Assemblyman Richard Brodsky has landed the endorsements of The Bronx Press and the Riverdale Review in his bid to succeed AG Andrew Cuomo as the state’s top attorney, but he got the nods (his first of the campaign) at the expense of the papers’ first choice: Sen. Eric Schneiderman.

The editors write that they were “ready, willing and able” to endorse Schneiderman, but were then brought up short by the Manhattan Democrat’s statement when he accepted the support of the Rev. Al Sharpton that Sharpton’s National Action Network would “have an annex in Albany for the first time in the history of the state.”

The editors called this “distressing,” adding: “We see even the acceptance of the endorsement from Mr. Sharpton as a questionable tactic for a candidate for a law enforcement post, given that Mr. Sharpton is frequently a target for investigations by state officials regarding his finances and taxes.”

They then went on to quote The Village Voice’s Wayne Barrett, king of the lefty journos, who lambasted Schneiderman’s comments, calling them “craven excess”, and deemed the candidate “everything state voters seem primed to reject in a general election.”

“We like Eric Schneiderman, but have lost respect for him,” the papers concluded. “Mr. Brodsky is someone we can trust for the long haul, a candidate with a backbone and, most importantly, no strings to charlatans like Al Sharpton.”

That Sharpton remarks has been worrisome to a lot of Democrats. As soon as those words left Schneiderman’s mouth, it was almost as if he handed a script for a negative ad Staten Island DA Dan Donovan and his GOP/Conservative backers on a silver platter.

Interesting aside: With these endorsements, Nassau County DA Kathleen Rice is the only one of the five Democratic AG contenders without a newspaper supporter. Her hometown paper, Newsday, informed the candidates back in July that it would not be weighing in prior to the Sept. 14 primary.

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