Alan Hevesi is still up a dozen points over emboldened Republican challenger Chris Callaghan, according to a new Quinnipiac University poll released today. A Newsday/NY1 poll puts Hevesi ahead by ten, but both polls are an improvement over last week's Siena New York survey that found the race "too close to call."

This weekend Hevesi ran an ad demanding that voters look at his record and ignore the tabloid headlines dancing at his downfall and the Democratic politicians fleeing his headquarters. Maybe it worked. Perhaps all the sympathy people just couldn't work up for Jeanine Pirro goes to our besieged and embattled state numbers guy.

Hevesi Has 12-Point Lead In Comptroller's Race [Quinnipiac University]
Hevesi's Lead Over Callaghan Is Down To Ten Points [NY1]
Hevesi/Callaghan Race Too Close to Call [Siena Research Institute]

That come-hither smile won't carry Election Day.Courtesy Ned Lamont for Senate

Lieberman's little dip comes from a small migration of independents, whose support for him dropped from 58 to 51. But that's to be expected, independents being capricious and untrustworthy by nature.

The poll's findings are delivered in the dry, authoritative tone we've come to expect from such reports. That is, until this little blast of 'tude at the very end: "If Lamont has an October surprise, he'd better check the calendar."

Jesus, anonymous poll tabulator — who pissed in your Cheerios? Stick with the statistical cleavage analysis and leave the snarky punch lines to the professionals.

Qunnipiac University Poll

Tom Reynolds called this horse a liar.Courtesy iStockphoto.com

Maybe it's the money, but it might just easily be the mouth — the potty mouth, that is. There's no better way to show you're 100 percent manimal than to spray around a little sauce talk now and again. When asked about the miraculously coincidental timing of the federal relief money — which arrived two weeks after the storm and the same day that Reynolds testified about Mark Foley before the House Ethics Committee — Reynolds tartly responded, "It's all horseshit." The Buffalo News was so freaked by Reynolds after-hours agitation they printed his explicating expletive as "horse [manure]." Buffalo being a hockey town, we'd have preferred "horse [puckey]," but whatever.

Reynolds Edges Ahead of Davis [WGRZ]
Disaster Spawns Storm of Politics [Buffalo News]

Just when you thought Tom Reynolds was certain to spend his winter filling out forms in Buffalo temp agencies, he might have a shot. A SurveyUSA poll released yesterday had Reynolds hanging on to tiny lead over Jack Davis, 49-46. Maybe this will get Senator John McCain to reconsider appearing at a Reynolds fund-raiser tonight in Rochester. He'll have to hurry; the Reynolds magic may evaporate by the time the Monday-morning polls show up.

Bad new for fans of the Andy & Jeanine Show. A race that was becoming not just totally crazy but increasingly competitive now seems to have drifted back toward merely nutty. A new poll from fun-to-say Quinnipiac University has Democratic attorney-general candidate Andrew Cuomo up 21 on Republican Jeanine Pirro, an eight-point bump since a recent poll that showed him leading by the not entirely insurmountable 13. What accounts for the tilt? Jeanine Pirro has been claiming that once voters got over all the tabloid wackiness and took a look at her record of locking up perverts as Westchester D.A., we'd realize she was far more qualified to be the state's top lawyer than a daddy's boy with a padded résumé like Andrew Cuomo.

But the opposite seems to be true. As Pirro's past is scrutinized and the scandal fades, New Yorkers are responding with a decided "eh, maybe not so much."

But the race continues. That pink blazer Pirro wore in the second debate — the one that made her like she played keyboards in the Knack — has got to be worth a point or two in the next round of polls. Her fight will go on. And JP will struggle to climb the high heights she assailed back when she was new to us, a boat-bugging glimmer on the horizon of expectations.

We all go through mood swings this time of year, what with the changing weather and shorter days. For most people, it's just a passing thing, but for some, Seasonal Affective Disorder (or "winter depression") can be a serious psychological illness. (Imagine Julianne Moore in Safe, but wearing a snowsuit and moon boots). Most cases are isolated to certain individuals, but folks up in the Twentieth Congressional District seem to be feeling this dread affliction en masse.

Two new polls out today tracking the race between incumbent Republican John Sweeney and Democratic challenger Kirsten Gillibrand suggest either really shoddy pollster math skills or a frighteningly capricious upstate. In a new Constituent Dynamics poll Gillibrand is beating Sweeney 54-41. But a Siena poll shows Sweeney up 53-39. Can two samplings of citizens with a relatively similar cultural and social experience be that disparate? Was the Constituent Dynamics sampling limited to Kirsten Gillibrand's pets? Did the Siena folks ask only Alpha Delta Phi brothers? It's baffling.

We should definitely dispatch a team of white-coated psych-ward attendants to round up the troubled residents of the Terrified Twentieth. They might do something truly deranged, like vote the Green Party ticket.

You really have to respect New Yorkers' ability to transcend the trashy tone of modern discourse. Though four out of five voters have heard of Jeanine Pirro's myriad extra-curricular problems, only half want to make the personal political, according to a Siena Research Institute poll released today. Andrew Cuomo's lead over Jeanine the Machine has gone from seventeen points a month ago to thirteen.

What good wonks we are, not letting scandal obscure our eagle-eyed hunt for the candidate with the best record and soundest policy proposals. This evening after work, when you're kicking back with the new Congressional Quarterly and deciding whether to make it a C-SPAN night or C-SPAN 2 night, pat yourselves on the back. You deserve it, New York.

Siena Research Institute poll

Republicans are hoping that North Korea's nuke test will divert attention from the Mark Foley scandal and move it right back into a comfortable campaign theme: the ever-present threat of total obliteration. Call it the politics of "Hope You Don't Die in a Massive Blast of Radiation."

If a recent Newsweek poll is any indication, the Republicans should be sending Kim Jong Il thank-you notes. Bush's approval rating is 33 percent (a record low for his presidency), and 53 percent of Americans want to see a Democratic Congress in November. What could be better for the GOP than a threat to national security?

Some Washington insiders claim Bush blew it on North Korea, but New York's own Democratic senator Chuck "I Love Sundays" Schumer helped Republicans shift the agenda. Schumer called Bush's response to the test "sober, somber, appropriate" and then went back to his familiar chorus of port-security funding. What a waste of a good dig.

Unless he finds Osama hiding in his toolshed sometime before November 7, representative Tom Reynolds may have to get a real job. Reynolds and challenger Jack Davis were brawling within the margin of error on September 28, but a new Zogby poll shows Reynolds trailing by fifteen.

Those twin banditos of the public trust — husband-bugging attorney-general candidate Jeanine Pirro and wife-ferrying state comptroller Alan Hevesi — continue their black reign of terror over newspapers and bloggers, but a Marist poll released Friday suggests that the citizenry at large is unfazed.

The Pirro numbers are surprising. Of registered voters in the state, 72 percent have heard of Pirro's domestic troubles. Of those voters, only 35 percent are "troubled" by it, even though 42 percent of them believe she acted unethically. Such a public fiasco (Wiretaps! Bernie Kerik! Boats! Affairs!) would likely skew margins in any other state, but Democrat Andrew Cuomo's lead of 54-31 hasn't changed much in the last two weeks. Voters are just that jaded.

Hevesi's Teflon shield is even thicker. Only 39 percent of registered voters have heard of the Hevesi Ride-a-Long program, and only 36 percent of those who knew about it cared. Half of them were not bothered at all. Hevesi leads Republican challenger Chris Callaghan by 30 points.