ALBANY
GOV. Pataki’s reelection campaign is ready to go where Andrew Cuomo dared not: directly at Carl McCall’s throat.
Pataki’s top campaign aides, assessing the stunning developments of the past few days, have set in motion a well-thought-out “soft and hard” game plan they’re convinced will carry the day.
First the hard – perhaps offered up just to give Democrat McCall a taste of what’s to come during the two months leading up to Election Day:
“Gov. Pataki has an excellent record of achievement, and Carl McCall has a record of failure,” State GOP Chairman Alexander “Sandy” Treadwell bluntly told The Post yesterday.
“McCall has a record to run on, and we believe it is a record of failure.
“He’ll base his campaign on the condition of the upstate economy and his role as president of the New York City Board of Education,” continued Treadwell, seeming to relish the opportunity to flay McCall.
“But he’s done nothing for upstate New York as comptroller . . . and when he was president of the Board of Education, classrooms were overcrowded and test scores and attendance went down.”
Where the just-ignominiously-exited Cuomo was deterred from tough attacks on McCall for fear of being accused of racial insensitivity and Democratic “divisiveness,” Pataki and his aides hold no such reservations, key insiders agree.
Pataki’s advisers include, after all, Arthur Finkelstein and Kieran Mahoney, two of New York’s most fearsome political operatives, who together have made mincemeat of the likes of Mario Cuomo and Robert Abrams.
The two are also the orchestrators of Pataki’s remarkable metamorphosis from a political conservative who railed against the evils of big government to a political liberal who has embraced nearly every Democratic issue – up to and including Vieques.
That transformation – set in motion by Hillary Rodham Clinton’s landslide win over Pataki-backed Rick Lazio in 2000 – has cut significantly into McCall’s traditional Democratic base, especially among Hispanic Democrats.
But Pataki’s strongest reelection card, undoubtedly, is New York’s changed political zeitgeist in the wake of the Sept. 11 attack.
Before Sept. 11, Pataki was regularly under 50 percent in public-opinion polls against both McCall and Cuomo, a sign of impending doom for any incumbent.
Since Sept. 11, however, Pataki’s numbers have climbed into the stratosphere, a remarkable achievement for any Republican governor in a state that is 5-3 Democratic.
New Yorkers post-Sept. 11 clearly want stability, reassurance and non-partisanship from their political leaders, just the thing to be delivered by a governor who was at the helm during the unprecedented terror attack.
And just in case New York voters still aren’t quite sure about Pataki’s role on Sept. 11, Rudolph Giuliani – the first American in a generation to reach a status approaching apotheosis – is waiting in the wings (and has already appeared on the TV screen) to assert once again that Pataki is, indeed, the best man for the job.
For now, Pataki’s will largely be a “soft” campaign.
“The governor is going to continue to run a positive campaign, although Carl McCall has been attacking the governor,” said a top GOP strategist. “We really think this is a different year, when attacks aren’t working. And we think if McCall turns his campaign into an attack campaign he’s going to hurt himself a lot.”
But if McCall’s attacks – and an assault on Pataki was already well underway yesterday as the newly anointed Democratic gubernatorial hopeful made a “victory” swing around the state – start to drive down Pataki’s numbers, watch out.
“We’re ready to tear his head off on his record if he starts to do any damage to the governor,” was how one of the state’s most influential Republicans put it. “This campaign will start soft, but we’re ready to take a hard approach as soon as that becomes necessary.”
Stay tuned!
Frederic U. Dicker is The Post’s state editor.
