The race for attorney general has begun.
Pre-empting his likely opponents, Assembly Member Richard
Brodsky has made public his most recent campaign finance report nearly a week
before it would have otherwise gone public, announcing Sunday that he had $1.3 million in his war chest. Brodsky said he had started raising money for the most recent cycle just two months ago.
Brodsky, who had not been at the center of most of the early
speculation over the race to succeed Andrew Cuomo, is hoping to vault over other more prominent candidates, like Nassau County
District Attorney Kathleen Rice and State Sen. Eric Schneiderman.
And while Brodsky insisted in an interview Sunday night that
the move was not meant to be “disrespectful” to either Gov. David Paterson or Cuomo,
who is expected to challenge Paterson, he acknowledged that his announcement may intensify
the jockeying to replace Cuomo and reinforce the widely held belief that
Paterson is vulnerable to a primary challenge.
“It’s a dynamic situation,” Brodsky said in a telephone
interview. “There’s a lot of flux, and you can’t, in this world, on anything
you want to do, you cannot sit around and wait and hope.”
Brodsky also pushed back on speculation that Cuomo is
preparing to take an active role in shaping the Democratic ticket and will choose
a favorite in the campaign for attorney general, most likely Rice. People close
to Cuomo have suggested as much in recent days, saying the attorney general may
want to weigh in on the race to replace him early in the process, so as to
present a full and balanced ticket.
“He has called me and told me he will not do that,” Brodsky
said of Cuomo. “He said he’s got to make his own decisions first.”
Brodsky added: “I don’t think the Democratic Party of the
state is likely to respond well to anybody telling other people what to do.”
Brodsky, who ran briefly for attorney general in 2006 before
dropping out to donate a kidney to his daughter, said the uncertainty over Cuomo’s
political plans will not effect his own decision on whether to run for attorney
general, adding that his work in the Assembly—on issues such as authority
reform and the MTA—will position him well to succeed Cuomo.
“The work I do as an Assemblyman would be relevant to any judgment people make about who should be attorney general,” Brodsky said. “If this is about change and reform, I’m not going to take second place to anybody.”
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