Sure, Eliot Spitzer is paying registered Democrats who have some spare time on their hands $800 a day to gather signatures for his NYC Comptroller ballot petition. But that doesn't mean these folks want to, you know, talk about what they are doing. Politicker spotted a few at West 66th and Broadway: "When asked about her petitioning, a female Spitzer staffer reluctantly said she had been on the job for a couple of hours and estimated having collected about 25 signatures. A male counterpart refused to comment."
Capital New York's Azi Paybarah tried to talk to some petitioners on the Upper East Side:
I went over to 86th Street and Lexington, a regular petitioning spot for New York campaigns. At 8:06 p.m., I found two young men and one woman with clipboards and white sheets of paper, and round, blue Spitzer stickers. Two of them had white, square stickers with names on them: Allan and Angelina. The third person, a young man in a black shirt, did not have a name tag.
They were on the northwest corner of the intersection.
When I approached, Allan asked if I wanted to sign. I said no and identified myself as a reporter, showed my credential, and asked if I could talk with them.
All three said no and walked away.
When I asked why, Allan asked, "Why what?"
Why not talk to me, I said.
"Just the way it is, man. It is what it is. No comment," he said.
Paybarah followed them for a while, which apparently made Allan nervous enough to perhaps make up a story about his phone being dead and needing to call his mom—so he asked Paybarah to use his phone: "I said yes and asked what number he needed to call. He gave me the number and I dialed it. It went to a voicemail message that sounded exactly like Allan's voice."
Spitzer needs to get 3,750 valid signatures of NYC Democrats so he can make the ballot. He only decided to run for Comptroller on Sunday, after feeding the cows or something.
