COMPTROLLERAMA. On this, the special day of grace between the New York City Marathon and Election Day 2006, I'm still confused about the New York State Comptroller race.

The front-runner appears to be Alan Hevesi, a Democratic who has years of experience in the position but has lately been caught in some dodgy behavior that seems par for New York politicians of both major parties.

Opposing Hevesi is J. Christopher Callaghan, a Republican functionary whose main claim has been outing Hevesi's malfeasance. He enjoys the support of Governor George Pataki, a Republican who has not only been involved in the kind of dodgy behavior that Hevesi has been accused of but who has also failed to cough up billions of dollars that courts have repeatedly decided are due to New York City schools.

Somewhere under the radar, there are actually three other comptroller candidates: the Green Party's Julia Willebrand, the Libertarian Party's John J. Cain, and the Socialist Workers Party's Willie Cotton.

The New York City Campaign Finance Board crapped out this year and didn't publish a voter guide to these people because of a lack of ballet proposals and city races. That's very disappointing.

The Comptroller candidates respond to some questions from the League of Women Voters question here. And here are the New York Times and Newsday overviews of the campaigners.

Anyway, I'm not very impressed by this year's crop of Comptroller candidates. Progressive blogger rochesterturning.com supports write-ins for Carl McCall. What to do?

Photo: David Marc Fischer