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You are here: Home / Beware the Zuckerman juggernaut!

Beware the Zuckerman juggernaut!

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Harold Ford could have beat Gillibrand but then he would have lost to Mort Zuckerman:

He has told friends that, while he is convinced he could prevail against Ms. Gillibrand, he feared the winner of the primary would have little money and remain highly vulnerable to a well-financed Republican challenger at a time when the Democratic party controls the Senate by a slim majority.

I assume he’s referring to Mort Zuckerman. There’s nothing upstate New Yorkers like more than billionaire media moguls from Manhattan. And Mike Bloomberg could tell you how popular billionaires are in the city right now too.

I’m probably being charitable to Ford here. He could be referring to Dan Senor.

Reader Interactions

33Comments

  3. 3.

    No Joy in Mudville

    How the hell does Bloomberg keep winning? Is it just his money? I guess the last race was a little more difficult, but a win is a win — and he keeps winning.

    Good riddance to Ford. There must be a job opening for a sleazebag somewhere so far away that we’ll never have to hear from him again. If so, I hope he finds it.

  4. 4.

    Snark Based Reality

    Well…

    I suppose his invented excuse involving him having a chance in a dream world is better than saying “The Homo Conspiracy forced me to quit”.

  6. 6.

    mai naem

    @TR: Morning Ho is I believe at 30 Rockefeller Plaza NY NY but I doubt they would accept flowers. I think we all should convince Scarbo himself to run. He’s a New Yawker now. We could then start talking about that dead intern they found in his Fla office when he was in Congress. Plus, I would luuurve to see Stockholm Syndrome Victim Mika Brezinzski talk to him after the loss about the “real Americans” who rejected him.

  7. 7.

    DougJ

    @No Joy in Mudville:

    How the hell does Bloomberg keep winning? Is it just his money?

    Mostly his money. He’s also fairly competent and the people who run against him aren’t.

  8. 8.

    JGabriel

    No Joy in Mudville:

    How the hell does Bloomberg keep winning? Is it just his money?

    Not just his money, thought that’s certainly a factor.

    The truth is that Bloomberg has been a largely competent administrator, especially in comparison to his predecessors: Giuliani, Dinkins, and Koch’s 3rd term.

    .

  9. 9.

    West of the Cascades

    Wow – an upstate moderate Democrat against a wingnut millionaire Republican from Manhattan. Erie and Monroe Counties should go about 60-40 for Gillibrand, Tompkins ought to hit nearly 70% democratic.

    Bring. It. On.

  14. 14.

    Brian J

    You know, out of all the things he’s said, this isn’t entirely wrong. Zuckerman may be somewhat well known down state, but I doubt he’s well known upstate. Ford is probably unknown in both areas.

    He’d have to spend a lot of time raising money to go toe-to-toe with a guy who could reach into his own pockets and define him before he really had a chance to make a name for himself and actually be competitive. And that’s before he even considered what it’d be like to try to match him in September and October. We all saw what a money advantage can do to a candidate in 2008.

  15. 15.

    Chad N Freude

    I looked at the NY Post article that covers this, and learned that Gillibrand was “unelected”. I thought she was “appointed”. Silly me.

  18. 18.

    Martin

    Ok, I’m almost convinced that Bunning is trying to blow up the filibuster. It’s a tough call between him simply being insane, or him taking the most indefensible stance possible in defense of the filibuster. It’s not just that he’s blocking this, but that he’s willing to stand up and say “I’m blocking this because the rules say that anyone can stand up and block whatever the fuck they want, so that’s what I’m doing.”

  19. 19.

    Brian J

    @Jeff Fecke:

    What is this, the California Recall of 2003? Is anyone who has ever thought of running for any elected position throwing his or her hat into the ring?

  20. 20.

    Martin

    @Brian J: One of my staff ran for Governor.

    But I thought 2010 was going to be the all-tech-CEO lineup. Steve Jobs would throw in for the Democrats, call Meg and Carly ‘fucking idiots’, promise California residents that he’d deliver better AT&T coverage and win in a landslide.

  21. 21.

    Brian J

    @Martin:

    You’d wonder why someone like Jobs would want the headache when he’d probably have much more influence on the world doing what he does now. But I see your point.

  22. 22.

    MattR

    If I didn’t know better, I would think that Joe Lieberman wrote Harold Ford’s oped in tomorrow’s NY Times

    I am a Democrat. But I am an independent Democrat. I am not going to stop speaking out on behalf of policies that I think are right — regardless of ideology, party or political expediency. I plan to continue taking this message across our state and across our nation.

  23. 23.

    No Joy in Mudville

    @Svensker:

    OK, grammar mavens—is it “could have beat” or “could have beaten”?

    “Could have beaten” is correct.

    (I’m not sure, but the Brits may say “could have beat.”)

  25. 25.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @MattR: He’s determined to be the skunk at the picnic till he gets a good payoff, I suspect.

  27. 27.

    New Yorker

    @West of the Cascades:

    Tompkins goes 70% Democratic every time, with the remaining 30% split between the Greens and some party with a name like “Revolutionary Communist Workers Party”.

    I love ya, Ithaca.

  28. 28.

    fraught

    @mai naem

    : Stockholm syndrome victim Mika Brezinzsky

    I’ve been trying to figure out a way to describe her behavior for a while now and, thanks to you, I know how. It’s perfect- the way she lives in fear of saying something that might make him slug her as soon as they got off camera.

  29. 29.

    fraught

    @No Joy in Mudville:

    How the hell does Bloomberg keep winning? Is it just his money?

    If you lived in New York City this past November you would have experienced a veritable blizzard of expensive printed material each morning in your mailbox from the Bloomberg campaign. It was a shameful waste of heavy stock paper, costly inks, effort on the part of the postal service, garbage disposal systems, not to mention, of course, the trees. I have never been as bombarded by any candidate for any office as by Bloomberg. And no, I did not vote for him because of it.

  30. 30.

    Anne Laurie

    @Martin:

    “Why are we still talking about Harold Ford, when Mickey Kaus is running for Senate in California?”
    __
    Why in California? We have almost no goats here.

    … And therefore, you lack the strict anti-cruelty-to-goat laws that restrict Kaus’ preferred sexual escapades in states more experienced with caprine-oriented perverts?

    Srlsy, from his past writings, I’d bet Kaus, “proud Eastern Establishment Haavaaad elitist” assumes that California voters are quite similar to those in the movie Idiocracy, and therefore (a) in need of his political brilliance, and (b) easy to impress on a relatively small budget. Although to be fair, I believe he’s been hanging around Hollywood for some years, and maybe all his local contacts really are that vapid and easily led.

  31. 31.

    OriGuy

    @Martin:

    Why in California? We have almost no goats here.

    They run them all over the parks around here, to keep the poison oak down. I hope for his sake he’s not allergic.

  32. 32.

    chopper

    @DougJ:

    this. bloomy is pretty effectual, and he certainly works a ton. lots of new yorkers appreciate this. they see news in the city break and hizzoner is already in front of the cameras. it makes it seem like he’s always there. he also handles the media pretty deftly.

    also, people don’t understand exactly how much cash he blew on his reelection.

  33. 33.

    Professor Fate

    Bloomberg keeps winning mostly becuase a) he’s got a lot of money and b) the erstwhile oppositon party keeps nominating canidates with the carisma of toast and the campaigning ablity of a dead goldfish. this time it was a lot closer than anybody thought it would becase even by NY standards Mikes buying a change in the city charter so he could run for a 3rd term himself was pretty damn crass and folks did remember that (unlike the professional short term memory loss victims in the press) and voted accordingly.
    Also his re-election was suposed to be in the bag so why go out on a cold day?

    re: Mr. Ford – i think he was told to quit by his bosses because the polling numbers looked god awful and the real possibity existed that he would get stomped but good in the primary with the result that a) the democartic party’s left wing in NY would be energized, becuase to be honest nothing excites the Left in NY like beating a DLC approved cannidate like a gong. And since Ford was going to use gop talking points, Senator Gillibrand would know how to handle them from exerience in the general.

    And for a man who is suposed to be in poltics and comes from a political family I have not seen such an utterly incompetent campaign in a long time.

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