Downstate issues dominate Spitzer-Suozzi debate
By TOM PRECIOUS
News Albany Bureau
7/27/2006
ALBANY - As both Democratic gubernatorial candidates declared victory Wednesday following their first and likely only debate, the Tuesday night session will go down as a downstate-dominated event featuring two downstate candidates with little to say about upstate issues.
Indeed, the debate was not even televised in Buffalo, the state's second largest city. People in the Buffalo area who wanted to see the debate needed to drive to Rochester - the nearest cable market airing the one-hour session - or fire up their radios and listen on WNED and imagine Attorney General Eliot Spitzer and Nassau County Executive Thomas Suozzi squaring off.
"Neither showed much attention or understanding of the issues relating to the upstate economy," said John Faso, the Republican gubernatorial candidate.
How is a debate among statewide candidates shown in New York City, Long Island, Westchester County, Albany, Syracuse and Rochester, but not Buffalo?
Ed Pachetti, a spokesman for NY1, an all-news cable channel in New York City that produced the debate at Pace University, said the event was shown on sister Time Warner cable outlets in the upstate cities. He said Cablevision, a downstate carrier, approached NY1 and asked permission to show the debate on Long Island and Westchester.
"This was the first year we had statewide coverage," he said. Previous NY1 debates were limited to the New York City market.
"We recognize the importance that this had to be shown in New York and also Rochester, Albany and Syracuse," he said.
The debate was broadcast on radio in five markets, including the Buffalo area on WNED.
The Buffalo area is serviced mostly by Adelphia cable company. Tom Haywood, an Adelphia vice president, was not sure why the debate wasn't broadcast in Buffalo. "If we could have received it, we would have shown it," he said.
What Western New Yorkers would have seen if they had been able to tune in Tuesday night was a series of mostly downstate questions from the panel that included a moderator from NY1, three New York City reporters and an anchor from a cable station in Buffalo.
While the upstate economy has emerged as one of the major issues in the campaign, there were no questions about the topic in the debate, which did feature questions about a week-long power outage in Queens, New York City schools, lower Manhattan redevelopment and New York City transit personnel issues.
Not that the candidates went out of their way to address upstate issues, either, though Suozzi did call on Spitzer to agree to a series of single-issue debates, one of which would be the upstate economy. Spitzer has no plans for further debates with Suozzi.
For their part, Spitzer and Suozzi continued debating Wednesday - this time over who won Tuesday night. Spitzer mocked Suozzi for trying to bring written notes to the debate.
"I didn't need any notes to beat you," Suozzi said in a letter to Spitzer Wednesday.
Faso, meanwhile, sought to burnish his upstate roots by attacking Spitzer, the front runner, for not focusing more on upstate in the debate. "These downstate Democrats don't know what they're talking about when dealing with upstate issues," Faso said. He said Spitzer "should be willing to debate in every corner of the state, particularly in places like Buffalo."
Neither Suozzi or Spitzer gives a rat's butt about upstate NY.
The votes aren't here for them. The big bucks they need (or at least Suozzi needs, Spitzer has his own) won't come from here.
John Faso, with a double digit deficit in poll numbers, is an upstater, but people here haven't accepted his am one yet.
Maybe that will change.
Probably not.
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