New York State Voters Want to Oust Their Lawmakers, Quinnipiac Poll Finds
Three out of four New York voters disapprove of the state Legislature’s performance, and a majority said they want new local lawmakers to be elected on Nov. 2, a Quinnipiac University poll said.
By 75 percent to 15 percent, voters disapproved of the Legislature’s job performance, consistent with a June survey’s 76 percent to 16 percent results, the most negative in the poll’s 20-year history. Respondents said this month that their state senator should be ousted, 55 percent to 31 percent who support their local lawmaker, and 53 percent said their assembly member should go to 33 percent who favored the incumbent.
The entire Legislature is up for election this year. It took lawmakers until Aug. 4 to close a $9.2 billion deficit and deliver a $136 billion budget that had been due March 31. In July 2009, the Senate stalled in a monthlong partisan deadlock during which no law went to a vote, after Democrat Pedro Espada of the Bronx sided with the Republicans, creating a 31-31 tie.
“State legislators ought to be nervous,” said Maurice Carroll, director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute in Hamden, Connecticut. “That sort of mass movement never has happened -- but the Legislature overall gets terrible marks, and New Yorkers, overall, are unhappy with the state of the state.”
The survey also found that New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, 52, the Democratic candidate for governor, leads both Republicans contending for their party’s nomination. Cuomo, the son of former Governor Mario Cuomo, tops former U.S. Representative Rick Lazio 57 percent to 25 percent, and business executive Carl Paladino, 60 percent to 23 percent.
Effect on Redistricting
Following this year’s U.S. Census, state lawmakers will redraw New York’s congressional districts for the 2012 elections. The party in power in Albany will determine those boundaries, potentially affecting the makeup of the state’s delegation in the House of Representatives.
Lazio, whose congressional district encompassed part of Long Island’s Suffolk County, received a 25 percent favorable rating to 24 percent unfavorable, while 49 percent said they didn’t know enough to form an opinion. Paladino, from the Buffalo area in western New York, wasn’t well-enough known to 70 percent of respondents to rate him.
Although Cuomo received a 69 percent job-approval rating in the survey, 63 percent, including 52 percent of Democrats, said he hasn’t done enough to explain how he would fix the state’s budget problems.
“Almost two-thirds of New Yorkers would like him to say more,” Carroll said.
U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, a Democrat, “dominates any of her three possible Republican challengers,” who are running in a Sept. 15 primary election, Carroll said.
Beating Rivals
Governor David Paterson picked Gillibrand, 43, to fill the Senate seat in January 2009, to finish Hillary Clinton’s term after her appointment as U.S. Secretary of State. The former representative of a congressional district near Albany leads former Nassau County legislator Bruce Blakeman, 44 percent to 26 percent; economist David Malpass, 45 percent to 24 percent, and former congressman Joseph DioGuardi, 43 percent to 28 percent.
More than three out of four voters “don’t know enough” about each of the three Republicans to form opinions, the polling institute said in a statement with the results.
The telephone survey of 1,497 New York state registered voters was conducted from Aug. 23-29 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.5 percentage points, the polling institute said.
To contact the reporter on this story: Henry Goldman in New York City Hall at hgoldman@bloomberg.net
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