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Posted: Tuesday, 13 February 2007 11:02AM
Poll: New Yorkers Like Spitzer 'Steamroller'
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ALBANY, NY (AP) -- Most New York voters like the notion of Gov. Eliot Spitzer as a self-described ``steamroller'' when it comes to reforming government, a poll reported Tuesday.
Sixty-one percent of voters surveyed statewide by the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute said they thought it was a good thing when told that Democrat Spitzer had called himself a steamroller who would roll over his opposition in his battle to change state government.
State Assembly Republican Minority Leader James Tedisco of Schenectady said recently that Spitzer made the comment to him in a heated telephone conversation. Spitzer did not deny that account.
``Executive pugnacity gets high marks in all geographical areas,'' said Maurice Carroll, director of the Hamden, Conn.-based polling institute.
The poll comes as the new governor continues his battle with the Legislature over its election last week of state Assemblyman Thomas DiNapoli as state comptroller. In electing DiNapoli, lawmakers ignored the recommendations of a Spitzer-championed panel of former comptrollers - agreed to by legislative leaders - who had recommended choosing the new comptroller from a list of three candidates, none of them state lawmakers.
Thirty-five percent of those polled said they felt lawmakers had broken their word by selecting one of their own to replace Democrat Alan Hevesi as comptroller while 18 percent said the choice of DiNapoli was a legitimate exercise of legislative power. Forty-eight percent of voters said they didn't know enough about the situation to have an opinion.
In fact, when voters were asked if they knew about the agreement between Spitzer and the legislative leaders about how to select a new comptroller, 62 percent said they weren't aware of the deal.
Quinnipiac's telephone poll of 1,049 voters was conducted Feb. 6-11 and has a sampling error margin of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
Hevesi resigned from the comptroller's job in December after pleading guilty to a felony for using state employees as drivers and companions for his wife.
Spitzer has said DiNapoli is not qualified to be comptroller and legislative leaders showed a ``stunning lack of integrity'' in selecting him.
Since the election of DiNapoli last week, Spitzer has been making stops across the state to promote his $120.6 billion state budget plan, and in the process has been attacking fellow Democrats who are members of the Assembly for backing DiNapoli.
While state Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, a Manhattan Democrat, has tried to calm the political waters, state Senate Republican Majority Leader Joseph Bruno, who sided with Silver to elect DiNapoli as comptroller, has taken Spitzer to task for his harsh comments about lawmakers.
``People who dictate, people who are tyrannical, they don't get results,'' Bruno said on Monday.
On Tuesday, Bruno planned to unveil a proposal to amend the state constitution and change state law to permit special statewide elections to fill vacancies for state comptroller or state attorney general. The power to fill those posts now rests with the Legislature.
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