NEW YORK – Jeanine Pirro is expected to quit her bid to unseat Sen. Hillary Clinton as early as Monday, prematurely ending what had been billed as one of the nation’s marquee races.
Just a few months ago, the Westchester County, N.Y., district attorney was the darling of a Republican Party convinced she was the right candidate who – even if she couldn’t beat Clinton – could at least slice into her high approval ratings.
But now, Pirro, 54, is being written off as the first political roadkill of the 2006 election season. And Clinton never even had to throw a punch.
What happened?
“She’s been hurt by a lack of money and a campaign that from the beginning has been sputtering at best,” said Marist College pollster Lee Miringoff.
Pirro, he said, also fell into the trap of making a central issue of her campaign that Clinton harbors presidential ambitions and won’t finish a second term, a claim that, even if true, doesn’t seem to matter much to most New Yorkers.
GOP insiders said they expect her to toss in the towel Monday when Republican leaders meet in Albany, N.Y., to gear up for next year’s elections, which also feature races for governor, state attorney general, Congress and all 212 state lawmakers.
Officially, her campaign says Pirro has no plans to quit, but sources said she will be “drafted” to run for attorney general, a job for which many of her backers say she is well qualified given her background as a prosecutor and former judge.
It’s the same job some say she should have gone for in the first place. The move to pull Pirro out of the Senate bid might be a signal that the state GOP will concentrate instead on the governor’s race and boosting Pirro for attorney general.
A potential candidate to replace Pirro is former Yonkers Mayor John Spencer, a relative unknown to most New Yorkers.
Sources close to the Pirro camp said Clinton’s popularity was not her only obstacle. Besides her fundraising problem, Pirro also was hurt by the media spotlight on her husband, Al Pirro, a lobbyist who did prison time for tax evasion.
She also didn’t help her own cause with an embarrassing campaign launch when she went speechless before cameras for 32 seconds, then asked where the missing page of her speech was.
Pirro’s friend Bill O’Shaughnessy, owner of a Westchester radio station, blamed an aggressive media and a “good ol’ boys” network that never gave her a chance. “This is like the gal who got all dressed up for the ball but never got a chance to go on the dance floor to hear the orchestra,” he said.
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