Pataki Hurt in Primary
McCall and Golisano Make the Race for Governor a Tossup
By Joseph Mercurio
September 12, 2002
The primary in New York proved that negative advertising in political campaigns works -- even close to the 9/11 anniversary. To mount a negative attack effectively it is essential that three rules be followed: The attack must be true; it must be relevant; and the person making it must score low negatives in his or her own personal image.
When Andrew Cuomo attacked Governor Pataki's leadership in responding to the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center and its immediate aftermath, voters thought it was neither true nor relevant, and Mr. Cuomo's personal negatives were already high.
On the other hand when Thomas Golisano mounted a massive assault on Mr. Pataki -- accusing him of being insufficiently conservative on jobs, taxes, waste in government, and of triangulating Democratic issues -- it resonated among the more conservative voters in Pataki's base and especially upstate. Mr. Golisano's personal negatives were low, a sizable portion of his campaign contained positive spots, and voters in Pataki's base believed the attack was true and relevant.
Also, Team Pataki violated a rule they should have learned in Political Communication 101 by not responding: Attacks must be rebutted in the medium in which they are made as soon as possible. Maybe they thought that the 9/11 remembrance would make the Governor invulnerable to attacks and that it would give him a bounce in the polls.
The glow, however, is already discounted in Pataki's numbers and is declining in importance. And Pataki had a dilemma: to rebut the Golisano attack would cost him votes among women and among the moderate-to-left Democrats and "Blanks" (voters not registered in a party) he was courting for November. The dilemma is the natural outgrowth of being a Republican in a Democrat's clothing.
The new Marist College poll released September 9, the day before the primary, took into consideration that the Democratic contest was over. A previous Marist poll, conducted in May, had Mr. Pataki with a 30-point lead over Mr. McCall. Everyone expected that lead to close by Columbus Day.
But even before the full effects of Mr. McCall's enormous primary win have been absorbed by the public, the Comptroller has already cut Mr. Pataki's lead in half to 15 points in the latest poll, which underestimates black turnout in the general election. The actual spread is probably 8 or 9 points. And the poll shows Mr. Pataki's vote in the city as more than 5 points higher than even his handlers expect him to receive in November.
In addition to Mr. McCall's success, Mr. Golisano's ad campaign, which relentlessly pounded on Mr. Pataki's record, had an enormous negative effect on the Governor, both by increasing his negatives and by denying Mr. Pataki the Independence Party line in the November election.
The new Marist poll shows Mr. Pataki dropping below the magic 50% mark in the head-to-head question ("Who are you going to vote for in the election?") statewide, and he is only at 50% upstate where he needs to win big. The poll also revealed that Mr. Pataki's favorable rating dropped 12 points to 69%, from 81% in May, while in the same stretch of time Mr. McCall's favorable rating increased 11 points.
Also disquieting for the Republicans is the negative change voters feel in the direction the state has taken. For the past year, each Marist poll measuring whether voters thought the state was moving in the right direction or the wrong direction garnered the same positive numbers.
Since May, Mr. Golisano has pounded the governor on how his "failed" policies harmfully affected the state. As a result the "right direction / wrong direction" indicator -- a very important predictor of future change in support for an incumbent governor -- has moved 20 points in the negative direction between the latest two polls. This suggests that the shift in votes toward McCall from Pataki has only just begun and we can expect that the spread will continue to narrow, especially since Mr. Golisano is still in the race and plans to spend a very large amount of money attacking Mr. Pataki's record.
Mr. Pataki's easy victory has gone the way of summer, and the race for governor looks increasingly likely to be a tossup by Columbus Day. With the hurricane season still with us, the perfect political storm may emerge to blow away the incumbent.
Will the Liberal Party move Andrew Cuomo off their line in November, adding to Pataki's trouble? Will McCall's fundraising skyrocket now that the race is competitive? Is Golisano going to spend even bigger bucks to hurt Pataki? More later.
