I remember watching this special election unfold right before our eyes. Seems that Democrat Senators flew in from around the state to also help in with this race. Isn’t all this being done on our time, on our dime? YES…

It goes on all the time and is just another huge problem we have with NY politics. This is how they continue to build their armies of workers. All with taxpayer funded jobs doing the work of the “Parties”, all of which is against the Law. But what are we to do, these people create the Laws and then violate them. Yet this is a states rights issue? Where are the Feds with crap like this?

Spitzer aides’ negative stories helped sink politican

ALBANY - They did it before.

Five months before the Troopergate scandal broke, Spitzer administration aides stimulated negative news stories to taint a Republican state Senate candidate running in a hotly contested race, the Daily News has learned.

A trail of e-mails obtained by The News through a Freedom of Information Law request also shows a high level of e-mail chatter among state government staffers about news coverage of last February’s special election in Nassau County.

Democrat Craig Johnson defeated Republican Maureen O’Connell in what became the costliest special election in state history.

Just four days before the election, O’Connell underwent criticism from the state Office of Homeland Security, a state agency then under the wing of William Howard, who was then a public security adviser to the governor.

Howard was part of the same cadre of Spitzer administration officials Attorney General Andrew Cuomo blamed last month for misusing the state police to smear Senate GOP Leader Joe Bruno in the Troopergate scandal.

State e-mails, some of which had remarks redacted, show an Office of Homeland Security press release attacking O’Connell and implying her campaign committed a crime by using a “fraudulent” seal.

The proposed release was e-mailed to two members of Spitzer’s inner circle - Howard and Spitzer press secretary Christine Anderson.

The statement was attributed to Dennis Michalski, the public information officer for the State Emergency Management Office.

At the time, Anderson reported to Darren Dopp, the governor’s communications director, who would later channel state police documents on Bruno’s use of state aircraft to an Albany newspaper.

After examining the e-mails obtained by The News, a Bruno spokesman ripped the state agency attack on O’Connell in the closing days of the contest, calling it “an eerie precursor of what was to come.”

“These disturbing new e-mails reveal political activities of the executive involving government officials at the highest levels,” said John McArdle, a Bruno spokesman.

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