'WOFF' TO THE RACES
Outsider's bid for state AG
Keith Wofford may be running for office, but he insists he’s no politician.
“So I have the luxury of being able to say the obvious,” the GOP’s candidate for state attorney general said. “We need someone, regardless of party, who’s going to go in there and deal with these crooked politicians — whether it’s Democrats, Republicans, whoever.”
The Manhattan lawyer, a first-time candidate, is taking a shot at a scandal-scarred office whose last elected occupant, Eric Schneiderman, was ousted in disgrace in May amid charges of sexual abuse.
Whatever happens on Election Day, the contest is historic: Either Wofford or his opponent, Democratic New York City Public Advocate Letitia James, will become New York’s first African-American attorney general.
His underdog bid against James is seen as his party’s best shot at a statewide win this November. The race’s only public poll, released on Oct. 1, gave James 50 percent of the vote and pegged her littleknown rival 14 points behind.
Republicans are funding him generously. Wofford has raised almost $1.8 million and has $400,000 on hand. James, who built up a $594,000 war chest, has $384,000 remaining.
His cash fueled a million-dollar ad buy that hit James for her ties to “Bill de Blasio’s political machine” and her status as “Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s handpicked attorney-general candidate.”
“Career politicians are not willing to do the things you need to do,” Wofford told The Post. “There are too many deals you have to cut, too many behinds you have to kiss, too many people you have to get along with to move up.”
That includes the multiple lawsuits that Schneiderman and his temporary successor, Barbara Underwood, have filed against the Trump administration and against President Trump himself.
Wofford dismisses them as political gamesmanship. James has pledged to pursue them as her top priority.
“Your job as attorney general is not to be the political resis- tance,” he said. “Your duty is to serve the state. It’s very important to me that we drain this partisanship out of the office.”
But he said he’d continue to press Schneiderman’s lawsuit that aims to bar a question on citizenship from the 2020 Census — even though most of the GOP opposes the effort.
“I disagree with what the administration is trying to do there,” Wofford said. “The point of the census is to count the people — period, full stop.”
As a son of upstate Buffalo, Wofford bristles at the raw deal his hometown got at the hands of self-interested Albany politicians in the Buffalo Billion scandal.
“I thought it was great that Buffalo was going to get a billion dollars,” he said. “The problem was that public officials rigged up all the contracts.”
A string of convictions of Cuomo associates on corruption and bribery charges, Wofford said, proves the need for a state attorney general to vet big-money state contracts and look for signs of fraud before the deals are signed.
“It’s not just that we do dumb projects,” he said. “It’s also a corruption tax — the money we lose, the money spent the wrong way.”