Primarily confused

In NYS, we're having a our primary on Tuesday, and I'm not sure who to vote for:

Attorney General: the frontrunner is Andrew Cuomo, son of former governor Mario. He was HUD Secretary under Clinton. Ran for governor four years ago against Carl McCall, a bruising fight he finally quit only a week before the primary, which left McCall in a weakened position against the incumbent Pataki. Not inclined to vote for him.

Mark Green (great last name!) was a former NYC public advocate. He was endorsed by the NY Times. He's a possibility.

Sean Patrick Maloney: I was previously inclined for him. I've been getting e-mails for his campaign. And let me tell you my bias; Sean is gay, and I am generally inclined, all other things being equal, to support the gay (or black, or woman candidate). But I found him less impressive in a five-way discussion that Time-Warner Cable arranged last month.

Conversely, Charlie King, who I really didn't know at all - he was a former leader of Manhattan's Democratic Party - fared much better with me, and not because he is black- in those discussions.

So, if I were to vote my gut, I'd probably vote King. If we had IRV, I'd vote for King as #1, Green as #2, Leonard as #3. But King (and Maloney) are trailing badly in the polls, and, in fact, King has dropped out of the race this week and endorsed Cuomo, as did Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson. This means I'll probably end up voting for Green. Stll, I'll vote for ANY of the Democratic candidates for AG against the Republican, Jeanine Pirro, who wanted to run against Hillary Clinton for the U.S. Senate, but was "persuaded" by the Republican party bosses to run for A.G.

The primary and subsequent election for governor appears to be actually a coronation of current Attorney General Eliot Spitzer. Nassau County Executive Tom Suozzi never gained any traction, and his Republican opponent, John Faso, I think is too conservative to win. Still, there is one issue on which I agree with Suozzi and disagree with Spitzer, and it is not inconsequential to me: the death penalty. Suozzi's against it, as am I, and Spitzer's for it in certain circumstances. What gives me SOME comfort is that Spitzer's hand-picked Lieutenant Governor candidate, David Patterson (black AND legally blind, BTW), is also openly against the death penalty, so maybe that'll soften Spitzer's stance.

We had a Congressman around here forever named Sam Stratton. When Stratton suddenly retired in 1988, the Republicans had already picked their sacrificial lamb (a guy I played volleyball with at the time, it turned out), and the Democratic machine was able, without the need for an untidy primary, to annoit Michael McNulty as the nominee. The Republicans certainly would have picked a more formidable candidate if they knew they weren't running against Stratton, and there were several Democrats who might have sought the job. So, I've NEVER voted for McNulty in the primary or general election. But I might now - even though, as anincumbentt, he probably doesn't need my support: his primary challenger really bugs me. His great complaint about McNulty is that he has steered Homeland Security money to...helping local fire departments? Horrors! More importantly, McNulty, an early and ardentsupporterr of the war in Iraq has had a major change of heart in recent months - one of the several pieces of mail I've received from his campaign is solely on his "out of Iraq now" position - and I find the need to reward that.

So much for the secret ballot.

Note: The polls are only open from 12 noon to 9 pm in most places, including here, though 6 am to 9 pm in NYC. I love voting first thing in the morning, which means I don't get yet one more call from the campaigns AND I don't have to stand in line at dinner time or later to vote.
***
Tom DeLay is urging people to support his "good friend" Sara Evans, not Tucker Carlson when Evans, Carlson, DeLay nemesis and "liberal" talk show host Jerry Springer, and others appear on ABC-TV's Dancing with the Stars, starting this week. Carlson, the conservative MSNBC commentator, on ABC News' Nightline last Friday, noted that "Tom DeLay lives in an irony-free zone." He also said that he's enlisted the support of Al Sharpton in his quest for the dancing crown; I THINK he was kidding.