Mario Zucca

“I’m not particularly fond of getting the shit kicked out of me by the media all the time,” John Liu told The Observer last week. “But that doesn’t alter the reality.”

The reality, the city’s comptroller said, is not necessarily found in the headlines every morning. For example, he disputes a New York Daily News report that “debunked” his claims of childhood sweatshop work. The New York Post said he “needs to just go away.” And Mr. Liu feels it’s “plainly obvious” that federal prosecutors are driving negative New York Times coverage as they investigate his mayoral campaign for fund-raising improprieties.

“You’re not supposed to fuck with the Fourth Estate,” Mr. Liu explained while sitting on a bench after a Harlem event, displaying two of his signature traits in one quick sentence—a penchant for direct talk and an increased interest in how the media portrays him. “You’re not supposed to. The golden rule is don’t mess with people who buy ink in bulk quantities or have really huge antennas. Of course, now the Internet version is big bandwidth. But, at some point, it gets a little absurd—especially nowadays. At some point, the Fourth Estate is supposed to be the arbiter of truth, not the echo chamber for rumors and innuendos. So when that happens, at some point, somebody’s got to keep an eye on the Fourth Estate.”

That point has definitively arrived for Mr. Liu. Even this publication—which editorialized that he “should be preparing to leave public service, not asking for promotion to the city’s highest elective office”—has found itself the subject of Mr. Liu’s derision.

“I certainly am here in spite of our sponsor’s editorial board, who has already continued to foment insinuations and innuendos against me,” Mr. Liu proclaimed at a recent Observer-sponsored mayoral forum. “They have tried and convicted me of charges that are nonexistent. Nonetheless, I am here out of respect for all of you who have attended.”

It’s not just editorial boards that are generating headwinds for Mr. Liu. When he stood on the steps of City Hall to announce his mayoral campaign last month, the journalists there were mostly interested in one line of questioning: Should you really be running for mayor while your former donor, Xing Wu “Oliver” Pan, and your former treasurer, Jia “Jenny” Hou, stand trial for allegedly orchestrating a straw-donor scheme on your behalf? Is the federal investigation over? Is it affecting your fund-raising?

“This so-called ‘investigation’ has been going on for four years now,” a defiant Mr. Liu shot back. “They’ve interrogated thousands of my supporters, reviewed a million documents, even wire-tapped my cellphone for a year and a half. When is this going to end? It’s time to put up or shut up! That’s what it is. We’ve got a campaign to run and an election to win.”

Would your electoral plans change if Mr. Pan and Ms. Hou are found guilty?

“People have said there’s a witch hunt. The problem is there is no witch!” he exclaimed. “So we’re going full steam ahead. We’re going to win this election.”

Few would dispute that Mr. Liu’s campaign is indeed plowing ahead at full speed. Supporters and detractors alike describe him as a man on a mission, confident and relentless in the pursuit of his goals.

“John Liu is incredibly smart, incredibly hardworking, and incredibly driven; those three traits have gotten him to where he is now,” a longtime friend of Mr. Liu’s told The Observer. “He doesn’t see himself as being capable of failing, and sometimes he doesn’t see people around him as being capable of failing. That’s probably why he has a different perspective on the mayoral race than other folks ... and why he places his trust in people the federal government says he shouldn’t.”

A college acquaintance said he “was not surprised at all” when Mr. Liu—the former executive vice president of Binghamton University’s student body—ran for a Flushing-based City Council seat in 2001. The acquaintance said he was equally unsurprised that Mr. Liu, now 46 years old, ran citywide for comptroller in 2009 and won, and that he is currently campaigning for mayor. Mr. Liu himself wasn’t shy about admitting that the city’s top job has been on his mind for some time.

“Probably from the moment I got elected comptroller,” he said as to when he first contemplated gunning for Gracie Mansion. “I’m going to be quoted for that. ... Maybe I need to hold my tongue more. I mean, I just said, ‘from the moment I got elected comptroller.’ How many other comptrollers or public advocates or borough presidents are going to admit that? That they’re thinking about running for mayor from the second they got elected to their positions?”

On the day he announced his campaign, Mr. Liu scheduled a whirlwind 14-hour tour of the city’s five boroughs and invited the press along for the ride—or run, as the day occasionally demanded. But it was not an unusually lengthy amount of time on the trail for Mr. Liu, who wakes up early and typically tries to get home before his 12-year-old son Joey goes to sleep, around 10:30 p.m. He said late-night campaign events sometimes get in the way of that particular goal.

Reporters aside, Mr. Liu was well received everywhere he went on launch day. Bedford-Stuyvesant churchgoers welcomed him with open arms in the morning. The Hakka Association of New York erupted in applause when he entered its ballroom in the afternoon. His crowd of supporters at City Hall was so massive that he had to give a second speech to the overflow section. Along the St. Patrick’s Day Parade route in Staten Island, it seemed like every 10th person knew who he was. And not a soul asked about the federal investigation.

“I rely on my own barometer of what’s going on,” Mr. Liu told us in Harlem, pausing to answer a passerby who approached him. “Good to see you.”

“The bad P.R. really upsets the family and friends much more,” he continued when asked about those closest to him. “I’m always trying to calm them down, like, ‘Don’t worry too much about—’”

He was interrupted by another passerby, this one asking for a photo. The enthusiastic man removed his coat so his dress shirt would better match Mr. Liu’s suit.

“Okay, I did not pay that guy,” Mr. Liu joked. “Alright?”

Despite his apparent popularity on the streets, Mr. Liu’s support has not made much of a dent in the public polls, which place him fourth in the Democratic primary—distantly trailing Council Speaker Christine Quinn and narrowly behind Public Advocate Bill de Blasio and former Comptroller Bill Thompson. But Mr. Liu, who has noted that his support has stayed around 9 percent even with the bad-headline barrage, says the surveys aren’t capturing the true electorate.

“I’m sure you guys all thought about it, you just never wrote about it, right?” he asked the press corps following him on his announcement day. “Look, if you want to talk about voters who are undercounted or absent from the count, you understand pollsters are people—live people—on the end of the phone asking questions. But they have to have a phone number to ask a question ... Nowadays, people don’t like to list their phone numbers. You also think, ‘Do the people who are making those phone calls know how to ask questions in Chinese? Or Bengali? Or Korean? Or Urdu?’ I don’t know for a fact; my guess is no.”

The Taiwanese-born Mr. Liu says the historical nature of his candidacy—he was the first Asian-American to serve on the City Council and will be the community’s first mayor if his current mission succeeds—will drive Asian voters to the polls en masse. Mr. Thompson, who is black, would not enjoy the same level of passion in the African-American community, Mr. Liu further contended.

“The Asian community is no different from any other,” he said. “The first time around there’s a credible candidate, it’s the first time. In Bill’s case—Thompson’s case—it’s not the first time. The governor’s been African-American, the president is African-American. So it’s not as big of a deal as it is in the Asian community ... When David Dinkins ran, there was a huge amount of excitement. I don’t think that’s going to be that different with the Asian community this time around.”

Although the city’s Asian population is skyrocketing, Asian people only constitute about 13 percent of all New Yorkers, according the U.S. Census, and new immigrant communities have relatively low civic participation rates. But Mr. Liu’s campaign isn’t just banking on the Asian vote. Rather, it is hoping his unabashedly left-wing approach to economic and policing policies—a perpetual pet peeve of conservative-leaning editorial boards, which accuse him of blatant pandering—will endear him to other communities across the city. Indeed, his first ads were released in four languages: Spanish, Russian, Creole and English—and the last was labeled “African American” on his campaign website.

“The Black vote cannot be taken for granted by anyone,” wrote Councilman Charles Barron in an Amsterdam News op-ed last week. The former Black Panther touted Mr. Liu’s opposition to the police department’s controversial stop and frisk tactic, support for reparations and outspokenness after the NYPD shot and killed 16-year-old Kimani Gray three weeks ago. “Liu will deliver more for our communities than any other candidate in the race for mayor in 2013. Let’s do the right thing for our people.”

For his part, Mr. Liu said, the winner of September’s Democratic primary will be determined by “operation,” not policy contrasts with his competitors.

“This is where you ask me these kinds of questions and I tend to answer with responses that I regret later. But I can’t help myself,” Mr. Liu said when pressed on the subject. “There’s not going to be that much contrast! We’re all liberal Democrats. There’s a couple of issues I think we’re very different on ... But [for] big issues, we’re not going to be all that different on housing, on education. There might be some slight nuances here and there. Are voters really going to get all the different nuances?”

Of course, the case against Mr. Liu’s electoral chances—described last Wednesday as “Powerball size” in the Daily News—pretty much writes itself. Although the judicial system has a presumption of innocence and Mr. Liu himself has not been accused of any crimes, the political world is under no such obligation to give him a fair shake. Stuart Appelbaum, the head of the retail workers’ union, who endorsed Ms. Quinn, had nothing but kind words for Mr. Liu, but he suggested the comptroller should simply adjust his reality.

“I don’t think that it is fair the way he seems to have been indicted by the media even though there are no charges brought against him,” Mr. Appelbaum said, before reflecting on the damage that has already been done. “I didn’t think that—given everything that has been going on, and perhaps in part because of the media—that this was the right race for him this year.”

As Mr. Liu rode in the press van between events on his big announcement day, The Observer asked the candidate how he viewed his own odds, given the political consensus that tends to label his quest as quixotic.

“I wouldn’t be running—it’s way too much time and money to throw down the drain—if there was not a clear shot to victory. I think we have a very clear path to victory,” insisted Mr. Liu. And then, unsheathing the toughness that has helped him overcome long odds before, the combative comptroller couldn’t resist a final shot. “In the coming months, I’m sure you political geniuses will decide for it for yourselves.”

ccampbell@observer.com

John Liu riding in the back of the press van, chatting with reporters.

In a 14-hour series of events yesterday, Comptroller John Liu formalized his mayoral candidacy as he traversed the city's five boroughs. Throughout the early part of the day, Mr. Liu showed impressive energy, speed-walking, jogging, and--at one point, at least--literally sprinting from location to location with a band of reporters struggling to catch up. But some of the most memorable moments on the campaign trail came in the evening when Mr. Liu boarded the back of the press van and, munching on donuts, fielded a barrage of questions until the inquiries simply ran out. Notably, Mr. Liu dismissed politicos and pundits who categorize him as a City Hall long-shot due to the ongoing federal investigation into his fundraising.

"I wouldn't be running--it's way too much time and money to throw down the drain--if there was not a clear shot to victory," Mr. Liu told Politicker. "I think we have a very clear path to victory. In the coming months, I'm sure you political geniuses will decide for it for yourselves. I don't quite feel like mapping it out right now."

Despite declining to elaborate, Mr. Liu ended up discussing some aspects of his viability, from his unexpectedly strong war chest to what he feels is his uniquely passionate base of supporters. Mr. Liu, who would be New York City's first Asian-American mayor, said that history-making appeal will drive the community to the polls, while one of his top Democratic rivals, former Comptroller Bill Thompson, would not share the same excitement among African-Americans.

"The Asian community is no different from any other community," he contended. "The first time around there's a credible candidate, it's the first time. In ... Thompson's case--it's not the first time. The governor's been African-American, the president is African-American. So it's not as big of a deal as it is the Asian community. ... When David Dinkins ran [for mayor], there's a huge amount of excitement. I don't think that's going to be that different with the Asian community this time around."

Mr. Liu also claimed that the polls--which continue to put him in fourth place--are missing Asian voters and thus undercounting critical elements of the electorate.

"I'm sure you guys all thought about it, you just never wrote about it, right?" he asked the group. "Look, if you want to talk about voters who are undercounted or absent from the count, you understand pollsters are people--live people--on the end of the phone asking questions. But they have to have a phone number to ask a question. .... You look at voter lists, generally speaking, the people who have phone numbers on them are senior citizens who registered to vote a long time ago. Nowadays, people don't like to list their phone numbers. You also think, 'Do the people who are making those phone calls know how to ask questions in Chinese? Or Bengali? Or Korean? Or Urdu?' I don't know for a fact, my guess is no."

And for the Asian respondents who did answer the pollsters' questions, Mr. Liu cast doubt on whether his support was being accurately measured in the first place.

"Think about how they're doing the polls, that's all I can say," he said. "That one poll that actually did show [Asian cross-tabulations], I think it said I had 10 or 15 percent support from Asian-American voters? You can interpret that the way you want."

We asked Mr. Liu how he felt about his overall status in the race--if he felt cautiously optimistic, for example--and the comptroller expressed confidence that he'll be the city's next mayor come January 1st, 2014.

"I'm very optimistic! I'm not cautiously optimistic," he answered. "'Cautiously optimistic' is an answer you get from somebody who really doesn't want to answer the question."

Christine Quinn in the Bronx with supporters and her father, Larry.

City Council Speaker Christine Quinn launched her campaign yesterday with a nod to her roots by kicking off a five borough "walk and talk" tour at the intersection of Broadway and Isham Street in Inwood a stone's throw from a church with ties to her family. Ms. Quinn used the tale of her grandparents' journey from New York to Ireland to emphasize the main theme of her campaign--fighting for the middle class. Along with articulating her message, the five borough tour allowed Ms. Quinn to directly address the central questions and controversies surrounding her campaign, namely, her seemingly close ties to the current occupant of City Hall, Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

"It's very exciting to get to be here right across the street from the church where my parents were married, and my sister was baptized and my grandfather was buried, from right near where my mother grew up to announce that today I am officially running to be the mayor of the great City of New York," declared Ms. Quinn in the first of the day's five speeches. "This is a city where, 100 years ago, all four of my grandparents, really just kids basically, got on ships and went across oceans ... They had heard that magical things could happen here, that if you came here you could get work, you could get decent housing, you could be free and you could get out of poverty. And that's what this city did for them and for my family it gave us a gateway into the middle class. ... That's the ultimate truth about New York, that it needs to remain and become even more that place of opportunity, a place that's a beacon for the middle class and people who are fighting so hard to get into that middle class."

In addition to describing her vision for providing "middle class and working class people" with "decent housing," "affordable childcare," "great public schools,"  "safe streets" and "good jobs," Ms. Quinn focused on another core element of her pitch to voters--her experience. According to the polls, Ms. Quinn is the overwhelming frontrunner in the race. She's also the highest ranked elected official among the major Democratic candidates. These factors have led her rivals to spend a good deal of time and energy alluding to controversial aspects of her career, namely the perception she's too close to Mayor Michael Bloomberg and that she is responsible for stopping the Paid Sick Days legislation. Ms. Quinn not-so-subtly dismissed the critiques from her rivals by repeatedly casting the mayoral campaign as a choice between her  proven record and "fingerpointing."

"If you look at my record, it's not one of criticism and fingerpointing, it's one of action, results and delivering," Ms. Quinn said. "Our job is to get things done to keep this city moving forward."

After her first speech, Ms. Quinn took a few questions from reporters. Politicker asked about her strong showing in the polls, which have her with almost enough of a lead to avoid a runoff race against the other candidates in the Democratic primary.

"I hadn't noticed," quipped Ms. Quinn before downplaying the numbers. "Look, it's March, we're at the beginning of this race and we're walking, and talking and running to win. And that means working every single day, taking nothing for granted. ... We won't know who won until election day and those are the only numbers that really matter."

She also touched on the attacks from her opponents when she was asked about Bill de Blasio's particularly relentless drumming on the Paid Sick Days issue.

"Again I hadn't noticed ... but thank you for telling me," Ms. Quinn said of Mr. de Blasio's salvos. "I support the goal of having Paid Sick Leave, but I don't want to impose it at a time that could have a very negative effect on small businesses who are still being impacted by the recession, who are being impacted by the effects of Hurricane Sandy still economically." 

Ms. Quinn's relationship with Mayor Bloomberg came up at multiple points during the day with both reporters and a heckler in Queens asking about backing the overturning of term limits that enabled his third term. Ms. Quinn characterized her choice as letting voters decide whether or not they wanted to keep their elected officials in the wake of the recent economic crisis. On the mayor, she suggested they simply haven't butted heads because of her aversion to "fingerpointing."

"I really don't want to waste a lot of time talking about everything that's wrong, talking about how you can't fix it, talking about how terrible everything is," said Ms. Quinn adopting a mocking tone. "I want to get things done, I want to fix things."

Ms. Quinn's campaign is a historic one. If elected she would be both the first female and the first openly gay mayor in New York City. The historic nature of her candidacy drew some supporters to accompany the tour including a female former NYPD detective who brought two young girls and encouraged them to pose for a picture with Ms. Quinn at her second stop in the Bronx.

"This is women's history," she said as Ms. Quinn gave the children a hug. "This is history kids."

Though her status as a pioneer was palpable on the tour with Ms. Quinn's wife, Kim Catullo, accompanying her along the way, her sexuality and marriage was not shown in the video that officially launched the campaign yesterday morning. While in the Bronx, she took a question from a reporter about why these details were absent from the clip.

"The campaign video was about telling New Yorkers more about me and I think it would be hard to imagine that New Yorkers don't know that I'm a lesbian and don't know I got married. You know, it was on the cover of the New York Times and the cover of the New York Post. So, we were trying to get new information and more information out," Ms. Quinn said. "I think it would be insane for any New Yorker to think I'm not incredibly proud as the first lesbian, openly LGBT speaker of the New York City Council."

Reporters were not the only ones Ms. Quinn spoke to during her trip around the city. With a pack of sign-wielding supporters, family members and her press corps in tow, Ms. Quinn shook hands and introducing herself to voters. Apart from the lone heckler and a few passerby who grumbled as Ms. Quinn and her entourage passed, the reception she received was overwhelmingly enthusiastic during her first three stops in Inwood, the Bronx and Queens.

The relatively high name recognition that's fueling Ms. Quinn's status as a frontrunner was also on display. Before Ms. Quinn arrived in the Bronx, a cook named Ernest Aragonez was standing with two friends outside a bodega. He said he hadn't made up his mind about who to vote for and seemed to no little about the candidates, but he had a distinct impression of Ms. Quinn.

"Who's the other one? Casmiaditis? How do you pronounce that? That's the other one, John Casmiaditis," Mr. Aragonez said when we asked him who was running, mispronouncing the name of Republican candidate John Catsimatidis.

He said he didn't know any of the candidates besides Ms. Quinn and Mr. Catsimatidis, but he had heard  "enough to know that Christine Quinn is pretty good."

When Ms. Quinn arrived and began making brief remarks in the Bronx, Mr. Aragonez interrupted her.

"Christine Quinn for mayor! Very good!" he shouted.

"Thank you very much," Ms. .Quinn responded. "I'm bringing you to all my press conferences. You're a good amen chorus, as they say."

Mr. Aragonez wasn't the only one present who didn't have extensive knowledge of the other candidates. Dana Snyder, a volunteer with reddish hair who carried one of Ms. Quinn's signs said she supported the candidate because she "speaks her mind" and is "particularly left of center." She didn't know about anyone else in the mayor's race.

"I don't really know very much to be honest. I really only know about Quinn. I'm only a temporary New York resident, so I can't actually vote," Ms. Snyder said explaining that she's a Maryland native who's currently studying at Barnard.

They may not have known much about the other mayoral options, but the people Ms. Quinn encountered in the Bronx were certainly enthusiastic about her candidacy. As she walked down the street a BX5 bus stopped next to her and the driver opened his doors to shout, "Hi Christine! How you doing?"

She jumped on board to give him a quick hug and then hopped back down saying she didn't want to delay the bus.

"That's all right," the driver said. "I'll be late for you."

A Spanish translator walked alongside Ms. Quinn and helped introduce her to the Latino locals in the Bronx. It was clear her approach to the Latino community would not match Mayor Bloomberg, who often holds forth in heavily accented Spanish. She told us she would not be following his example.

"It's funny, I can hear my mother yelling at me in high school to have paid better attention in Spanish," said Ms. Quinn. "It wasn't my forte, but I'm trying, little by little I'm trying."

Another difference between Ms. Quinn and the infamously health conscious Mayor Bloomberg was apparent when she met Angel, a churro vendor who told her she had his vote. Ms. Quinn instructed a staffer to buy a bag of his churros for the volunteers.

"We're going to get some for the truck," she said, adding, "I don't want any that are sugar free."

"When you're less popular than cockroaches, Genghis Khan, traffic jams, and yes even Nickelback, well, it might be time to reevaluate," Tom Jensen, PPP's director, said in a statement accompanying the poll.

Despite these dismal results, there were some things the pollsters found that are even less popular than Congress including; Lindsay Lohan, telemarketers, North Korea and Gonorrhea. View the full results of the poll here.

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.

Stephen Colbert (Photo: Getty)

A new poll indicates South Carolina voters want Governor Nikki Haley to make comedian Stephen Colbert their senator now that Jim DeMint is leaving Capitol Hill to become president of the Heritage Foundation. The survey, from the liberal-leaning Public Policy Polling, found 20 percent of South Carolinians want Mr. Colbert, who is a grew up in the Palmetto State, to get the job.Republican Congressman Tim Scott, who is reportedly the most likely replacement for Mr. DeMint, came in second to Mr. Colbert with the support of 15 percent of South Carolina voters. He was followed by Congressman Trey Gowdy who polled at 14 percent.

Jenny Sanford, the wife of the state's former governor, Mark Sanford, came in fourth in the poll. Ms. Sanford, who divorced her husband after he had an affair, had the support of 11 percent of South Carolinians. Mr. Sanford tied for fifth place at eight percent with former attorney general Henry McMaster.

Mr. Colbert, who ran a satirical presidential campaign this year, has campaigned for the Senate seat on Twitter.

"Tweet @nikkihaley & tell her why I belong in the US Senate. For one, I wouldn't just block legislation, I'd body-check it! #SenatorColbert," he wrote last Thursday.

Even if Mr. Colbert was serious this time, Ms. Haley, a Republican, is unlikely to support someone famous for left-leaning comedy. However, the PPP poll also showed she has strong incentive to heed the will of the voters. It found she is "one of the most unpopular Governors in the country" with only 42 percent of voters approving of the job she's doing and 49 percent who disapprove of her performance.

Hillary Clinton and Andrew Cuomo marching in the 2006 Columbus Day Parade. (Photo: Getty)

With both Hillary Clinton and Governor Andrew Cuomo considered potential 2016 presidential candidates, the latest poll from the Siena Research Institute contains several numbers that will be of interest to early watchers of their potential bids. Siena polled favorability ratings for both Ms. Clinton and Mr. Cuomo and asked New Yorkers whether they'd like to see either run for president four years from now. 

The poll found Mr. Cuomo has a favorable rating of 72 percent among New York voters and Ms. Clinton's favorability was at 75 percent. Though Ms. Clinton's numbers were slightly higher, Mr. Cuomo has more bipartisan support. Ms. Clinton scored favorability ratings of 90 percent among Democrats and 50 percent with Republicans while Mr. Cuomo scored relatively high among both groups with 76 percent of Democrats and 66 percent of Republicans saying they have a favorable impression of the governor.

A majority of New York voters, 54 percent, said they'd like to see Ms. Clinton run for president in 2016. However, just 39 percent said they wanted to see Mr. Cuomo run for president in four years. Though New Yorkers didn't exactly seem enthused about the prospect of Mr. Cuomo making a White House bid, 62 percent said they'd like to see him run for re-election as governor.

Along with Mr. Cuomo and Ms. Clinton, Siena polled New Yorkers on New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who's also viewed as a potential 2016 contender. The poll found 63 percent have a favorable impression of Mr. Christie with more than 60 percent of both Democrats and Republicans saying they had a positive view of the Garden State Governor.

Nate Silver (Photo: Wikimedia)

During the waning weeks of the election, New York Times poll wonk Nate Silver served as a totem for many liberals in the face of pundits and pollsters who predicted a victory for Mitt Romney. Mr. Silver's predictions for the outcome of the election ended up being accurate; however, in an email to supporters this morning, Obama For America campaign manager Jim Messina included a not-so-subtle reminder of a time Mr. Silver was off the mark.

"So many times in this election, this campaign was counted out ... Last year, a major American newspaper asked, 'Is Obama toast?' As recently as two weeks ago, another ran this headline: 'Can Obama win?'" Mr. Messina wrote. "Tuesday night, you all answered all of those doubts with a resounding YES WE CAN."

The first headline Mr. Messina referred to in his email was a piece from the New York Times Magazine written by Mr. Silver almost exactly one year ago. In that piece, Mr. Silver speculated President Barack Obama might not win re-election because voters had "fundamental misgivings" about him and the state of the American economy.

"Obama has gone from a modest favorite to win re-election to, probably, a slight underdog," Mr. Silver wrote.

Mr. Silver went on to hedge his bet, noting, "Let’s not oversell this. A couple of months of solid jobs reports, or the selection of a poor Republican opponent, would suffice to make him the favorite again."

However, in spite of this caveat, in the same article Mr. Silver predicted Mitt Romney had an 83 percent chance of winning the nomination and noted that a "more moderate" Republican candidate like Mr. Romney had the best chance of defeating President Obama.

Obviously, Mr. Silver's ultimate predictions ended up proving correct, and there are far more variables at play a year before an election. Still, it's clear the Obama campaign took note of the fact he wasn't with them from the beginning.

Alec Baldwin (Photo: Getty)

A new poll of the race to replace term-limited New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg released last night included actor Alec Baldwin, who has hinted he might run for mayor. Based on the numbers, Mr. Baldwin might want to abandon his dream of sitting in City Hall. According to the poll, which was conducted by NY1 and Marist College, 66 percent of New York voters don't want Mr. Baldwin to even try running for mayor. 

Just 18 percent of registered New Yorkers said they'd like to see Mr. Baldwin make a mayoral bid while 16 percent were "unsure." Though Mr. Baldwin has earned a reputation as an outspoken liberal, opposition to him cut across party lines with 69 percent of Democrats and 70 percent of Republicans saying they don't want him to enter the mayoral race.

Mr. Baldwin performed even more poorly in the poll than scandal-scarred former Congressman Anthony Weiner and ex-Governor Eliot Spitzer.

The poll indicated 25 percent of New York voters would like to see Mr. Weiner, who resigned from the House of Representatives in June 2011, after he was caught sending lewd Twitter messages to multiple women, make a run for mayor while 58 percent of voters would prefer to see him stay out of the race. Mr. Spitzer, who left the governor's mansion in 2008 after he was busted for patronizing a prostitution ring, performed slightly better with 30 percent of voters saying they'd like to see him mount a mayoral campaign and 57 percent saying they want him to stay far from City Hall.

Politicker reached out to Mr. Baldwin to discuss the poll results. As of this writing, we have yet to receive a response.

Barack Obama arrives at JFK. (Photo: Getty)

HEMPSTEAD, N.Y.  -- The race between President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney has seen polls tighten in recent days, but at Hofstra University ahead of tonight's debate, Mr. Obama's campaign manager Jim Messina repeatedly said the re-election effort is doing great in every swing state across the country.

"When you're within the margin of error, you're losing," Mr. Messina declared on the floor of the media filing center as an ever-growing scrum of reporters gathered around  him. "And that's exactly what they're doing in Ohio. We are leading in battleground states. We're leading in important places like Ohio, Iowa and Wisconsin because there's a clear difference of selection. Romney's going to struggle to defend his positions on outsourcing....These issues matter and that's what we're going to hear about tonight."

Pressed again on whether there are any variances across the country, Mr. Messina answered by listing every state his campaign is remotely trying to compete in, citing Ohio, Iowa, Wisconsin, Virginia, North Carolina, Florida and "even Arizona."

"We continue to feel very good about Colorado," the Denver-born political operative quickly added. "The Broncos performed amazing in the second half last night! We feel good about that."

"You described all the battleground states," a reported pointed out, which caused Mr. Messina to return to his Midwest staples.

Asked why his campaign is deploying resources and surrogates in places like Wisconsin if the Midwest is going so swimmingly, Mr. Messina replied, "It's a battleground state and we can't take anything for granted."