Anyone have any idea why Tom Suozzi is doing this?

SPITZER'S FAR AHEAD WITH DEMS

The Siena College Research Institute survey of likely Democratic voters found Spitzer, his party's only announced candidate for governor, with a whopping 64 percentage point lead over Suozzi, beating him 72-8 percent in a statewide tally.

Suozzi, who has told associates he plans to challenge Spitzer, showed some strength among suburban voters, garnering 24 percent to Spitzer's 56 percent.

But he did poorly in New York City, where he was beaten by Spitzer, 72 to 6 percent, and upstate, where he was trailing, 79-3 percent.

Is there any reason he can't move into Peter King's district to challenge him for that seat? I'd love for him to do that. He's a Democrat who can win in Nassau County. Why is he being wasted in a truly quixotic primary like this?

The rest of the poll holds moderately bad news for those of us who like Mark Green despite his smarminess and had hoped he might someday hold a public office higher than NYC kvetcher-in-chief. But a big chunk of Democrats haven't made up their minds yet.

In the race for the nomination for Attorney General, Andrew Cuomo has a large lead, with 37 percent of Democrats supporting him. Mark Green has the support of 20 percent of Democrats. Denise O’Donnell, Richard Brodsky, Charlie King, and Sean Maloney combined garner the support of only 10 percent of Democrats,” Caruso said. “While Cuomo has the early lead – including a small lead in New York City and large leads in the suburbs and upstate – 35 percent of Democrats have yet to choose a favorite in a race that has gotten very little public attention."

That's from the original poll press release, here. I think Fredric U. Dicker, State Editor for the New York Post (that has to be a made-up name, no?), may have spent as much as a whole half hour cribbing his article from it.

(Okay, that was harsh and unnecessary. Fredric U. Dicker is probably a nice guy and good at his job.)

Update:
From the comments, SG's reasons for never forgiving Mark Green after all.

For tacking hard to the right because he thought it was the only way to win, thereby undoing a whole lifetime of progressive accomplishments, which were the only reason he had support in the first place. He was not well served by whoever convinced him he needed to become a DLC New Dem, because it alienated his base. He had the chance to be a Bobby Kennedy candidate, and instead he tried to be a Bill Clinton candidate (which would never work for a bronzed elitist like him, because, for one thing, he has none of Clinton's charm, which makes the "end to welfare as we know it" talk go down so much more smoothly).

Then there was the whole problem of racist campaigning. I quit the campaign right before all that went down, because I didn't like some of the other things we had been doing.

For the record, Green's claim that those were independent supporters who had nothing to do with the campaign is a complete lie. My friends on the staff told me that not only had they vetted the racist lit, there were even some staffers in Staten Island and south Brooklyn distributing it with them. They thought they'd be able to get away with it because it was led by an outside group.

If Green hadn't alienated his black base (this is the man who sued the Giuliani regime for racial profiling, years before any other politicians were talking about it!), he could have recovered from the racist lit debacle. His real problem was the centrist campaign he decided to run.

Basically, the campaign staff had the mindset of "do anything to win, because Mark will be a progressive Mayor in office." Since I worked on economic policy, I wasn't so sure about that.

Tags: Eliot Spitzer, Thomas Suozzi, Peter King, Andrew Cuomo, Mark Green, New York politics, New York governor, New York Attorney General