New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand is CW-presumed to have an easy re-election campaign next year.
Gillibrand was appointed to the Senate in 2009, won statewide last year by 2-1 over a tea party challenger, and there are few if any NY Republicans who could do much better than that in 2012, when she will run for a full six-year term.
The Murdoch money-pit New York Post has never liked Gillibrand as Senator, and have lately had Fred Dicker, its Albany bureau chief, lead the way in trying to recruit Harry Wilson, a Wall Street multi-millionaire, to challenge her.
Dicker launched the Wilson trial balloon earlier this month, with anonymous "insiders" promoting Wilson, in his Monday column.
Republican Harry Wilson, the wealthy investor and former member of President Obama’s Auto Industry Task Force, is being talked up by GOP insiders as a possible candidate against US Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand in 2012.
Details, below.
Wilson ran a creditable race last year for Comptroller, losing by just 200,000 votes (about 3.4 percent), against Tom DiNapoli, appointed after the previous Democratic Comptroller resigned in disgrace.
Wilson outspent DiNapoli by about 2-1, including $4 million of his own Wall Street money.
Dicker's column was soon followed by a Murdoch money-pit editorial, that trashed Gillibrand as "something of a cipher" amd "a second-rater," while lauding a Wilson challenge as "an excellent idea.
Today, Dicker amped up his promotion of Wilson, with a column entitled "Willy eyeing run vs. Gilly".
The conceit of the column is that Dicker's first column forced Wilson to begin seriously considering a Senate challenge.
Wilson told The Post that he had ruled out running against Gillibrand until two weeks ago, when Inside Albany reported that leading GOP activists were discussing his possible candidacy.
“Since the Inside Albany report two weeks ago, Harry has been inundated by Republicans and Democrats encouraging him to run,’’ said Wilson spokesman Bill O’Reilly.
Until then, said O’Reilly, Wilson “had not planned to run’’ against Gillibrand.
But now, “he is giving it serious consideration,’’ said O’Reilly, noting that Wilson and his family are “thinking through whether to make this run or not.”
In today's column, Dicker writes that "Several public-opinion polls have recently shown Gillibrand with less than a 50 percent approval rating and with a large number of voters saying they know little about her."
But, like a true Murdoch propagandist, Dicker left out any mention of the most recent poll about this race, because it contradicts the Murdoch money-pit fable about an unpopular and politically vulnerable Gillibrand.
A Siena College poll, released last week, found that Gillibrand has a re-elect number of 53 percent, up from 46 percent last month, and that she would beat Wilson by 63-21.
Dicker knew all about this poll, and had interviewed a Siena spokesman about it six days before his disingenuous column was published.
A word about Dicker's "insiders" -- Dicker has been working in Albany for more than 30 years, and has plenty of sources.
But the main one on Gillibrand-related matters is millionaire lobbyist Bill Powers, a former state GOP chairman who helped elect Rudy Giuliani as NYC mayor and George Pataki as governor.
Powers mentored Miami Mob Boss John Sweeney, hiring him as executive director of the state GOP committee, getting him, ludicrously, appointed by Pataki as state Labor Commissioner, and ensuring that he had a primary-free path to Congress in NY-20 when Gerry Solomon retired in 1998 to become a GE lobbyist millionaire.
Gillibrand came out of nowhere to beat Sweeney like a drum in 2006. Powers and his media outlet Dicker have never forgotten that.
The Murdoch money-pit opposes real Democrats at every level, because that's its marketing model, pretty much the same as that of Fox "News".
Gillibrand is a special case, because of the Dicker-Powers connection.
Which means that Gillibrand, who has done an excellent job representing all of New York state as a freshman Senator, will continue to get unfair and unbalanced coverage from the Murdoch money-pit.
The good news -- most polls, and every election Gillibrand has run, have shown that the Murdoch money-pit has little influence on how NY voters vote.