New York State Capitol

So the Albany soap opera has come to a close. Crystal and Alexis will live to catfight another day. Serena and Blair will return in the fall. And Malcolm and Pedro will assuredly be ready for more battles next session. In the meantime let’s figure out the winners and losers from the month of madness.

Losers

We’ll start with the losers because it’s easier.

Republicans

Already in a deep state of disarray and on the wrong end of the demographic pendulum, New York Republicans came thisclose to pulling off a miracle. The problem is they had to consort with a criminal (OK not a convicted criminal but still) to get there and surprise surprise he stabbed them in the back. The GOP gets no credit for trying to fix Albany and ends up with no more power than when this all started. Ouch.

Senate Democrats

It was clear when they won control last November that these guys (and gals) were waaaay out of their league. Having spent their entire careers in the minority where they had been paid to do virtually nothing (since they had no power and no real function), they ascended to the leadership without any idea how to run the place. Nothing that has happened in the last 30 days will convince anyone otherwise. Indeed now everyone knows what reporters and Albany insiders knew nine months ago.

Mike Bloomberg

This may not seem so obvious because Bloomberg kvetched about the problem plenty, echoing the sentiments of most New Yorkers. Nonetheless in having to fight for school control and the ability to raise taxes, Bloomberg was forced to draw attention to two things that may not help him much in his reelection effort. Then again he’s gonna spend $100 million bucks against a guy no one knows is even running.

Tom Golisano

Having first helped produce the Democratic win in November and then having prodded the deserting Dems into action, billionaire Floridian (nee Rochesterite) Tom Golisano has proven he can play the puppetmaster — he’s just not very good at it. Golisano wants reform but nothing he has precipitated is likely to produce lasting change. I would LOVE to stand corrected on this one.

New Yorkers

We made California look good. New Yorkers got the government they deserve. By reelecting their State Senators and Assembly members year after year New Yorkers have, like many Americans, cast aside their responsibility to elect officials who will work in the best interest of his or her constituents. Now no one can argue they don’t know what the result of this has been. New Yorkers got screwed to be sure, but honestly, don’t we deserve it?

Winners

David Paterson

The only winner here is, oddly, Governor David Paterson. Sure there will be arguments that Attorney General Andrew Cuomo will benefit in his quiet attempt to be the right Democrat for Governor in 2010 but where’s the evidence? His limited contribution was to declare that Paterson couldn’t appoint a Lieutenant Governor. Most New Yorkers will think that makes Cuomo part of the problem.

Assembly Speaker Shelly Silver might also be deemed a winner but he was already the most powerful guy in Albany before the chaos and he remains so today. And don’t talk to us about Pedro Espada. Yes he is now Majority Leader. No, it won’t keep him from being indicted.

The only person who gets any bump out of this is Paterson who made the right noises and, with his Lt. Governor move, will be perceived by the public to have created the spark that made this problem go away. That being said, winning in this case is a relative thing. Paterson had no where to go but up.

So let’s just put this up front: Nobody really knows what the f*ck is going on with the economy. But still, there are some “experts” that really shouldn’t even be allowed to speak or write or exist.

Remember the heady days almost precisely a decade ago of the dot com boom? Thanks to new technology and supersmart economists the world’s advanced economies had little to worry about in the way of recessions or downturns. Sure there might be a hiccup here or there but the bad old days of economic cycles were a thing of the past. Our bright new future had arrived.

There were plenty of purveyors of that snake oil including many of the most “prestigious” business publications and media outlets (The Economist being a notable exception) but none quite so ostentatious as the authors of the grandly-named tome Dow 36,000. Remember that one? Authors James K. Glassman and Kevin A. Hassett published their book in late 1999 when the Dow was just three months away from hitting it’s (then) all-time high of 11,750.

Glassman and Hassett argued that despite the very rapid run-up in stock prices stocks were in truth undervalued and therefore cheap. There cockiness was on display in the first few paragraphs. Let us reminisce:

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, as the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose from below 800 to above 11,000, Wall Street analysts and financial journalists were warned that stocks were dangerously overvalued and that investors were caught up in an insane euphoria. They were wrong.

Stocks were undervalued in the 1980s and early 1990s, and they are undervalued now. Stock prices could double, triple, or even quadruple tomorrow and still not be too high.

Market analysts and media pundits have also persistently warned that stocks are extremely risky. About this they are wrong too. Over the long term stocks in the aggregate are actually less risky than Treasury bonds or even bank certificates of deposit. Although the experts may not be very good at predicting what the market will do, they are brilliant at scaring people — not out of malice but out of a profound misunderstanding of stock prices. Whatever their intentions, they have performed a terrible disservice to millions of investors by frightening them away from the market.

Stocks are now, we believe, in the midst of a one-time-only rise to much higher ground — to the neighborhood of 36,000 for the Dow Jones Industrial Average. After they complete this historic ascent, owning them will still be profitable but the returns will decline. You won’t be able to make as much money from them each year. We believe that in the meantime, however, astounding profits will be made.

Admittedly it is easy sport making fun of bad predictions (I insisted, privately, that Al D’Amato would beat Chuck Schumer in their 1998 Senate race) but this one is worth special notice because these guys defended their theory in 2002 even as the Dow hovered around 7,500.

They wrote:

Certainly, Dow 36,000 has been put to a severe test. The U.S. has been through a lot in three years: the impeachment of a president, a disputed election for the first time in a century, the first attack on the U.S. mainland since the War of 1812, the first recession in 10 years, corporate scandals and a zealous political response that could create unintended consequences. What’s remarkable is that, in spite of this, price/earnings ratios have remained higher than historic averages–exactly what we expected.

But what about this 36000 business? If the Dow were there today, one could say that the upward pressure from the demystification of stock ownership had subsided. Since it is not, and there is no convincing evidence that the earnings history of the past 200 years is suddenly irrelevant, stocks are still a very good buy. The best way to partake in a rising market is through buying and holding diversified stock portfolios. But some people are impatient.

Wow! That’s some hubris boys. Even better they go on to say that the only theories that had been debunked by the huge drop in stocks since their book had been released as those of their critics.

So why bring all this up now? Well, Hassett is back and he’s now spouting fantastically absurd theories about Barack Obama and his economic plans thanks to Bloomberg News.

In an on-line column Hassett wrote on Monday that like Johnson’s War on Poverty and Nixon’s War on Drugs, Obama was launching a War on Business. Hassett then spins out a “Manchurian Candidate” story about how it is as if one of America’s enemies “had spent years preparing a Manchurian Candidate to destroy the U.S. economy once elected.”

Hassett goes on to relay the now-standard conservative critique of Obama’s plans (ending tax loopholes for corporations is bad, carbon cap-and-trades are bad, any non-private health care changes are bad) and concludes, “It’s clear that President Obama wants the best for our country. That makes it all the more puzzling that he would legislate like a Manchurian Candidate.”

There are certainly valid arguments to be made challenging Obama’s proposals and plans but having a thoroughly discredited hack like Hassett make silly ones in their stead only weakens those honest conservative challenges to Obama’s ideas. And Bloomberg giving Hassett space to do so only makes this business media company look ridiculous.

NYC Comptroller Bill Thompson (D)

While Mayor Mike spread the green (so to speak) at the Staten Island St. Patrick’s Day Parade this weekend, his so-far-only-kinda-officially-announced major Democratic competitor (sorry Tony A) stepped up his “Mike’s out of touch” attacks.

Comptroller Bill Thompson launched into a (for him) blistering blast on Bloomberg — specifically the Mayor’s comments during his radio show on Friday morning when hizzoner responded to questions about the fairness of hiking taxes on the rich in these tough times.

Here’s what Bloomberg said on Jon Gambling’s show: “We can tax the rich, except that, if you haven’t looked at the stock market lately, they aren’t making any money.” Bloomberg went on to say, “You know, the yelling and screaming about the rich – we want rich from around this country to move here. We love the rich people.”

And here’s what Thompson had to say about that on Sunday:

This is one of the clearest defenses I’ve ever read of the Reagan-Bush Republican philosophy of trickle-down economics. For eight years, George Bush said virtually the same thing our Mayor said on Friday – we need to give tax cuts to the rich, because it will trickle down to everyone in society. I have a very different philosophy. I believe that our working families and small businesses are the ones who drive our economy. I believe that government should be focused on helping the middle class. And I believe that the trickle-down philosophy has caused us to be in the mess that the country is in today. I think that at times, the Mayor’s wealth has caused him to be out of touch with what most New Yorkers experience every day.

It’s by far the toughest language the generally congenial Comptroller has used in describing Bloomberg or his policies. He’ll follow up this morning with a proposal to hike the city’s current 3.65% income tax rate to 4.3% for those making more than a half-mil per year with the rate going to 4.8% for folks earning more than a million in taxable income.

But Thompson probably should talk to his state counterpart Tom DiNapoli before accusing the mayor of “not getting it.” DiNapoli reported just six weeks ago that bonuses to taxpaying New Yorkers in the financial industry fell 44% in 2008 costing the state a cool billion in tax revenue and the city $275 million. Indeed Thompson himself noted last September that Wall Street accounted for almost half NYC’s tax revenues in the past few years.

So it’s hard to argue with Bloomberg saying “We love rich people,” since it’s those rich people with their rich, taxable bonuses that have filled the city’s coffers for much of this decade. Thompson sure as hell better love rich folks if he wants to bring in an extra billion in revenue from them. Everyone acknowledges the era of easy Wall Street money has come to an end and honest minds can disagree over the wisdom of hiking taxes on the rich at this time. Is it killing the golden goose or sharing the pain?

So while recent polls show most New Yorkers actually agree with Thompson that Bloomberg is a bit out of touch with the average person, the Comptroller’s latest broadside takes the mayor’s perfectly rational (if politically tone-deaf) statements and turns them into something they are not.

If Thompson can follow up and engage Bloomberg in a real debate about the merits of hiking top tax rates, however, he could do himself and the rest of us a lot of good.

Brooklyn Bridge Free No More?

It’s no mystery what Mike Bloomberg is going to run on in his bid for a third term — safe streets and good management. But what exactly would his Democratic opponent try and do to sour New Yorkers on their popular mayor?

If Anthony Weiner was to really run (which seems very doubtful at this point) he has already spent months sketching out an outer-borough populist case that paints Bloomberg as an elitist who was lucky enough to be mayor during one of the biggest economic booms in the city’s history. Weiner would be prepared to illustrate such an argument with the mayor’s own actionsand pet projects (see: Term Limits, Congestion Pricing, and Yankee Stadium).

Bill Thompson, on the other hand, has been far more coy. While he has mildly critical of Bloomberg on some issues (term limits, school control) he has shown little fire in the belly and even less campaign fire and brimstone. Thompson has shown no hints of a storyline he might use to bring the mayor down — until now.

Sunday Thompson joined Assemblyman Adriano Espaillat and a handful of other pols to blast the proposal emerging in Albany to toll the East and Harlem River bridges. The idea has been around for decades and was one of the key recommendations of the Ravitch Commission which was charged with finding a permanent fix for the MTA’s fast-growing budget problems.

In the past couple of days the idea of tolling the currently free bridges into Manhattan (from the Brooklyn Bridge to the Broadway bridge over Spuyten Duyvil — my personal favorite place-name in NYC) has gone from a non-starter to a no-brainer as the leaders of the Assembly and State Senate have both thrown support behind it.

The original Ravitch plan called for tolling the East River bridges at the same rate as the Midtown and Battery Tunnels and the Triboro Bridge while putting $2 tolls on the Harlem River crossings. Now Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and Senate Majority Leader Malcolm Smith back the idea of tolling all the bridges at that $2 mark (or the same as the current subway fare at the time).

Leading the charge against this idea now appears to be Thompson’s first significant attempt at finding an issue that will help define him and Bloomberg. Tolling these bridges has always been easily spun as a Manhattan-centric idea (at least since Mayor Lindsay ordered up a study on it in 1970) designed to stick it to the working stiff. And so Thompson adopted a bit of that stand in Sunday’s news conference arguing “Harlem and East River tolls would burden many hard-working people who live in boroughs other than Manhattan and would drastically hurt small businesses, many of which already are struggling in this economy.”

Good as far as it goes but truth be told Assemblymember Jose Peralta seemed to strike the better campaign pose when he said “The MTA’s Harlem and East River toll plan would win approval by Robert Moses the Master Builder himself, with their idea to seal off Manhattan Island and make it only affordable to the wealthy.” Peralta is presumably not running for mayor, however.

Thompson is instead repeating his proposal from late last year to radically increase registration fees for large gas-guzzlers. It’s an idea that could very well work but his failure to get any traction for it with the only three guys in Albany makes him look no more effective than Bloomberg whose congestion pricing plan suffered an even worse fate.

Thompson has spent the last seven years as the city’s Comptroller dutifully presenting solutions but rarely engaging in the kind of hard-ball politics many of his ambitious predecessors became infamous for (paging Liz Holtzman!). If he’s going to take on Bloomberg and his big bucks he’s going to have to be more than the cerebral dispassionate solutions guy. New York already has one of those that voters say they basically like. His name is Mike Bloomberg.

NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg

It’s nice to be Mike. Bloomberg that is. And not only because he’s (still) worth multiple billions of dollars.

The new Marist Poll out Friday shows why it’s virtually impossible to see how Mike Bloomberg is stopped from winning a third term as Mayor later this year.

Despite the “Blues for Bloomberg?” headline a quick peak into the numbers shows that Bloomberg is broadly popular among New Yorkers and actually in a better position than he was at this time in 2005. And he’s ready to spend even more than the $80 million in blew through then on his way to a 18-point win.

The headline-inducing number — 55% of NYC voters say it’s time to elect “someone else” — is undercut by what voters told pollsters to other questions.

Sure, the mayor’s approval numbers have dropped pretty substantially in the last few months (from 68% in October to 52% now) but it’s still higher than his approval number in March of 2005 when it was just 43%.

Marist Polls on Bloomberg's Popularity

Far more telling though is what voters said when asked more specific questions: “If the election were held today would you vote for Bloomberg or (Democrat) Anthony Weiner?” Voters pick Bloomie 53%-37%. Same question but switch Bill Thompson for Weiner and it’s the same story: Bloomie wins 53%-36%.

Then there are the questions that get to the root of how people are really feeling as opposed to what they may tell pollsters about how they might vote eight months from now: Is Bloomberg working hard as Mayor? 80% say he is. Does he understand the problems facing the city? 68% say he does. And the clincher, is he a good leader? 67% think he is.

If you’re Thompson or Weiner or dark horse Dem Tony Avella there are some numbers that could give you hope and a line of attack:  “Does Bloomberg care about people like you?” 47% agree but 50% disagree. “Was changing term limits a good thing? 25% say it was, 46% say it was not, 29% don’t care. But honestly, it’s a pretty faint glimmer when you remember you will be outspent four or five to one.

In much the same way that many New Yorkers thought Rudy Giuliani was an a**hole but voted for him because he was our a**hole, voters think Bloomberg is something of an imperious autocrat but at least he’s our imperious autocrat. Plus la change….

IBO Director Ronnie Lowenstein (NY Times)

Mea Culpa! Apparently after all those years of a President who couldn’t think of a single mistake he’d made and corporate executives who couldn’t find a failure they wouldn’t reward, mea culpa’s are back.

Earlier this week New York City’s Independent Budget Office released it’s annual “how we would fix this screwy city budget if we could” report (Budget Options for New York City). It contained dozens of ideas for how the city could save hundreds of millions by changing some big and small things about the way the city does business.

One of those ideas involved cutting the city’s contribution to the pension plan for workers at “private cultural institutions” which sounded like a pretty good idea. After all why should the curator at the Met have a taxpayer-funded pension? The IBO estimated changing that policy would save about $25 million a year.

But they goofed. And Thursday they admitted it:

“In IBO’s ‘Budget Options for New York City’ released yesterday, we presented an option entitled Eliminate Pension Payments for Employees of Private Cultural Institutions (page 27). We estimated that this action would save $25 million annually. In fact, the Cultural Institutions Retirement System also includes employees of dozens of child care centers in the city. While the city’s payment to the Cultural Institutions Retirement System will be about $25 million this fiscal year, $17 million will be for the pensions of child care workers. That means the savings from eliminating the city’s pension contribution for cultural institution employees would be $8 million.”

Kudos to the IBO for fessing up and doing so pretty fast.

Plus even $8 million bucks is something. Mayor B? Whaddya think?

Oh, and one more. MSNBC host Keith Olbermann did his own mea culpa too. This one over his gleeful reporting about that the boss of arch-rival Fox News allegedly told analysts on a conference call earlier in the week.

The original transcript showed News Corp CEO Rupert Murdoch saying his has ”never been a company that tolerates facts.” That of course was too delicious for Olbermann to pass up. Unfortunately it turned out the transcript was wrong.

To his credit Olbermann admitted he’d screwed up — or at least that the transcript company had screwed up and he’d repeated their error.

Hey. It’s something.

New York State Capitol

While we all wait to see exactly what the US Senate comes up with for it’s version of the stimulus package it seems certain that the total amount will easily blow way past the $819 billion House plan which passed Wednesday. So what will it mean for New York? Especially the state government which is facing a $15.4 billion budget gap?And what about New York City where Mayor Bloomberg is unveiling his doomsday budget today?

Monetarily Sen. Chuck Schumer calculates the state and cities will get roughly $15 billion over the next two-plus years.The biggest chunk of help will come in Medicaid funding which happens to be the largest part of the state budget. But whatever portion of that $15 billion the state gets it assuredly will not be enough to close the deficit. That means all of Governor David Paterson’s doomsday talk and his resulting doomsday budget is still relevant.

Paterson’s budget, filled with fees and cuts, has met with pretty much total silence from Legislative leaders in Albany who have said it made no sense to even talk about what might need to be cut or what taxes and fees might need to be raised until the size of the Federal “donation” was understood. Well we’re pretty close to understanding now.

Paterson’s budget proposed roughly $9.5 billion in cuts — the lion’s share out of the two biggest areas of the budget, education and health care. Since the state can expect about $10 billion in Medicaid help over the next two years and roughly $5 billion in education assistance during the same period (not all of which goes to Albany — $11B is what one analyst said is likely to be Albany’s take), a quick back-of-the-envelope calculation shows that if lawmakers only wanted to use the Federal cash to offset budget cuts (as opposed to making the cuts and using the cash to reduce the tax and fee hikes) the number to cut comes down to a more manageable $4 billion.

While budget watchdogs and even the Governor may scream that the current crisis should be used to reform health care and education funding in NYS (which are generally far above what almost any other state spends with no benefit to show for it) we’ve all seen this scene before.

Under Republicans and Democrats New York’s government has almost always taken the easy way out, using one-shot asset sales, windfalls, and various accounting tricks to avoid facing the hard truth: New York State spends too much and New York citizens get too little for it.

You’d think the prospect of a second Great Depression coupled with a 15 billion dollar Federal gift might persuade the Legislature to fix the chronic budget mess under the cover of crisis. But you’d probably think wrong.

As for the city, Schumer says Gotham should get around $3.4 billion in health and education funding or about $1.7 billion this year and the same next year. The Independent Budget Office just estimated the city’s budget gap for 2009 has grown to $4.3 billion. The Mayor’s budget will count on that Federal cash but he will propose a sales tax increase, service cuts, and worker benefit changes to close the $2.6 billion gap that will remain.

Of course the politics at City Hall will be somewhat different because while the Mayor and most of the council members are running for reelection this November they don’t have the luxury Albany has of “creative budgeting”. That’s because back in the 70′s Albany made New York City adhere to very strict balanced budget rules. Too bad Albany won’t live by the very effective rules it sets for others….

NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg

You gotta hand it to Mayor Michael Bloomberg. He royally pisses the voting public off with his term limits power grab but they still lovvvvve him.

That’s what a new Quinnipiac Poll out Tuesday seems to suggest. By a margin of 56% to 42% NYC voters disapprove of the term limit extension Bloomberg and the City Council pushed through for themselves last year. So that’s bad news for Bloomy, right? Of course not!

A big majority of those same voters say they not only want Bloomberg to run but that they’ll vote for him over two potential Democratic opponents. Bloomberg beats Anthony Weiner or Bill Thompson by almost identical double-digit margins (50-35 and 50-34 respectively).

While a NY1 Poll puts the Bloomberg-Weiner match much closer both polls show Bloomberg with a very high approval rating (64-29 in NY1 Poll and 69-25 in Q) that makes a mockery of the notion that at this early stage there’s a real race for Mayor.

Bloomberg will spend tens of millions more than whichever Democrat emerges to challenge him and voters don’t mind that either. Quinnipiac asked if voters thought Bloomberg bankrolling his own campaign A) freed him from being beholden to special interests or B) made it look like he was trying to buy the election. By a margin of 54-40 voters chose the “freed from special interests” line. Big smiles all around Camp Bloomy.

The bottom line is that with these poll numbers, more money to spend per vote than any candidate in history, and a top team of hired guns (including part of Obama’s micro-targeting group that so successfully ushered in the new era of get out the vote operations) Bloomberg has very little going against him.

Anthony Weiner would certainly make a fiery opponent and would likely connect with some disaffected blue-collar voters angry about the economy. But it’s hard to see how that’s enough to overcome Bloomberg’s huge advantages. If voters don’t dislike Bloomberg right now with term limits fresh on their minds what’s going to make them learn to dislike him later?

Thompson’s run would be different and potentially more effective if he could mount a real grass-roots rebellion among African American and Latino voters but what’s going to fuel that other than class resentment (which is Weiner’s theme)? And when has Thompson shown he can or will run that kind of contest?

So Boss Bloomberg should sleep soundly tonight knowing that less than ten months from election day there are virtually no signs that his chances of winning a third term are anything but golden.

Gov. David Paterson

Oh how quickly the news has moved on from Kirsten Gillibrand the “accidental Senator” to David Paterson the “doomed Governor.” Newspapers across the state from Buffalo to Gotham wrote up Paterson’s big problems this morning after the botched selection process to replace Hillary Clinton.

Now two new polls, one from Quinnipiac and the other from Siena, make several things abundantly clear:

1. Pundits be damned, the public is NOT blaming Paterson for the Caroline Kennedy fiasco (despite Liz Benjamin’s excellent report this morning indicating the public might want to think again).

2. Paterson is still widely popular, and all things being equal (which they are not but chill — I’m getting there), he is not in a particularly tough position for a campaign that will begin a year from now.

3. Kirsten Gillibrand will be elected Senator in 2010.

First, the Q poll shows voters are giving Paterson a pass on the Caroline mess blaming Kennedy and her people by huge margin (49% say it was Caroline’s fault, 15% say it was Dave’s). Furthermore his approval rating is down pretty significantly from it’s high last August (64% then, 50% now) but considering all the bad news about the budget, his State of the State, and Caroline he can’t be too unhappy that only 30% disapprove of the way he’s doing (that’s roughly the percentage of Republicans in the state so whaddya expect?) Finally there’s great news for Gillibrand here.

Voters who say they have an opinion like her 25% to 10%. Nice, but focus on the 63% who don’t have an opinion. For an aggressive campaigner and fundraiser who’s taken classes at the Chuck Schumer School of Politics, 63% undecided is pure gold. Gillibrand skillfully went to work moments after she was announced last Friday and hasn’t stopped. The poll shows she has great appeal upstate and among Republicans — even among NYC Dems who critics say will abandon her over her support for gun rights she has positive ratings and a vast pool of undecideds. Combine that with the support of her mentor and macher Senator Schumer and Gillibrand is the closest thing to a sure bet you’re gonna get in politics.

So back to Paterson’s polls and his problems. While his approval rating is still pretty good the Siena poll put him into a head to head match-up with Attorney General Andrew Cuomo and found it to be thisclose in a hypothetical primary (35% Paterson to 33% Cuomo). Oooo delicious, right? Not so fast.

Andrew Cuomo has clawed his way back to respectability after primarying Carl McCall in 2002 thus earning what looked to be the everlasting enmity of African-American (and plenty of other) Dems who thought it mighty uncool for the brash young scion to try and keep New York from possibly electing it’s first black Governor. So what’s he gonna do now that he’s in (almost) everyone’s good graces? Take on New York’s actual first black Governor? Not on your life unless top African American politicos like Rangel, Sharpton, and some guy named Obama throw Dave over the transom. If that happens there won’t be a primary because Paterson will resign or find himself Ambassador of [insert obscure country here].

Finally remember who now rules the Democratic Party of the State of New York. King Charles. Schumer no more wants Andrew Cuomo in the Governor’s Office than he wanted the ambitious competitor in the Senate. If Paterson can muddle through this budget year (and I’m betting he can with the help of some big $$ help from Schumer and Obama) Schumer will do whatever it takes to make sure he stays in office and the politial pecking order stays the same. With Schumer firmly on top.

UPDATE 1/27/09

A third poll from Marist may give Paterson more pause. Marist has his “How am I doin’?” numbers at 46% Excellent/Good versus 48% Fair/Poor and shows him losing to either Rudy Giuliani or Bloomberg (who almost certainly would never run) albeit by narrow margins.