Spin Cycle

I guess this definetly means the sherrif wont debate again. he'd be crazy if he did. tom suozzi would bury him.

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He Shoots, He Scores
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Published: July 30, 2006
Long Islanders who know Thomas Suozzi know that his candidacy for the Democratic nomination for governor of New York could be a credible one, but for the following: nobody knows him, his ads have been ineffective and he has been unable to shorten the overwhelming distance between him and Attorney General Eliot Spitzer in the polls.

But in their debate last week — an hour of rapid fire sparring that somehow generated both heat and light — Mr. Suozzi attacked the front running Mr. Spitzer with a punchy effectiveness rarely seen in a single digit candidate.

Mr. Spitzer punched back, and the voters won. New Yorkers outside Long Island who had known nothing about Mr. Suozzi or had only a hazy notion of where he and Mr. Spitzer stood on the issues got inklings, at least, as well as a sense of whose ideas might be worth listening to, and where the troubling gaps and lingering questions might lie. The debate did a lot to pull the campaign into focus.

Voters deserve to see Mr. Spitzer tested, and Mr. Suozzi has now shown himself perfectly capable of doing that. When asked — by Mr. Suozzi — why Mr. Suozzi should not be governor, Mr. Spitzer had no answer. Mr. Suozzi effectively harried Mr. Spitzer over his refusal to hire outside counsel to represent the state when he disagreed with the governor.

Mr. Spitzer’s counterattacks, meanwhile, distorted Mr. Suozzi’s record — Nassau County’s fiscal recovery was not, as Mr. Spitzer claimed, merely a case of raising taxes, and Mr. Suozzi is not the simplistic tax-and-spender that Mr. Spitzer made him out to be.

In our ideal primary campaign, the candidates would revisit and amplify those and other points of disagreement. Mr. Suozzi, too, would clarify his own positions — on why, say, a mere $2.5 billion would be enough to satisfy a court order to increase financing for New York City schools, when court estimates of what the schools need each year are easily twice that amount.

Regrettably, though, Tuesday’s debate was to have been the first and last of the campaign, and now that it is out of the way, Mr. Spitzer may find it possible simply to coast on to November, ignoring all the underdog yapping coming from the Suozzi camp. And while Mr. Suozzi may have sunk some baskets on Tuesday, he will need a lot of unanswered three-pointers to win the game.

The small knot of Suozzi supporters who cheered and sang outside the debate hall at Pace University were a telling indication of the state of his candidacy. They had plenty of boisterous energy, but they also had a lot of unused campaign signs, which they dumped into piles when they went to a nearby bar for a post-debate party.

The plain truth is that Mr. Suozzi has so far not fulfilled his promise to mount a potent challenge to Mr. Spitzer, or even to be a speed bump on Mr. Spitzer’s flower-strewn path to the governor’s mansion. Even so, it is hard for us to tell him not to stick with it. And while few believe that Mr. Suozzi has any real chance of becoming governor, Mr. Suozzi himself seems to think he does. As the curious, substance-hungry voters who tuned in Tuesday night discovered, that’s not a bad thing at all.

new york times sunday july 30th 2006.

the "suozzi fan" must change the flavor of cool aid that he/she is drinking- forget tom burying anyone in a debate since he has already used up all his bullet points to no avail--if this was a real campaign, then the real miracle in mineola would be front and foremost- that miracle being finding a vendor who does business with the county that doesn't pony up to the suozzi campaign

the "suozzi fan" must change the flavor of cool aid that he/she is drinking- forget tom burying anyone in a debate since he has already used up all his bullet points to no avail--if this was a real campaign, then the real miracle in mineola would be front and foremost- that miracle being finding a vendor who does business with the county that doesn't pony up to the suozzi campaign

calling for no more debates is the "losers", and "scared" approach. Maybe u should stop writing in favor of mr spitzer, people are really gonna believe he is afraid to debate.( people already know anyway) ps. ill change my cool aide if u tell me what ur smoking!