By Jill Colvin
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
HELL'S KITCHEN — Attorney General candidate Kathleen Rice says she has no plans to run for Governor, despite previously refusing to pledge that she won't.
The Nassau County District Attorney and financial frontrunner told reporters Monday that she has "no plans to run for Governor" — unlike her would-be predecessors Eliot Spitzer and Andrew Cuomo.
At a debate in July, Rice was the only Democratic candidate in the field who refused to make a pledge that she wouldn't eventually run for governor.
"I think that these kinds of pledges are all show. It is ridiculous to say to someone, 'make a pledge now' before you've even done the job you’re running for," she had said.
Still, when asked again about her future political aspirations at a roundtable with reporters at her campaign headquarters Monday afternoon, Rice reiterated her position that such pledges are "meaningless."
"Making promises that you're not," she said, "it's just like one of those campaign things that I think people say because they think that's what people want to hear."
"If a public servant is elected to do a job and you do it well, they should be able to run for another office if they think that they can do that job just as well," she added.
Republican Candidate Dan Donovan, the Richmond County District Attorney, has recently pledged not to run for any higher office for at least two years after the completion of his term as Attorney General if he is elected, arguing that it ensures voters know his priorities.
“By making this pledge, New Yorkers will have confidence that any actions undertaken by my office are done impartially and based on the merits of each case — not for headlines and not to further my own political career," Donovan said in a statement.
Rice was also asked again to explain why she first registered as a Republican and failed to vote for nearly twenty years.
"There were years there where I didn’t believe in the system because I saw its failure for individuals and children and families on so many levels," she said. "Certainly my failure to vote for so long was a mistake.... But I also don’t believe that people's past mistakes should limit people's future."
Rice is facing State Sen. Eric Schneiderman, former federal prosecutor Sean Coffey, Assemblyman Richard Brodsky and former state insurance superintendent Eric Dinallo in the Democratic primary on Sept. 14.
