ALBANY (AP) -- The largely quiet race for the Senate seat held by Democrat Kirsten Gillibrand became contentious Wednesday, with Gillibrand debuting a negative TV ad and both candidates calling each other out about their pasts.
Gillibrand released an ad claiming Republican challenger Joe DioGuardi had a record of wasteful spending when he was in Congress in the 1980s and that he was a tax cheat. The Gillibrand campaign has been highlighting negative incidents from DioGuardi's past for days.
DioGuardi claimed Gillibrand is bringing up incidents from his past because "she has no message." The former Westchester County congressman countered by raising Gillibrand's past work as a lawyer representing tobacco giant Philip Morris.
"She is now pre-empting me by coming out with distractions, things that have no validity," DioGuardi said, hours before the Gillibrand's ad was unveiled. "I never did anything wrong."
Polls have shown Gillibrand heading into the November election with more support. A Marist College poll last week showed Gillibrand favored by 52 percent of respondents compared to 41 percent for DioGuardi. The same poll found barely over half the respondents strongly supported their pick, indicating a large portion of the electorate could still be up for grabs.
DioGuardi is little-known around the state. And Gillibrand, appointed to her seat in January 2009 after Hillary Rodham Clinton became secretary of state, is still building her statewide reputation.
DioGuardi launched his first TV ad this week, introducing himself as a certified public accountant whose No. 1 priority in the Senate would be to stop "runaway spending." The ad buy for upstate markets cost $318,000, according to his campaign.
Gillibrand launched a series of TV advertisements the day after the Sept. 14 primary promoting herself as a fighter for government reform, upstate New York and veterans. The negative ad released Wednesday is a shift in tone. The 30-second ad claims, among other things, that DioGuardi voted himself a congressional pay raise and was caught cheating on his taxes.
The Gillibrand campaign cited a 1992 Associated Press story about DioGuardi paying $20,468 in back taxes. The payment followed a dispute with the IRS revolving around DioGuardi's stake in a partnership that bought and sold options and futures on stocks and securities. DioGuardi and his wife in 1978 earned more than $124,000 but claimed taxable income of $9,323 because of losses to the partnership. The IRS said the losses could not be deducted.
DioGuardi has denied that the partnership's purpose was to lose money and that the tax law had been changed without his knowledge. His campaign said the pay raise vote cited by Gillibrand was part of an omnibus spending bill and that he donated a 1987 raise to charity.
DioGuardi, during a campaign swing through Albany, said Gillibrand was firing "blanks" at him. He shot back by noting Gillibrand's work in the 1990s for tobacco interests. The New York Times reported last year that Gillibrand, as a young lawyer, worked against the release of documents that could prove that tobacco industry executives had lied about the dangers of smoking.
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