NEW YORK, NY September 12, 2006 —The closest and most contentious statewide contest is the race for Attorney General. Two long-time candidates for higher office, Andrew Cuomo and Mark Green, are the front-runners, with Sean Patrick Maloney also in the race.

Cuomo and Green have been vying not just to succeed Eliot Spitzer but, in a sense, to persuade New Yorkers that each is the second coming of Spitzer. Cuomo’s ads feature a photo of the large shoes the former U.S. Housing Secretary pledges to fill – despite reportedly having larger feet than the current Attorney General.

Green’s mailers show the former new York City Public Advocate in four different pictures with Spitzer and proclaim that both men are consumer fraud prosecutors. With Green and Cuomo mostly pledging the same things – for instance, “cleaning up Albany” and “cracking down on welfare fraud” -- the campaign has consisted mostly of barbs against the others’ character.

Maloney has stayed out of the fray, but his campaign has attracted little notice. He’s backed by only 7 percent of likely primary voters according to the latest Quinnipiac Poll. Cuomo has 50 percent and Green, 31.