A couple of interesting observations I heard on today’s Siena poll of key State Senate races.

The first has to do with Republican incumbent Serf Maltese, who is currently running even with his Democratic challenger, Joe Addabbo. Consultant Joe Mercurio said he found that “surprising,” since that’s basically how Maltese’s 2006 race ended up, and that was against a challenger who was virtually unknown.

"I figured Addabbo would do better than an unknown,” Mercurio told me.

The other observation was about Craig Johnson on Long Island, who has a 24-percentage-point lead over his Republican challenger, Barbara Donno. Of all of the six races Siena chose to look at, this one has the highest percentage of undecided voters: 26 percent.  read more »

Here’s a mailer in which Barbara Donno, the Republican challenging Democratic State Senator Craig Johnson, accuses Johnson of voting against a property tax break for veterans.

His supporters, however, say it's inaccurate.

The Albany Project quotes Nassau County Comptroller Howard Weitzman, a veteran, saying, "[D]espite what this mailing says, at no time did Craig Johnson, or any other elected official, deny a tax cut to veterans."

His statement goes on, "Rather, in the vote referenced in the mailing, the County Legislature preserved an existing tax deduction at its existing levels. Any other action would have either raised taxes for veterans or cost all Nassau taxpayers an additional $17.7 million at the time when the county faced insolvency. Craig Johnson's vote on this matter was fiscally responsible and supported by the Nassau County Office of Veterans Affairs and many veterans groups throughout Nassau."

According to two Republican sources, City Hall staffer Fred Kreizman is considering a run for state Senate on their line against Democrat Diane Savino, whose district includes parts of Brooklyn and Staten Island.

Kreizman works in the Community Assistance Unit and has previously taken some time off from work to help Republican state Senate candidate Maureen O'Connell on Long Island, who lost her special election race earlier this year to Democrat Craig Johnson.  read more »

Craig Johnson, a Democratic State Senator in a Republican marginally Democratic-leaning district in Nassau County, just issued this statement vowing to vote against a legislative pay raise, which Eliot Spitzer reportedly supports:

"With the softening economy, a looming state budget battle over the fate of our schools and our children, and the mountain of legislative work that this majority seems to have little interest in completing, I do not think it is appropriate, or prudent, to be considering a legislative pay raise at this time. I will vote against such a bill if it comes to the floor."

He, so far, is the first Democrat to come out against it.

So I’ve been calling around to find out how Eliot Spitzer’s closest allies in Albany, the Democratic minority in the state Senate, feel about the governor’s new three-tiered driver’s license plan. And I've not been finding a ton of enthusiasm.

“We’re studying the plan,” said Craig Johnson, a Democrat from Nassau who Spitzer helped get into office in a special election earlier this year.

Johnson had opposed Spitzer’s original plan and was seen as the kind of Democrat from a Republican-leaning district who could be most hurt by the original plan, which would have allowed illegal immigrants to obtain the same kind of licenses as legal residents.

So Spitzer’s compromise policy--and compromise political approach--is, presumably, more amenable to lawmakers like Johnson. Or maybe not.

“Right now I’m focused on working my district, so I really don’t have much of a thought on that,” he said.

State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli stopped by a while ago to talk to the folks on "bloggers row" (which is actually full of recognizable print bylines like Liz Benjamin, Dan Janison and Nicholas Confessore), and said, among other things, that when he was in the Assembly, he did not support a bill to allow illegal immigrants to obtain driver's licenses, which Eliot Spitzer has made a major priority.

DiNapoli added that he'd like to "give the governor a chance" and that "it's his call."

(Separately, DiNapoli also let drop the bit of news that he hired former Assemblyman Dan Feldman of Brooklyn, who used to work for Eliot Spitzer in the Attorney General's office and ran unsuccessfully for congress against Anthony Weiner.) Shortly afterwards, newly elected Democratic state Senator Craig Johnson of Long Island was asked for his position on the driver's license issue, and said that he "no comment" and that he hadn't "reviewed it." But he did vote for a Republican bill in the state Senate that basically ran counter to Spitzer's proposals.