Posted on 10/16/2006 1:09:14 AM PDT by neverdem
The New York attorney general’s race, one of the most combative and colorful state political contests in recent memory, turned ever nastier yesterday as the two candidates, Jeanine F. Pirro and Andrew M. Cuomo, spent an hour attacking and undercutting each other in their first televised debate.
Ms. Pirro, the Republican, went on the offensive against Mr. Cuomo with a prosecutorial zeal. She belittled him as an ambitious politician in search of a job, yet unqualified to succeed the Democratic attorney general, Eliot Spitzer.
“My opponent was a junior prosecutor more than 21 years ago,” said Ms. Pirro, a former three-term district attorney of Westchester County. “He bills himself as a nonpracticing lawyer, looking to be the top lawyer for the State of New York. He doesn’t have the experience, and he doesn’t have the qualifications.”
Mr. Cuomo, the Democratic candidate, never lost his cool, though his smile tightened at times. He twice said that Ms. Pirro is the focus of a “criminal investigation,” stemming from her marital troubles, and he criticized her as soft on her trademark issues, jailing sexual predators and policing Medicaid fraud.
“There is a candidate who is being accused of criminal wrongdoing and is under investigation by a number of law enforcement agencies and has their ethics questioned,” he said after Ms. Pirro questioned his integrity. “That’s not me, however.”
Mr. Cuomo also tried to deliver a knockout by attacking Ms. Pirro for rejecting appeals from a man who was successfully prosecuted on murder charges by her predecessor as district attorney and was exonerated after Ms. Pirro left the post. But Ms. Pirro defused the matter a bit by pressing Mr. Cuomo to produce documentation that an effort had been made to get her to take action, and he said he had none on hand...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Cindy Sheehan, being a gold star mother, has good reason to be someone with major depression or PTSD. I wouldn't recommend personal attacks regardless of her appropriateness and utility as a useful idiot. IMHO, it's not a winning idea. FReepmail me if you want on or off my New York ping list.
Regardless, she can flash her headlights at the next debate and she will still lose by 20 points....
IMO, Cuomo is totally unqualified for the job, but Pirro should have dumped her loser husband years ago.
Thanks for the ping!
There is nothing Pirro can do at this point. She and the county/state party should have thought out the baggage out before they endorsed her.
Hurricanes Cuomo/Spitzer are barreling down upon us. God help us all!
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