{"id":379557,"date":"2010-03-02T09:45:27","date_gmt":"2010-03-02T14:45:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/washingtonindependent.com\/?p=78020"},"modified":"2010-03-02T09:45:27","modified_gmt":"2010-03-02T14:45:27","slug":"zuckermania","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/379557","title":{"rendered":"Zuckermania!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ben Smith has a rose-colored look at a possible Senate run in New York by Mort Zuckerman, the 72-year-old media mogul and pundit who seems interested<\/a> in Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand’s (D-N.Y.) seat and is — like Harold Ford did, until last night — getting nothing but kudos from the state’s moneyed elite.<\/p>\n

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Zuckerman, who owns the New York Daily News and U.S.News & World Report, has been a practicing pundit for years and \u201chas always wanted to be in the political mix,\u201d said Howard Rubenstein, the New York PR man and a Zuckerman friend. More important, the weaknesses of his likely opponent, Gillibrand, are clear to everyone, and a statewide office has rarely seemed so ripe for the plucking.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019d be her \u2018worst possible opponent\u2019 among possible candidates, said Democratic political consultant Dan Gerstein.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Obviously, that’s assuming Zuckerman will dip into his fortune and spend Bloomberg-level money on an ad campaign. But right now, Zuckerman is trailing Gillibrand<\/a> by 20 points — former governor George Pataki, who seems disinterested in a run, leads her by six points. And that represented an uptick in the polls for her. Gillibrand has more than $7 million<\/a> in the bank, which she no longer has to spend in a pointless primary. And the Democratic ticket will almost certainly be led in November by Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, replacing the bumbling and scandalized Gov. David Paterson (D-N.Y.). It’s not a total gimme for the Democrats, but the hopes of Republicans turning this into their majority-making victory really seem based on magical thinking.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ben Smith has a rose-colored look at a possible Senate run in New York by Mort Zuckerman, the 72-year-old media mogul and pundit who seems interested in Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand’s (D-N.Y.) seat and is — like Harold Ford did, until last night — getting nothing but kudos from the state’s moneyed elite. Zuckerman, who owns […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4313,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-379557","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379557","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4313"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=379557"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379557\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=379557"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=379557"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=379557"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}