Long live King George?I suspect even Spitzer wouldn't be dumb enough to defend ACORN, even if they are brought down by a fake hooker.
Former Republican Gov. George Pataki has leapt ahead of Democrat Kirsten Gillibrand in an hypothetical U.S. Senate match-up, according to a new poll out this morning.
The statewide Marist College survey found voters would narrowly favor the three-term governor - 48 percent to 44 percent - over the freshman senator if the 2010 election were held today. That's an eight-point swing from a similar poll in July, when Pataki trailed Gillibrand 42 percent to 46 percent.
The poll, meanwhile, found nearly seven in 10 New Yorkers would reject a second coming by former Gov. Eliot Spitzer, a Democrat whom The Post recently reported has been mulling a run for comptroller or attorney general.
Needless to say, Gillibrand's decision to support ACORN isn't going over well in some circles.
A group that fights government waste blasted Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand Thursday for voting to continue funding for Acorn, the nationwide nonprofit reeling from a conservative sting operation now showing on YouTube.
Citizens Against Government Waste noted that Sen. Charles Schumer, Ms. Gillibrand's fellow New York representative and political benefactor, had voted Monday to stop the Department of Housing and Urban Development from funding Acorn, while only six senators joined Ms. Gillibrand in opposition. The Senate's vote tally was 83-7.
On Thursday, the House voted to deny all federal funds for Acorn. That vote, on a provision attached to a student aid bill, was 345-75, with Democrats supplying all the "no" votes.
Acorn is under fire because two amateur actors posing as a pimp and a prostitute used an undercover camera to record Acorn employees giving them advice on how to secure housing for a brothel. The pair visited a slew of Acorn offices across the country and found employees in four of them—Brooklyn, Baltimore, Washington, D.C., and San Bernardino, Calif.—who took the bait. After the videos went live on the Internet Monday, Acorn fired the employees and did not defend their actions but said they should not obscure the organization's good work.
But conservative groups have had a field day criticizing the nonprofit, whose name stands for Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now.
“Cutting off funds to Acorn should have been the easiest vote of the year, yet these senators could not bring themselves to do it,” said Tom Schatz, president of Citizens Against Government Waste, in a statement. He went on to call the seven senators “nutty” and named them “porkers of the month.”
“Sen. Gillibrand deserves special opprobrium for her vote, since one of the videos was shot in Brooklyn's Acorn office, and the New York Post had a story on the scandal prior to the vote,” Mr. Schatz said. “Apparently Sen. Schumer reads the local papers, and Sen. Gillibrand does not.”
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