Cox the Hare to Pirro’s Tortoise, But Who Will Win?
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

ALBANY – In the two weeks since Jeanine Pirro announced she will seek the Republican nomination to challenge Senator Clinton’s re-election bid next year, the Westchester County district attorney has attended a clambake and a steak roast and has sat for radio interviews in New York City, Syracuse, and Binghamton.
Over the same period, another Republican who wants to run for Senate, Edward Cox, a Manhattan lawyer, has met with party chairmen in 12 upstate counties and attended clambakes, county fairs, and fund-raising events. He spoke to an estimated 500 people at the Erie County Conservative Party picnic, had brunch with officials from the New York Farm Bureau, and delivered the keynote address to a crowd of roughly 700 at the annual Livingston County Republican dinner. With his son Chris at the wheel, Mr. Cox has logged 1,700 miles on a Jeep Grand Cherokee in the past 13 days.
“I think the party leadership on the town and county level want to see a candidate who is willing to do the tough spadework necessary in the formative stages of a campaign to introduce themselves, to talk about the issues, and to earn the nomination,” Mr. Cox’s spokesman, Thomas Basile, said. “I believe our effort is appreciated and will continue to garner us support.”
With more than a year to go before the election, the differing campaign styles of Mr. Cox and Mrs. Pirro suggest different things to different people. Some said Mr.Cox’s early barnstorming reflects his need to overcome the frontrunner status Mrs. Pirro gained when 46 of 62 Republican county chairmen indicated their support in an open letter to her in June. Others said Mrs. Pirro has become complacent about winning her party’s nomination.
“Where has she been?” a former executive director of the Republican state committee, Brendan Quinn, said. “Ed Cox has been out there working. She hasn’t.”
Mrs. Pirro’s advisers said her campaign will pick up in phases after Labor Day, and no one should read into her recent schedule a sign she is letting up.
“A lot of this is interviewing candidates for various campaign jobs, putting together a strong team,and preparing for the campaign to come,” Mrs. Pirro’s campaign manager, Michael McKeon, said. “We recognize that these are the last two weeks of August, and people are focusing on summer vacations and getting back to school, and not on a race that’s 15 months away. This is going to be a marathon, not a sprint,and we’re still on the Verrazano Bridge.” That bridge, which connects Staten Island and Brooklyn, is the starting point of the annual New York Marathon.
If the Senate race is a marathon, then Mr. Cox – who married President Nixon’s daughter Tricia – has been running it for months. He crafted a strategy long ago and is halfway through a 62-county tour that is expected to wrap up in a month. Mrs. Pirro, by contrast, decided on the race just days before her announcement and has been scarce since, relying on tacit assurances of support from party leaders and the occasional, and high-impact press appearance.
Mr. Basile said he’s confident Mr. Cox will convert signatories of the June letter over the course of his travels.
“We have spoken to nearly all of them,” Mr. Basile said. “I don’t think Mrs. Pirro can count on all 46 of those chairmen to go her way. We have a plan to engage these county leaders, and we are executing that strategy. She can do what she wants.”
A veteran pollster, John Zogby, said the difference in styles between Mr. Cox and Mrs. Pirro reflects the uphill battle that Mr. Cox faces against the telegenic and better-known Mrs. Pirro.
“If the primaries were next month, I’d be curious as to what Pirro’s strategy was,” Mr. Zogby said. “But she got a significant amount of publicity from her announcement and, at this point, I think she’s just basking in residual publicity. The burden is really on Ed Cox to get himself around and get better known.”
Despite Mrs. Pirro’s low profile, the Cox campaign has not been left alone. Another potential Republican challenger in the race, John Spencer, has been nipping at his heels, questioning his conservative credentials. The former mayor of Yonkers tied Mr. Cox yesterday to a friend-of-the-court brief filed by lawyers at his firm that effectively argued in favor of ensuring due process for two suspected terrorists, Jose Padilla and Yaser Hamdi.
Mr. Spencer cited a commendation of the firm’s work by a Palestinian Arab advocacy group, Human Rights First, as a sign that the firm, Patterson, Belknap, Webb & Tyler, and, by extension, Mr. Cox, supports the interests of terrorists.
Mr. Basile said that the brief was written in support of a larger jurisdictional issue and that the U.S. Supreme Court agreed with it on the matter, in an 8-1 ruling. He also noted that Mr. Cox works in a different practice area than the one in which the brief was issued. “These kinds of desperate and ridiculous statements are precisely why John’s campaign lacks credibility,” Mr. Basile said.