Poll: Pirro has better chance running for AG

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By MARC HUMBERT
AP Political Writer

December 14, 2005, 12:05 PM EST


ALBANY, N.Y. -- While still facing an uphill battle, Jeanine Pirro would have less of a mountain to climb if she ran for state attorney general instead of challenging Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton next year, a statewide poll reported Wednesday.

Pirro, Westchester County's high-profile district attorney, has been under pressure from state Republican leaders to give up her struggling campaign for the GOP nomination to take on the former first lady and run instead for attorney general.

But in a Tuesday night interview with The Journal News, her hometown newspaper in Westchester County, Pirro again insisted she was still a candidate for Senate and that her campaign was going well.

The new poll, from the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute, had Clinton leading Pirro, 62 percent to 30 percent.

The gap was narrower against two high-profile Democrats seeking their party's attorney general nomination, former federal Housing Secretary Andrew Cuomo and former New York City Public Advocate Mark Green.

Cuomo, the elder son of former Gov. Mario Cuomo, leads Pirro 49 percent to 32 percent, while Green leads the district attorney 43 percent to 35 percent.

"Running for attorney general, she loses more respectably, but she still loses," said Maurice Carroll, director of the Hamden, Conn.-based polling institute. "This is not great news for Pirro, but she still runs better in a race she insists she is not running."

http://www.newsday.com/news/local/wire/newyork/ny-bc-ny--clinton-pirro1214dec14,0,1340855.story?coll=ny-region-apnewyork