Rice makes primary ballot in attorney general race

RYE BROOK - Nassau District Attorney Kathleen Rice and four other candidates for New York attorney general grabbed spots on the September primary ballot after voting at the state Democratic convention here.

In the first ballot Wednesday, Rice topped her opponents by taking 36.1 percent of the vote with Nassau, Suffolk, Brooklyn and Queens throwing their support to her in afternoon voting. State Sen. Eric Schneiderman also took a ballot spot in the first round with 27.45 percent, as did Assemb. Richard Brodsky of Westchester with 26.99.

In a second vote taken in the evening, the other two attorney general candidates - former prosecutor Sean Coffey and former state Insurance Superintendent Eric Dinallo - reached the 25 percent threshold needed to put them on the primary ballot. After Dinallo's supporters complained earlier this week about voting procedures, party officials arranged a complicated plan that allowed all five to garner enough votes to secure them all spots on the ballot.

"This has been an energizing convention and I'm pleased not only with the support I've received, but with the party's decision to extend ballot access to others in the race who weren't able to garner enough support on the first ballot," Rice said in a statement. "Voters should have a choice in September and this convention will give them that choice."

Earlier Wednesday, the convention delegates also nominated Sens. Charles Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand for U.S. Senate, Thomas DiNapoli of Great Neck for state comptroller and Rochester Mayor Robert Duffy for lieutenant governor. Democrats will nominate Attorney General Andrew Cuomo for governor Thursday.

DiNapoli was nominated by loud and enthusiastic acclamation. "He believes in accountability, he believes in transparency, and he lives it," said North Hempstead Supervisor Jon Kaiman. "This is a man we can trust."

This will be DiNapoli's first campaign for the job he has held since being appointed to replace Alan Hevesi, who resigned in 2006 in a plea deal for misusing state employees as drivers for his sick wife.

"Tom DiNapoli has been a role model for me and every other public official who believes in good government," said Babylon Supervisor Steve Bellone, who seconded his nomination. "As our state comptroller, he has restored ethics and trust and faith in our state government."

In his acceptance speech, Schumer joked, "I feel good!" moments after Manhattan Assemb. Keith Wright dubbed him the "hardest working man in politics. . . . We call him the James Brown of government and politics."

"Man, I love New York," Schumer said.

State Republican chairman Ed Cox, stationed outside the convention hotel Wednesday morning, has issued a release calling Schumer the state Democratic kingpin who had developed a reputation as a "self-serving, media-obsessed political creature, who will stop at nothing to get what he wants."

Gillibrand of Hudson was nominated as the Democratic candidate for the remaining two years of the Senate term interrupted when Hillary Rodham Clinton became secretary of state.

"I may not have been in Washington long, but I have been there long enough to know what's wrong with it: The voices of ordinary Americans are not being heard," she said.

Republicans issued a statement denouncing her as a "rubber stamp" for Schumer.

With James T. Madore