Spin Cycle: A macho match, and a battle of sexes

A dramatic gender gap is showing up in election surveys this season. In a sample of New York women deemed likely voters, Andrew Cuomo led Carl Paladino by a huge margin, 61 to 29 percent - while among likely male voters, Cuomo's edge was a negligible 47-46, according to a Marist Poll published Thursday.

Major-party campaigns, alert to this divide, are crafting strategies around this difference - most obviously in the governor's race.

From the start, Republican Paladino and his campaign crew opted to bait the Democratic attorney general, schoolyard-style, as lacking "cojones."

There's a context to the macho game. Paladino impregnated an employee of his company, who now raises their 10-year-old daughter - and his publicly loyal wife was quoted as saying she never knew of this until after the death of their 29-year-old son last year in a one-vehicle accident.

Paladino - who chose to make all this public last spring - thus faces a particular kind of sleaze factor, which may further drive the gender gap as the story becomes better known.

A Paladino counter-effort to stain the long-divorced Cuomo over his family life backfired. When a reporter heatedly demanded evidence, a shaken-looking Paladino spewed bile and threats.

Now, candidates elsewhere on the Nov. 2 ballot are mulling what if anything the Paladino factor could mean to their own down-ballot races.

Democrats have been trying to make Paladino's sluggish polling among women stick to GOP Senate candidates. Party activists note that Long Island hasn't sent a woman to the upper house since Carol Berman was unseated by now-Senate Minority Leader Dean Skelos (R-Rockville Centre) in 1984. Of nine Senate contests in Nassau and Suffolk, four Democratic nominees are women, while all Republican nominees are men.

That said, a recent Siena College survey showed Republicans polling strongly in four highly contested races. This included Suffolk's 3rd S.D., where Lee Zeldin was deemed even overall with first-term Sen. Brian Foley (D-Blue Point). Even with somewhat stronger female support for Foley, the poll showed men and women fairly even in identifying priority issues - giving similar weight to property taxes, state budget, government reform, education, jobs and health care.

Next to racial identity, income and geography, gender marks an important and immediate fault line.