All 5 Democratic candidates make AG primary ballot

RYE BROOK - Aiming to ease internal divisions and to turn the page on the scandals that have devastated Albany, New York Democrats opened their state nominating convention Tuesday with a vow of reform and a promise that all five attorney general candidates will be given a place on the primary ballot.

"We will allow no excuses; we will . . . go to Albany and make the changes that voters have demanded," state chairman Jay Jacobs told delegates gathered at a hotel here amid a blizzard of placards announcing a "New Democratic Party."

The crowded field for attorney general was expected to provide the only real suspense of this nominating convention, with Nassau District Attorney Kathleen Rice understood to be the favorite of the presumptive gubernatorial nominee, Attorney General Andrew Cuomo. But state Sen. Eric Schneiderman of Manhattan, Assemb. Richard Brodsky of Westchester, former state Insurance Superintendent Eric Dinallo and former prosecutor Sean Coffey all have been raising money and securing endorsements within the party.

Former Rep. Elizabeth Holtzman, who had flirted with a bid for the job, Tuesday bowed out, saying she had concluded it was too late to jump in.

Party leaders said the 47 counties in the Democratic Rural Conference, Dinallo supporters, had vocally complained that their candidate didn't stand a chance against the much more heavily weighted votes of the few downstate counties.

"We were beginning to feel it was unfair," Jacobs told a reporter.

Most of the candidates seemed happy with the decision to include all five candidates in a primary: Coffey called it "a good idea," while Dinallo said he was "excited" by the chance at a primary.

Brodsky said he, too, was pleased, though he had rounded up the needed share of party support weeks ago.

"All the head-banging and elbow-twisting is over. . . . This gets us into an election where ideas and character and temperament will be judged, and not just relationships," he said.

Rice, waiting in the back of a ballroom for her chance to greet the rural conference, avoided answering directly when asked how she thought the balloting plan would affect her chances.

"I'm just happy to be here, and I just hope to be on the ballot," she said.

The state's perilous finances and scandals that have so bedeviled Albany of late clearly framed this year's campaign season, with Cuomo promising a fix-Albany campaign targeted largely at his own legislators.

"In the past, both parties have made promises . . . but voters feel we've fallen short," Jacobs told state committee members Tuesday.

Brodsky was blunter.

"We are in a crisis, let there be no doubt," he said.