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Voters Favor Sweeping New York State Lawmakers From Office, Poll Indicates
New York voters favor sweeping their state legislators from office in the November election, a Quinnipiac University poll reported today.
Fifty-three percent said the state senator in their district should be ousted, with 35 percent opposed. New Yorkers favor removing their state assembly member, 49 percent to 33 percent, the poll found.
Voters told interviewers “their own state senator should be swept out of office in a general housecleaning,” Maurice Carroll, director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute, said in a statement.
The survey, conducted July 20-26, coincided with the state Legislature’s failure to complete a budget due April 1. Governor David Paterson ordered lawmakers to convene tonight for a special session on revenue measures to close a $9.2 billion revenue gap and pay for a $136 billion spending plan approved earlier this month.
Seventy-five percent of voters described the entire New York state government as “dysfunctional,” down from 83 percent in a June 23 Quinnipiac poll, the highest measure of public dissatisfaction in the survey’s 20-year history.
All 212 seats in the Legislature are open in the Nov. 2 election.
In the race for governor, Democratic Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, 52, son of former Governor Mario Cuomo, leads Republican former U.S. Representative Rick Lazio, 56 percent to 26 percent, and Buffalo businessman Carl Paladino, 55 percent to 25 percent, the poll said.
Lazio, Paladino
Lazio, 42, leads Paladino, 63, in the Republican primary election race, 39 percent to 23 percent, with 33 percent undecided, according to the poll.
In the five-candidate Democratic primary for attorney general, 81 percent of Democrats said they didn’t know who they would vote for, and only 3 percent could name any of the people running.
When offered the names, 11 percent chose Nassau County District Attorney Kathleen Rice, the only woman in the race, with no one else topping 5 percent and 73 percent undecided.
The other candidates are state Assemblyman Richard Brodsky of Westchester; Eric Dinallo, former state insurance commissioner; Sean Coffey, an attorney in private practice, and state Senator Eric Schneiderman of Manhattan.
The survey of 1,165 registered voters had a margin of error of plus or minus 2.9 percentage points. The margin was plus or minus 5 percentage points among 380 Republicans, and 4.7 percentage points among 441 Democrats, included in the primary election samples, poll director Douglas Schwartz said in a news release.
To contact the reporter on this story: Henry Goldman in New York City Hall at hgoldman@bloomberg.net
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