Hotline: GOP Still Searching For Top Challenger To Gillibrand
Source: Dan Roem, Hotline
Hotline: GOP Still Searching For Top Challenger To GillibrandDan Roem
March 14, 2010
http://hotlineoncall.nationaljournal.com/archives/2010/03/gop_still_searc.php
If GOPers are going to defeat Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), it seems almost certain it will be without an A-list candidate. And the news late last week that DC GOPers are talking to NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg's (I) long-time girlfriend Diana Taylor -- an ex-state banking superintendent -- only seems to confirm these suspicions.
But Taylor is not alone on the GOP's B- or C- list. As top-tier challengers, such as ex-NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R), New York Daily News publisher Mort Zuckerman (R) and Rep. Peter King (R) -- and apparently ex-Gov. George Pataki (R) -- have each turned down bids, a crop of lesser-known challengers has risen up.
To review, there are at least 6 other GOPers in various stages of a race against Gillibrand. Ex-Port Authority Commis. Bruce Blakeman (R) has already confirmed his bid. Ex-Rep. Joe DioGuardi (R) is set to officially announce his candidacy 3/16. And ex-Giuliani aide/economist David Malpass (R) is supposedly in.
Meanwhile, ex-Bush foreign policy adviser Dan Senor (R), husband of CNN's Campbell Brown, is highly rumored to run, and Rockland Co. Exec. Scott Vanderhoef (R) and Orange Co. Exec. Ed Diana (R) are still considering the race.
The 69-year-old CPA DioGuardi, 69, is somewhere between a second and third tier candidate given that he's been out of Congress since losing to to Rep. Nita Lowey (D) in '88. He's likely more popular for being the father of American Idol judge Kara DioGuardi than his work on South African apartheid or authorship of the 1990 CFO Act.
In the absence of an A-lister, the GOP field may expand even more, since the filing deadline is still four months away.
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