With less than a week to go until Election Day and his re-election safely in the bag, comparisons between Gov. Pataki and Yankees legend Lou Gehrig come to mind.
No, not that the governor is an ironman or a heavy hitter. More like he’s the luckiest man on the face of the Earth.
Sure, Pataki’s political success has much to do with reaping the dividends of four-plus years of political re-invention that has seen him move so far left that Nelson Rockefeller must be smiling somewhere.
But the governor has surely been blessed this year with a series of opponents who have set some kind of record for sheer incompetence.
First, there was Andrew Cuomo, who seemingly had the Democratic nomination locked up – only to see the bottom drop out of his campaign after he ran off at the mouth about Pataki having been Rudy Giuliani’s post-9/11 coat-holder.
That left Carl McCall holding the bag for the Democrats.
But McCall’s campaign has been so hapless that it has dispirited Democrats statewide. Some even fear he’ll finish behind flaky big-bucks businessman Tom Golisano.
Yet McCall’s collapse isn’t really all that surprising. Back in the spring, after all, rumors were swirling that he was ready to quit the race.
Cuomo was running sky-high in the polls, leading by some 10 to 15 percentage points. McCall’s campaign was beset by gaffes, miscues and a daily parade of defectors who deserted the comptroller like the proverbial rats off a sinking ship.
One news report quoted an unnamed McCall intimate as calling the candidate’s performance “incredible and embarrassing” – which pretty much describes his campaign’s state today.
Even after Cuomo started slipping in the polls, McCall never really took full advantage. Within weeks, his campaign was once again being described as listless and unfocused.
Cuomo, recall, quit the race not because McCall had pulled ahead but because Cuomo had fallen so far behind in the wake of his “coat-holder” gaffe.
Perhaps McCall actually believed Cuomo’s face-saving claim that he’d been beaten by the comptroller’s superior TV commercials. For whatever reason, McCall seemed to take Cuomo’s fall as a sign that his own campaign didn’t need more fire.
He even needled Cuomo’s withdrawal from the state Democratic convention by saying, “Let me tell you the difference between me and him – I have never run from a fight.”
Yet, ironically, it seems as if running from a fight is what McCall himself has done this fall. After all, it’s not as if Pataki’s lead in the polls, while substantial, has been insurmountable; that onetime 30-point lead from last summer is but a distant memory.
Or perhaps McCall really believed, as he told The Post’s editorial board in August, that “Tom Golisano is my secret weapon.” If so, it backfired.
Sure, Golisano’s multi-million-dollar ad drive has been about the only thing that’s kept this race interesting. (Can anyone remember the last major gubernatorial candidate whose commercials touted medical marijuana?)
But the sheer volume of ads (few of which stress the conservative themes on which Golisano ostensibly campaigned), combined with McCall’s ineffectualness, has had a reverse effect: Rather than undermine the governor, Golisano has effectively split the anti-Pataki vote.
Which means that he’s probably taking more votes from McCall than he is from Pataki. (Not quite what he and campaign guru Roger Stone intended.) So, barring a last-second McCall resurrection or the bottom dropping out of Golisano’s upstate numbers, it’s smooth sailing for George Pataki.
But that’s the easy part. Next, the governor must contend with an approaching statewide fiscal tsunami the likes of which New York has rarely – if ever – seen.
Which is when George Pataki’s luck – not to mention his political skill – is going to be tested for real.