumbent executive, particularly watch out."

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