A Christmas decoration on display in England. (Photo: Getty)

Watch out Santa. A new poll from Public Policy Polling shows 47 percent of Americans believe there is a "War on Christmas." For years conservative pundits, particularly Fox News host Bill O'Reilly, have argued that secularization efforts including encouraging generic "holiday" celebrations rather than Christmas festivities amount to an assault on the Christian holiday.

According to the poll 40 percent of Americans do not believe there is a "War on Christmas" and 13 percent are not sure. Slightly more men, 50 percent, believe in the "War on Christmas" than women, 45 percent.

PPP's poll included several other holiday-themed questions that yielded rather interesting results. Notably, 52 percent of respondents said they believe in Santa Claus compared to 45 percent who do not. The poll also found that 87 percent of Americans celebrate Christmas, three percent celebrate Hanukkah, four percent celebrate Kwanzaa and three percent celebrate the Seinfeld-inspired holiday of Festivus.

Reverend Al Sharpton eulogizing Sylvia Woods at Grace Baptist Church in Mount Vernon. (Photo: Getty)

Harlem restaurateur Sylvia Woods was a legendary chef, but she was also a key figure in the Uptown political scene. At her funeral service at Grace Baptist Church in Mount Vernon today, many of the high-powered regulars from Woods' eponymous restaurant showed up to share their remembrances and pay tribute to Woods as a pioneering African-American businesswoman, an ally in the civil rights struggle and, of course, a superb chef.

"Every protest, every movement, every plan, every law started with a breakfast, or lunch or a dinner at Sylvia's," former Governor David Paterson explained.

Today's service was one of three memorials for Woods. On Saturday, her family is holding a "homegoing celebration" in her native Hemingway, South Carolina. Yesterday evening, Bill Clinton and Mayor Michael Bloomberg were among the luminaries who gathered for a "salute" to Woods at Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem. Woods' granddaughter, Tren'ness Woods-Black, spoke to reporters prior to today's service and said the turnout at yesterday's event showed her grandmother was beloved by average citizens as well as the boldface clientele.

"From presidents on down to 70-year-old people who have been eating at the restaurant every day, that's what showed up yesterday and that was a true representation of what Sylvia's is all about," Ms. Woods-Black said.

Before the service got started, Woods lay in state in an open casket as the mourners packed into their pews. As the ceremony began, Grace Baptist's associate pastor, Reverend William Franklyn Richardson III, plead for brevity from the scheduled speakers, who included Mount Vernon Mayor Ernest Davis, Abyssinia Baptist Senior Pastor Dr. Calvin Butts, Hazel Dukes, president of the NAACP's New York State Conference and former New York City Mayor David Dinkins.

"We would like you to keep your remarks to two minutes," Reverend Richardson said. "Do that out of respect for this family, who has already had one service and will go to South Carolina for another, so I ask that you would not labor them or any of us by going over two minutes."

None of the speakers managed to stick to the time limit.

Woods' eulogy was delivered by Reverend Al Sharpton who reminisced about watching "Sylvia's grow from a counter to a global sightseeing place." He said he was introduced to Woods and her restaurant while he worked as a tour manager for legendary soul music singer James Brown.

"The first time I met her was in the late 70's when James Brown brought me to Sylvia's. He used to go there when it was just a counter, but he loved the food there," said Reverend  Sharpton. "When he was in town...I would be with him and he would look at everybody and say, 'Let's go by Sylvia's.' And I would go, one, because I lived in New York and, two, because I was one of the few that understood what he was saying when he was talking."

Reverend Sharpton also shared stories of visiting Sylvia's with two other famous dining companions.

"I remember one night Bill O'Reilly from Fox News--that Bill O'Reilly--he wanted to go to dinner," the Reverend said. "He goes, 'I want to go to Sylvia's.' We went to Sylvia's and he got out of the car waiting for everybody to recognize him, but when you're going to Sylvia's, you're just somebody else going to Sylvia's."

Reverend Sharpton noted Mr. O'Reilly got into a bit of a controversy following their meal at Sylvia's when he went on his syndicated radio show and expressed surprise that "all the people up there are tremendously respectful" despite the fact "it's run by blacks" and has "primarily black patronship."

"I was amazed he was amazed," Reverend Sharpton said.

The Reverend also described eating at Sylvia's with President Barack Obama.

"There's a picture as you come into Sylvia's of then-Senator Barack Obama and I eating at Sylvia's. And that night he was on his way to the Apollo to have a fundraiser in his quest for the presidency, but you look at the picture and he's eating fried chicken and cornbread. I was on a diet, I just had coffee in front of me," said Reverend Sharpton, who recently became a vegetarian.

Reverend Sharpton also gave his explanation for Sylvia's appeal among Harlem's power lunch set.

"She built that restaurant as a family business and all of Harlem became her family....Sylvia was connected to the community. Today, we have others in business, but they see the community as something to go through on their way somewhere else," said the Reverend. "Sylvia wasn't trying to go somewhere else, she was connected to us. Wasn't no accident we had our meetings in Sylvia's. Other folks had chicken, wasn't no accident that every political figure went to Sylvia's, every major cultural actor went to Sylvia's, every major minister went to Sylvia's. She was connected to us."

After the ceremony, Reverend Sharpton accompanied several of Woods' crying family members to a private gathering in the back of the church as the guests walked out into the street. The Politicker spotted Mr. Paterson and asked him what he generally ordered at Sylvia's. He answered without the slightest hesitation.

"Fried chicken, collard greens and potato salad. Sylvia's problem with me was that I would always eat it. She was like, 'Why do I even put a menu in front of you, because you just want to eat the same thing.'" Mr. Paterson said. "I always say I'm going to have something else, but rarely did I."

A group of pallbearers placed Woods' casket onto a hearse were it made the journey from Mount Vernon to Owens Funeral Home in Harlem, taking the restaurateur's body on a final trip down 125th Street.

Eric Ulrich (Photo: Facebook)

GOP Councilman Eric Ulrich announced his candidacy for a State Senate against incumbent Joe Addabbo this morning, putting a new seat in play that previously lacked a strong challenger.

"Today,  I am excited to announce that I will be a candidate for State Senate in District 15," he said in a video posted on YouTube. "This was not an easy decision for me to make and I had every intention of running for reelection next fall. But the stakes are simply too high. While I've been able to accomplish many great things at the local level, I believe I can accomplish even more."

Mr. Ulrich, who's only 27, directly addressed his young age in his announcement.

"If we're serious about revitalizing our communities, creating good paying jobs and encouraging young people like me to stay in New York, then we've got to lower the tax burden for homeowners and small businesses and invest in higher education so that people can compete for the jobs of the 21st century," Mr. Ulrich said. "I'm running for State Senate because I want to make a difference."

Mr. Addabbo, who previously held Mr. Ulrich's Council seat, was elected to the State Senate in 2008 after defeating 20 year Republican incumbent Serphin Maltese. He easily won re-election over his GOP challenger in 2010.

The redistricting process made Mr. Addabbo's district more friendly to a potential Republican challenger with the addition of the Breezy Point neighborhood of Queens, which helped propel GOP Congressman Bob Turner to his surprising victory in the special election to replace Democrat Anthony Weiner last fall. Mr. Ulrich, who is considered a rising star in New York City's Republican party, is working with political consultant Bill O'Reilly, a veteran of Mr. Turner's House campaign.

Watch Mr. Ulrich's campaign announcement below.

Maxwell Eliot Stringer (Photo: Manhattan Borough President's Office)

Manhattan Borough President Stringer showed off pictures of his newborn son, Maxwell Eliot Stringer (left).

Congress narrowly avoided another shutdown.

Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu wants Trinity Church to let protesters occupy its vacant lot on Canal Street.

Former Deputy Mayor Kevin Sheekey owns the web site Bloomberg2012.com. 

Is Councilman Eric Ulrich the future of New York's Republican party?

Janet DeFiore, head of the controversial Joint Committee on Public Ethics, denied the group had its first meeting behind closed doors.

JCOPE's first public meeting is scheduled for December 20.

A group of Long Island high schoolers were suspended after mimicking Tim Tebow's infamous post-touchdown prayer pose in a school hallway.

The House Judiciary Committee postponed action on the controversial SOPA internet piracy bill.

Bill Clinton went back on his vow never to appear on Bill O'Reilly's show.

Herman Cain (Getty)

Herman Cain canceled a dinner with influential New Yorkers today as he admitted skeletons in his closet are causing him to reevaluate his White House bid. New York Post columnist Cindy Adams was supposed to host the event at her home Sunday for a select group of politicians and media mavens. She told NY1 about the circumstances behing the snub. 

According to NY1, guest list for the aborted evening included Senator Chuck Schumer, Matt Lauer, Barbara Walters, Bill O'Reilly, Greta Van Susteren and Lesley Stahl. Ms. Adams said Ms. Van Susteren's husband, John Coale, who is one of Mr. Cain's advisors, called this morning informing her Mr. Cain asked to cancel the dinner "in case he drops out of the race."

Mr. Cain's change of plans followed the news of his latest sex scandal. Yesterday, a woman named Ginger White came forward and claimed she had a 13-year extramarital affair with Mr. Cain, who has been married to his wife, Gloria, for more than 40 years. Ms. White's revelations came in the wake of multiple other allegations of sexual harassment made against Mr. Cain.

In a conference call this morning, Mr. Cain told senior staff and supporters he's "reassessing" whether to stay in the race for the Republican nomination.

"When the previous two accusations, false accusations, came about, we made another assessment. The way we handled those was, we continued on with our schedule. We made an assessment about what was going to happen to our support," Mr. Cain said. “Now, with this latest one, we have to do an assessment as to whether or not this is going to create too much of a cloud, in some people’s minds, as to whether or not they would be able to support us going forth.”

“I have rarely dealt with someone who gets it as thoroughly as he does, who stays on message and gets me and my style,” Mr. Turner told The Observer. “I am thrilled with the guy! I mean thrilled! Most of the time you want to kill these people.”

In a series of canny moves, Mr. O’Reilly took a race that seemed like a formality for the Democrat David Weprin, and pulled off an upset with national implications.

When Mr. Turner’s Democratic opponent, Assemblyman David Weprin, a longtime politician with multi-generational family ties to the district decided to skip out on a debate in the closing weeks of the race—saying that Hurricane Irene had irrevocably disrupted his schedule—it was Mr. O’Reilly who came up with the idea of sending a campaign volunteer to drive the distance between Mr. Weprin’s office and the debate site. The trip, Mr. O’Reilly gleefully pointed out, was just a few minutes door-to-door, and that the coast was clear.

“Our intrepid volunteer braved sunny skies and clear roadways this afternoon,” read the press release, “to chart the course between Mr. Weprin’s headquarters in Forest Hills and the site of tonight’s debate in Middle Village,” he wrote. “What he discovered is that, indeed, the 22-minute trip can be made, if one is willing to brave two turns and several traffic lights. Now that he knows the route, our volunteer is offering to pick up and drop off Mr. Weprin this evening—so Mr. Weprin can no longer say he can’t get there.”

It was Mr. O’Reilly too, who came up with the idea of then trailing Mr. Weprin at his public events with duck hunting whistles (Ducking. Get it?). It was also him who offered a $1,000 reward for anyone who could decipher Mr. Weprin’s position on the Palestinian Authority, after he muddled through a question about whether or not the U.S. government should give them aid. And it was his idea to pass out subway maps to Obama for America organizers when they came to volunteer on the campaign—maps that helpfully pointed out that if they made it to David Weprin’s house, they were officially lost, since he didn’t live in the district.

“You need to run against them like your life depends on it,” Mr. O’Reilly said. “You have to do it like a wild animal. You can’t do these half-assed campaigns. They are going to hold on to it with everything they’ve got. Anything less and you are not going to come close to winning.”

Indeed, no one would call the Turner campaign half-assed. “He had this ability to turn non-events into events,” Mr. Turner said a few days after being sworn in the as the newest representative from the 9th congressional district.

Mr. O’Reilly is a member of what may be the First Family of conservative politics. His full name is William F. Buckley O’Reilly, as in that William F. Buckley, his uncle and the founder of the National Review. Another uncle, Jim Buckley, is the only member of the Conservative Party of New York to have been elected to the U.S. Senate. His mother, Maureen Buckley, spent many years working at the National Review, handling phone calls from irate subscribers.

Mr. O’Reilly said he has eschewed mention of his pedigree.“I have been very cautious to keep this relationship under the radar,” he said. “I wanted to make sure I wasn’t a total embarrassment or flop or something.”

His mother died of a brain hemmorage while feeding an 11-month-old Mr. O’Reilly, and as a teenager, he bounced around three different prep schools in Manhattan and Westchester, eventually spending three years at DayTop Village, a drug rehab center. After getting straight, he became the face of the institution, travelling around the country to warn of the dangers of drugs, making speeches alongside Nancy Reagan in the 1980 presidential campaign.

After graduating from N.Y.U, Mr. O’Reilly tried his hand at journalism, getting an enviable posting at a local paper on Tortola in the British Virgin Islands.

“I absolutely sucked at it,” he remembered. “I couldn’t ask the questions. I didn’t want people to dislike me.”

He quit after his editor sent him to interview the bridge of a man who had shot himself in the head on his boat 48 hours after his wedding. Mr. O’Reilly walked six times around the block and told his editor that the widow declined to talk to him.

In part because of his lineage, and in part because of his work history, Mr. O’Reilly is part of the Old Guard G.O.P. infrastructure.This permits him to take only races he thinks he can win, even though, New York being New York, those don’t come up very often for a Republican consultant. Nonetheless, he has had a good run of late. In 2009, he helped a former sports radio jock, Rob Astorino, win the race for County Executive of Westchester, despite, a huge registration advantage for Democrats. In 2010, he helped financier Harry Wilson come within a few points of knocking off incumbent Democratic comptroller Tom DiNapoli (Mr. Wilson would have been the first Republican in nine tries to win statewide office.)

This has led to carping among some in the Republican political class. They say Mr. O’Reilly is only good when he can focus on one race at a time, and that he is still little more than a hired-hand mouthpiece, rather than someone who can help craft a campaign strategy. And they note that he has yet to make a stab at the biggest stage, by working on a Republican presidential campaign.

This last point, at least, is misguided, according to Ed Rollins, a veteran Republican strategist who helped lead the 1984 Reagan-Bush effort. In 2007, he tried (unsucessfully) to recruit Mr. O’Reilly for the Mike Huckabee campaign.

“He is every bit as talented as anybody out there,” Mr. Rollins said. “Any campaign I would put together he would be my number one draft choice.” Mr. Rollins added that the results of the Weprin/Turner race gave Republicans the sense that blue-collar Democratic votes were once again up for grabs.

Mr. O’Reilly agrees.

“Voters are available again,” he said. “After the recount in Florida, it seemed like there were a lot of Americans who were not going to be satisfied until a Democrat became president, and I think when Obama won it immediately broke the partisan spell, where people were willing to listen to the other side again. People got what they wanted. They got their next John Kennedy who was going to go a full term—hopefully—and it was a black president, a liberal president and it broke the tension.”

The reason Mr. Turner was able to exploit that willingness—and the way that Republicans can achieve something close to parity again in Blue New York, Mr. O’Reilly says—is by recruting candidates like Mr. Turner: businessmen so successful in their career that they don’t care about winning or losing and hence are willing to say what they really think.

This is not to say Mr. Turner didn’t make his share of mistakes in the campaign. He at one point expressed tepid support for federal law that would have provided medical care to 9/ 11 first responders. He would answer thorny policy questions by simply saying that he hadn’t studied up on it. At the end of the race, the campaign had only $35,000 in the bank, just as the Democrats were preparing to pour $1 million into their candidate’s coffers. (“I was praying that no reporter would ask me about it, because I would have had to dance,” Mr. O’Reilly recalled. “‘Oh, I’ll get back to you,’ one of those kinds of things.”) But he never allowed himself to get hung up on the kinds of questions about Medicare, Social Security or Paul Ryan’s budget plan that have done in other Republican candidates.

(Mr. O’Reilly managed to balance these by exploiting issues that seemed to have nothing to do with Brooklyn or Queens, like Barack Obama’s views toward Israel, or the so-called Ground Zero Mosque.)

“People cut Bob a break because he was a business guy, not a politician,” he said. “And everybody had a message to send to Obama. They were different messages, but everybody had one. And we successfully nationalized it. And then the thing was, Obama walked right into the narrative when he sent the Obama for America team into the district. I couldn’t believe the good luck. They had a memo! In ink! And so our narrative—that the race was about Obama—became true.”

Unlike many political flaks, Mr. O’Reilly is a genuinely affable guy. Most spokespeople handle the press with browbeating, intimidation, playing favorites or accusing them of bias. Mr. O’Reilly concluded an interview with The Observer by saying he needed to send flowers to a reporter who had complained about lack of access to Mr. Turner. And reporters, regardless of their political leaning, seem to actually like him, as do his Democratic opponents. It has lead to the belief among some that Mr. O’Reilly isn’t a “real” Republican.

Mr. O’Reilly admits that he doesn’t follow party orthodoxy. He is pro-gay marriage. He owns two rifles but doesn’t hunt. And he is ambivalent on abortion.

But he adds that although he used to love the battles of the campaign more, his mission in life now is to build a more conservative America.

“I have grown a very healthy dislike for the hard left. I think they are destroying the country. I think collectivism is a disaster for us. I think ‘we’ is the most dangerous word in the English language and I feel like there are not people out there battling it.”

After Mr. Turner won, over-excited Republicans like Republican Governor’s Association head Haley Barbour predicted that the G.O.P would carry New York in 2012. Mr. O’Reilly isn’t so sure. A candidate like Mitt Romney could make it close if the party poured in the resources, but he doesn’t see that as likely. What he wants is to at least make it acceptable for his fellow Republicans have a respectable presence in the state.

“When you are at a cocktail party and you are afraid to say you are a Republican, Republicans are in bad straits,” he said. “That just shows you we are willing to take a beating.”

There are two factors that led to the G.O.P’s decline in New York, in Mr. O’Reilly’s estimation. Republicans in the White House leads to a backlash in New York, since the party inevitably elects Bible Belt conservatives. And, Mr. O’Reilly says, a lot of the issues that Republicans used to run on have been solved by Republican leaders.

“We’ve been victims of our own success. [Former mayor Rudy] Giuliani ran on crime, quality of life stuff. He fixed them and then those issues were off the table. Welfare was a huge issue for Republicans and Clinton and Giuliani fixed up the welfare system and the issue went away. The Communists went away! It took us a bunch of years to get new issues—the debt, the economy, Milton Friedman vs. Keynes.”

In the meantime, the key for Republican strategists like himself is to try and drive the debate. He points with pride to his lower-taxes, less-regulation group called New Yorkers for Growth, which waged a relentless PR-campaign against the labor-backed Working Families Party. He hoped to make the group’s endorsement so toxic to Gov. Cuomo that he forsook their line in the 2010 elections, thus relegating the WFP to ballot obscurity. That gambit failed, but a key Democratic state senator decided against accepting the WFP line, and he ended up being defeated, giving Republicans control of the chamber.

“That’s a great thing. I can go to bed at night and say I was a part of that.”

For now, he can also go to be knowing that his most recent win changed the political conversation in the country. It will likely be the last competitive election until Barack Obama is on the ballot in November. In New York, the G.O.P. is gearing up for a full frontal assault, and using Mr. O’Reilly’s message as a map.

He has a note of caution for them, however.

“You are always going to lose more than you win in New York,” he said. “We are still a blue state. Only now a little less so.”

dfreedlander@observer.com

twitter.com/freedlander

The question was posed one day after Weprin -- who supported the proposal -- was endorsed by Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman -- who opposed it.

Raising this issue is an attempt by Turner to get Weprin to defend an issue that struck a nerve with some socially conservative New Yorkers, and, presumably, to drive a wedge between Weprin and some of the district's many Jewish voters.

Update: A reader notes Weprin had a more nuanced position than Turner may be suggesting. Weprin supported the developer's right to build the facility -- Park 51 it's called -- at it's current location. But Weprin actually favored then-Governor Paterson's idea of working out a compromise to move it further away from Ground Zero.