All in all the week has had its share of oddities. Monday we got a call from the communications director of the Eliot Spitzer for NY Governor Committee. Eliot Spitzer, as you may know, is the current Attorney General for the state and a Democrat, and is looking to replace George Pataki come November in the Governor’s Chair in Albany. He’s pretty much a shoe-in, as the Republican Party in this state has collapsed under its own weight of corruption and ineptitude. Much like the Democrats did in New York oh, those many years ago.
Anyhow, it seemed that Mr. Spitzer wanted to do a press conference on the front stairs of our house.
Yes, you read that correctly. Eliot Spitzer wanted to stand on our brownstone stoop and talk to the press about…well, the communications director refused to say what he would talk about. Managing a political campaign is pretty much all about managing the flow of information, so they wouldn’t tell us. But would it be OK? I said, sure, as long as he wasn’t advocating demolishing our home or something like that. We were assured of that and we were told that we wouldn’t have to be there, which was a good thing, as in the end neither Kathy nor I ended up being there.
So we missed it, and it actually was a pity, because as it turns out the press conference was to announce the endorsement of former NY Governor Hugh Carey (pictured above) for Spitzer’s cause. Apparently the former governor was born on our block back in 1919, so they wanted to take it all back home. He wasn’t born in our house, as best as we can tell, but because we had donated to Democrats in the last election cycle they pretty much assumed that we would be game to their plans, and let them use our place as a stand-in.
As I said it was a pity that we missed it, as it turned out to be solid evidence of not asking 87 year olds for their opinion on your candidacy. The article in the Daily News pretty much summed it up:
Democratic former Gov. Hugh Carey threw his support to gubernatorial hopeful Chuck Schumer - er, Eliot Spitzer - yesterday, marking a return to his party after backing Republicans in several major races.
Carey, 87, got around on his own steam but flubbed by repeatedly referring to Spitzer as Sen. Chuck Schumer.
There are times that I feel that the stairs in our house are cursed. I have fallen down every flight at least once. Kathy had her famous accident, and even our Electra broke her leg tumbling off of the landing. Now the cursed stairs have taken another more high profile victim, the addled former Governor who stumbled through a speech on our stoop, possibly because he couldn’t remember in which house he was born.
