Spencer says he'll stay put

BY GLENN THRUSH | Newsday Washington Bureau

October 20, 2006

WASHINGTON - John Spencer says he'll avoid any Rick Lazio-type "excursions" into Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's personal space at tonight's debate in Rochester.

Spencer, the former Republican mayor of Yonkers, plans to come out swinging on national security issues, but he'll do so from the nonthreatening confines of his own rostrum.

In a disastrous move at a Sept. 13, 2000, Senate debate, Republican Lazio bounded toward a stunned Clinton, demanding she sign a pledge to ban soft money from her campaign. The move was widely perceived as bullying.

"I don't plan on making any excursions," said Spencer last night. "That was Rick Lazio and that was what he chose to do. That's not John Spencer. I don't plan to do any walks around. I've debated with women before and I feel comfortable sticking to the issues."

The 7 p.m. debate will be hosted by NY1 News and broadcast on Time-Warner affiliates throughout the state. A second and final debate will be held Sunday morning at 9 on WABC-TV in Manhattan.

They come at a critical time for the GOP underdog, who trails Clinton by as much as 35 points in recent polls.

In addition to challenging the senator on her job-creation record and her position on the Patriot Act, Spencer said he will raise questions about Bill Clinton's "lobbying" for foreign governments and relationship with the royal family of Dubai.

A Clinton campaign spokeswoman had no comment.

A Spencer aide said his boss' debate playbook is conservative scribe Amanda Carpenter's "The Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy's Dossier on Hillary Clinton."

Clinton's official Spencer stand-in and debate-prep partner is Bob Barnett, the bespectacled Clinton family attorney who has guided them through Whitewater, impeachment and a slew of lesser personal crises and "-gates." Barnett played Lazio in 2000 rehearsals.