Dem AG candidates slam Albany, Wall Street

Responding to a moderator's rapid-fire questions, all five Democratic candidates for New York attorney general Thursday night called for reform in state government and highlighted the need to wipe out corruption in Albany and on Wall Street.

The candidates also addressed questions about immigration, domestic violence and the environment at the forum held at the New York University School of Law in Manhattan. The Council of Urban Professionals, a nonprofit group that advances the social and economic interests of minorities and women, sponsored the forum.

Addressing the reform issue, Nassau County District Attorney Kathleen Rice, of Garden City, noted her experience as a prosecutor. Rice has repeatedly said she is the only candidate who has run a law enforcement agency. She repeated that last night saying, "The attorney general should be the guardian of the public's trust."

But Eric Dinallo of Manhattan, a former top deputy to onetime Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, challenged Rice' assertion, noting that he served as a former superintendent of the state insurance department.

The state insurance department, Dinallo said, "is also a law enforcement agency of 1,400 people."

Assemb. Richard Brodsky of Westchester told the audience that Spitzer's hard-driving tactics won't fly anymore. "The sort of bully-boy philosophy . . . that doesn't work," Brodsky said. "The next attorney general will need political skills."

Former federal prosecutor Sean Coffey of Westchester told the audience composed largely of law students and attorneys that "our state government has lost the faith of the people." Coffey said he would work to fix the broken "machinery of government."

And state. Sen. Eric Schneiderman (D-Manhattan) noted his work on behalf of immigrants and called issues surrounding immigration the "civil rights issue of the next decade." Schneiderman indicated concern about the hate crimes against immigrants that have sprung up around New York.

With the Sept. 14 primary less than two weeks away, a Quinnipiac University poll released Thursday found 77 percent of registered Democratic voters didn't know who they would vote for in the attorney general race.