CUOMO AND MCCALL DEBATE DRUG LAW

In a free-form radio debate yesterday between the two candidates seeking
the Democratic nomination for governor, Andrew M. Cuomo accused H. Carl
McCall of failing to block an unrealistic state budget and of stopping
short of calling for the outright repeal of the Rockefeller drug laws.

Mr. McCall insisted he had no power to force a better fiscal plan and said
his differences with Mr. Cuomo over the drug laws were merely semantic.

But each asked the other to direct most of the venom at Gov. George E.
Pataki, whom the winner of the Sept. 10 primary will face on Nov. 5.

The debate was the second of four agreed to by the two candidates. Although
it emphasized issues of particular concern to Latino voters, and Mr. Cuomo
read a few Spanish slogans from his index cards, the candidates stuck to
the usual themes of their campaigns.

Mr. McCall, the state comptroller, portrayed himself as a leader too
dignified to attack his opponent, while Mr. Cuomo, a former federal housing
secretary, sought to paint Mr. McCall as a do-nothing Albany bureaucrat.

The few sparks that flew were generated by Gerson Borrero, the editor in
chief of El Diario/La Prensa, a daily Spanish-language newspaper, who with
Brian Lehrer moderated the debate on Mr. Lehrer's radio program on WNYC.

Mr. Borrero called the McCall and Cuomo campaigns "predictable and boring"
and demanded to know why Governor Pataki had a 75 percent approval rating
among Latinos in a recent poll. "What are you doing wrong?" he asked.

Later, Mr. McCall explained Mr. Pataki's support by pointing to
state-financed commercials featuring the governor and promoting health
insurance for children.

"Governor Pataki is buying the support of many communities across the
state," Mr. McCall added. "And the support that's come to me from the
Latino community, the Dominican community and others is legitimate support
from people who realize that I have been with them on the issues that are
important to that community."

Mr. Pataki's campaign manager, Adam Stoll, later issued a statement
scolding Mr. McCall for negative campaigning. "It is beneath him and he
should stop it," he said.

As he did in the first debate, Mr. Cuomo insisted that Mr. McCall could
have halted a state budget both candidates have called irresponsible.
"Someone has to stand up and say stop," he said.

But Mr. McCall insisted that legally he could not have done so. "It would
be nice to do some kind of symbolic stand," he said. "And it would look
good, and I would get a lot of press. But it wouldn't advance the process
at all, which is what I'm trying to do."

Both candidates had ample opportunity to promote their own records. The
moderators played an interview tape of Mario M. Cuomo, the former governor
and Andrew's father, who wondered if Mr. McCall, who now oversees the state
pension fund, could point to actual accomplishments or only a long resume.

Mr. McCall retorted, "When I became comptroller, I sued Mario Cuomo because
one of the things he did was he attempted to raid the pension fund." He
said he won the suit, raised pensions for retirees and eliminated the need
for state employees to make pension contributions.

Andrew Cuomo said his time at the Department of Housing and Urban
Development proved that he was the one with the concrete achievements. "I
transformed public housing when nobody wanted to go near it. I reinvented
the worst federal bureaucracy - a 10,000-employee poster child of waste,
fraud and abuse."

After the debate, the McCall campaign put out a news release saying that
Mr. Cuomo's tenure at HUD had been beset by problems. The release cited
complaints by government auditors of waste and mismanagement, accusations
that Mr. Cuomo used the position for self-promotion, and scandals like the
one in which speculators defrauded a federal home mortgage program by
buying and quickly reselling hundreds of properties in Harlem and Brooklyn.

During the debate, Mr. Cuomo acknowledged that there is a "flip side" to
his HUD record and questioned Mr. McCall's list of achievements, saying he
invested less in affordable housing than his predecessor and less than the
California pension fund, Calpers.

While the Cuomo campaign immediately handed out memos saying that Calpers
invested 1.2 percent of its fund in affordable housing, a Calpers spokesman
said the actual amount was more like 0.6 percent. The New York State
Pension Fund invests 0.4 percent, Mr. McCall's spokesman said.

The candidates also squabbled over who had hired more Latinos.

"My percent went up 7 percent," Mr. Cuomo said. Statistics show that the
percentage of Hispanic employees at HUD increased to 7 percent from 6.57
percent during his tenure.

Mr. McCall said 8 percent of his 2,200 employees are Latinos. Aides later
admitted that the actual number is closer to 1 percent, saying that Mr.
McCall has hiring discretion only over 136 employees, and of those, 10 (7.4
percent) are Latinos.

But that was not the only time that Mr. McCall seemed to be ill prepared.
He said that the difference between his Rockefeller drug law plan and Mr.
Cuomo's was "a semantic difference and not a substantive difference." But
Mr. Cuomo calls for repealing the mandatory minimum sentences, while the
proposal Mr. McCall supports would only reduce them.

Each candidate had the chance to ask the other two questions. Mr. Cuomo's
invited Mr. McCall to ban all campaign contributions from people who do
business with the state. "And then highlight that Pataki won't say it. And
let's say that this is a Democratic reform."

Mr. McCall refused, but his own query left listeners to wonder if the two
campaigns coordinated their plans, or were just predictable.

"What can we do as Democrats," he asked Mr. Cuomo, "to make it clear to the
public that George Pataki has failed us and has failed to protect the
environment?"