Albany County Executive Dan McCoy and Ulster County Executive Mike Hein have weighed in on the race for New York State Attorney General.
While McCoy and Hein's endorsements Thursday of a fellow Democrat came as no surprise, a Siena College poll released in April found that 53 percent had no opinion of sitting first-term Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, leaving the door open to a challenge.
Dan McCoy lauded Schneiderman's fight against heroin and other forms of drug abuse as well as the AG's concerns for those who served in the military. "Being a veteran myself of the Iraq war, being in the military for over 20 years of my life, Attorney General Schneiderman has stepped up to the plate for veterans. We just had a benefit concert here with Charlie Daniels, Marshall Tucker and Brett Michaels to benefit this Soldier On, and the Attorney General came there, opened up the concert, there was over 6 thousand people there, veterans from all over, letting them know his office was there with different programs they have to protect veterans."
John Cahill, a former top aide to Governor George Pataki, is the Republican candidate running against Schneiderman. He hired longtime Mitt Romney adviser Beth Myers as a campaign consultant. And he has backing from an anti-Schneiderman SuperPAC.
Critical of the many scandals involving state officials , Cahill told NewsmaxTV, "with a one-party system, there's no one there to basically hold people to account." Dave Catalfamo is a spokesman for the Cahill campaign. He has questions for the county executives. "Would they endorse spending hush money to silence victims of sexual harassment? Would they propose to parole a violent sexual predator? And would they support 'shoot to wound' legislation which endangers all police officers and law enforcement officials? If the answers to all those questions are 'yes,' then Eric Schneiderman's their man. I'm afraid they probably don't know Eric Schneiderman's record on law enforcement which is one of the worst in America and eventually is going to make New York an unsafe place to live again."
Ulster County Executive Mike Hein called Schneiderman "a remarkable leader who truly understands what justice is all about." "Whether it’s holding a large company accountable, for abuses of workforce or a whole host of other things, holding large banks accountable, whether it be making sure that corrupt officials are held accountable, whether it be a whole host of those types of things, in many ways the Attorney General has simply become the conscience of the State of New York."
Unimpressed, Catalfamo hopes the county executives will reconsider their endorsements. Cahill has strong support from the Alliance for Quality Education and former Metro-North chairman Joe Lhota, last year’s Republican mayoral candidate in New York City, who was handed a landslide defeat by Bill de Blasio.
Schneiderman, a former state Senator from Manhattan, is reportedly stocking a growing war chest. The Wall Street Journal reports Schneiderman's re-election campaign has purchased $1 million worth of advertising time with broadcast TV stations in New York, Albany, Buffalo, Rochester and Syracuse, New York's five biggest media markets; his endorsers include labor unions such as the powerful United Food and Commercial Workers Union Local 1500 with 23,000 members in New York City, on Long Island, and in Westchester, Putnam, and Dutchess counties.
