NY Senate Race Gets Ugly Fast

Kirsten Gillibrand isn’t playing nice anymore. The New York Democrat is heeding advisers’ counsel and going for the jugular against Senate primary opponent Harold Ford Jr., who’s been lobbing bombs faster than she can keep up. Until now, Gillibrand’s mostly attacked Ford through proxies, generating little buzz in New York’s tabloid-dominated media scene. But in a recent statement, she blasted Ford as an anti-abortion, anti-gay rights Wall Street pawn, Politico reports.

The Ford camp’s reply was brutal: “If the unelected senator and tobacco industry apologist has a new strategy based on distorting Harold’s support for abortion rights and gay rights, then she’s not only a puppet of the party bosses, she’s a desperate liar,” a spokesman said. The “puppet” bit has been a consistent theme for Ford—yesterday he called Gillibrand a “party parakeet”—because his advisers believe it plays into the current anti-Washington sentiment. (More Harold Ford Jr. stories.)