Spin Cycle

What Cuomo campaign would be complete without a last-minute, thinly sourced, accuracy-challenged attack from the family's favorite Fred, Mr. Dicker of the New York Post?

In this report today, Dicker says that Spitzer is "disappointed" with the tone of Mark Green's AG campaign against Andrew Cuomo, and that Spitzer aide Rich Baum asked Green to pull a TV ad "which falsely claimed that Spitzer had sued Cuomo - the former federal housing secretary who has led Green by more than 20 percentage points in one recent poll - to enforce a law requiring reduced pesticide use in public housing projects. "

Green press secretary Mark Benoit says there was never a request to pull the ad. Spitzer press secretary Christine Anderson says "we'd never presume to tell another candidate how to run their campaign."

And, except in Dicker's imagination, there actually is no ad that claims "Spitzer had sued Cuomo." Instead, the ad in question says on the screen, "Spitzer suing HUD," while its voiceover says, "Spitzer is even suing because Cuomo ignored a law to protect kids from pesticides."

The reality, despite protestations from Cuomo and Dicker to the contrary: Spitzer and other AGs sued HUD in 2003, alleging that regulations adopted under Cuomo to implement a 1996 anti-pesticide law had been inadequate, and asking the Bush administration to remedy the situation. Even Connecticut AG Richard Blumenthal, who endorsed Cuomo last week, has acknowledged that the suit he filed with Spitzer claimed the regs adopted by Cuomo were inadequate.

Maybe the "top Democratic operative" who peddled this story and also told Dicker about Cuomo's "impressive comeback story" actually had ties to Cuomo, and misled poor Fred.....