Hey, who do you have to engage in inappropriate sexual conduct with to get elected in New York City?
Anybody you want to, it turns out. That's one of the takeaways from the zombie-like durability of Eliot Spitzer, Anthony Weiner and Vito Lopez, the front-runners in the Democratic primary races for city comptroller, mayor and Brooklyn's City Council seat.
While we've been living with Lopez and Weiner's intentions for months, last week was when Spitzer's fondest dreams of wall-to-wall attention came true. Following last Sunday's announcement of his plans to jump into the race, reporters thronged his every appearance and watched the clock as his last-minute petition drive scrambled to secure the 3,750 signatures required to earn a slot on the Sept. 10 ballot.
The day after he filed more than 27,000 signatures, Spitzer traveled to that venerable New York City political landmark, NBC Studios in sunny Burbank, Calif., for an appearance on "The Tonight Show." As I write this on Friday, it's unclear if he and Jay Leno will dive into the minutiae of the recent audit of the Sanitation Department's handling of violation notices.
Many of the fallen governor's enthusiasts and the former allies he has not yet alienated will point to his good work as attorney general and argue that the comptroller's office is uniquely structured to bring out his best qualities without overtaxing his limited ability to work well with others.
One response to that idea would be to fall to your knees, pound your fists into the earth until they are raw, throw your head back and scream to the heavens, "O Lord, is there no one in the metropolis — no man nor woman nor beast — with a similar skill set who is not Eliot Spitzer?"
Who could get elected, that is. Spitzer will be running against Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, a man the former governor describes as "a friend."
Stringer seems to be Spitzer's friend in the same way that Silda Wall Spitzer is his wife — that is, their relationship does not preclude the most egregious kind of personal betrayal.
A former state assemblyman, Stringer now finds himself almost 10 percentage points behind a guy who wasn't even running 72 hours before the first poll was conducted. This is surely the result of the natural human response when a pollster asks you to choose between a list of candidates for a barely understood office: Most will pick the name that's the most familiar, as long as it's not "Darth Vader" or "Rick Lazio."
But it's also a sign that not enough people in New York City know who Scott Stringer is or how he would pursue the task of comptroller, a strategy that was working like a charm for Stringer until Spitzer decided to pounce. Indeed, it's indisputable that Stringer's stealth campaign was a veritable printed invitation, welcome mat or dinner bell for the former governor.
Suddenly, Stringer's supporters are out in force. Manhattan Assemblywoman Linda Rosenthal issued a scathing statement on Spitzer's past misdeeds: "Soliciting a sex worker is not merely exploitative of women, but it helps to perpetuate an illicit activity that has violence at its very core," she said.
Assembly Democrats can only take this sort of thing so far before they'll have to answer for their continued support of Speaker Sheldon Silver, whose decision to quietly settle sexual harassment claims against Lopez helped to perpetuate that illicit activity.
Of course, Silver's sins aren't as bad as Spitzer's, which aren't as bad as Lopez's. I'm not sure where to put Weiner's social-media transgressions on this continuum.
But the mere fact that all four are Democrats gives you a sense of the utter glee that state Republicans are feeling as they watch primary season unfold.
State GOP chairman Ed Cox branded the three disgraced office-seekers as an "Unholy Trinity."
Almost as an afterthought, he touted John Burnett's campaign for comptroller. He's an African-American veteran of Wall Street with an inspiring personal narrative of his rise from grocery store cashier to margin analyst.
He'll need more than that to overcome the roughly 6-to-1 voter registration advantage enjoyed by Democrats. Republicans thought the Lopez scandal would be a winner for them in 2012; that strategy ended in Wendy Long's historic pounding at the hands of Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, and the loss of the state Senate majority.
If the GOP wants to win, or at least play, in the general election, voters will need to hear a lot less from them about Spitzer, and a lot more about Burnett.
He might not share a stage with Leno. But I'm not sure a city comptroller needs to.
cseiler@timesunion.com • 518-454-5619