Posted on 12/01/2005 5:33:43 PM PST by nycfree
ALBANY, N.Y. -- Jeanine Pirro, under pressure from some top Republicans to give up her quest for the GOP nomination to challenge Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton next year, has asked to meet with Gov. George Pataki to discuss the future of her campaign, an aide to the governor said Thursday.
Pataki spokesman David Catalfamo said the meeting would take place Friday in the governor's New York City office. Catalfamo said he did not know if Pirro was considering leaving the Senate race and noted that Pataki and the Westchester County district attorney "meet from time to time."
Pirro campaign spokeswoman Andrea Tantaros said Thursday evening that while the prosecutor wanted to talk with the governor about her Senate campaign, she had no plans to leave the race. "She's in this race," Tantaros said.
Speculation that Pirro might quit the Senate race has been running through New York political circles since Tuesday when state Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno, the Legislature's top Republican, said she should give up her Senate bid and run instead for state attorney general. At the time, Pirro rejected Bruno's advice.
The Pirro campaign, despite the backing of Pataki and state GOP Chairman Stephen Minarik, has struggled since it began on Aug. 8 and has had trouble raising money. Also, the state Conservative Party has balked at her support for abortion and gay rights. No Republican running statewide in New York has won without Conservative Party backing since 1974.
Meanwhile, Clinton already had almost $14 million in her campaign account by the end of September and polls have shown her far ahead of Pirro and other potential GOP challengers. In addition to Pirro, the GOP Senate nomination is being sought by former Yonkers Mayor John Spencer
(Excerpt) Read more at newsday.com ...
pataki ought to be the one taking a shot at a Senate seat in this race.
Er, no. That would be really embarrassing for Pataki.
why, he's not running for governor again.
This isn't 1994 when Pataki was a harmless backbencher 2nd year state Senator taking on the evil Mario Cuomo. He's had 12 years of a mediocre to poor track record as Governor (remember, the only reason why he isn't running to break Nelson Rockefeller's 4-term modern-era record is because he knows he'll lose to ANY 'Rat this time around). Pataki hasn't got the strength or the dynamism (or the aforementioned not-so-stellar record) to challenge Hillary. He wouldn't even get 40% of the vote.
he has won 3 state wide elections in a state with a very large D to R ratio. He's not running again because Spitzer is such a strong candidate, and the odds of anyone winning a 4th term is very low.
Hillary is the weakest state wide Democrat in New York, she is the low hanging fruit.
Rocky won a 4th term. Cuomo did not because he had become unpopular and was running in the worst year possible for a 'Rat in '94. Pataki is now at where Cuomo was 12 years ago with a fairly poor approval rating.
"Hillary is the weakest state wide Democrat in New York, she is the low hanging fruit."
The only thing hanging lower are Pataki and Pirro as potential opponents. We'll have to do better than that, or Hillary's going nowhere.
How about Bill Weld! puh yeah right
Please, I'm trying to hold my dinner. =8-0>
Seriously, remember when that twat ran in '96 against Frenchie ? If John Kerry's penis were 6 feet tall and had red hair, his name would be William Weld.
Wow, well Im a lot a bit more Conservative then him, i think his candicacy for Gov is a joke, but back in the early 1990's here in Massachusetts after Dukakis finished his rampage of the state, Weld was a God sent. But now after boozing up a bit, hes all done.
The GOP would've better off bringing back ex-DINO Gov. Ed King or having John Silber switch parties. It took one election to see how bad Weld turned out to be, and 2 more to realize he was worse than AIDS to the GOP. If I were Romney, I'd want to rip off his ball$ with my bare teeth.
Ed King was probably the best MA Governor since Calvin Coolidge in the late 1910s. You might remember that Dukakis had initially defeated the daffy RINO Governor Frank Sargent back in '74 to serve a single term before King upended him in the primary (much to the chagrin of the radical left in the state, most of whom switched to support the Republican ticket, and can you guess what certain, ahem, "Republican" was the nominee for Attorney-General in the '78 general ?). King did such a fantastic job governing as a Conservative that the hard-left got its revenge in '82 by defeating him in a primary rematch and re-coronating the horrid Dukakis. Dukakis, being the slimebag rodent that he was, took credit for ALL of King's programs (it was King, along with President Reagan's policies, that were responsible for the "Massachusetts Miracle."). King later on DID switch to the Republicans, but bumbling on the part of the party in the late '80s kept him from ever obtaining a rematch.
Alas, back in 1990 I was one of those teenage Republicans who thought that ANY Republican was better than ANY Democrat. It took me 8 years and my own treacherous RINO Governor to finally see the light. It was really incredible to see that there were 2 out of 3 leading candidates for Governor in 1990 that were Conservatives, and the other one was a liberal nut loose-cannon who had been badmouthing the Reagan adminstration, bashing Ed Meese, and taking all sorts of potshots. Guess which one that was ? If the general election contest had ended up between House GOP leader Steve Pierce and DINO John Silber, either one would've made above average leaders (some don't realize that Silber's blunt and honest talk, criticizing a whole class of "parents" who were dumping their kids into day care as a substitute for raising their own, that cost him the election - with the weasel Weld taking the radical left position that how DARE Silber tell parents they couldn't dump their kids and expect them to turn out A-OK).
It was just that after Dukakis, even a Socialist RINO would've looked good... until we saw exactly what he inflicted in short order. You know it was bad when LIBERAL Republicans were complaining that he was doing NADA for the party...
Of course, I'm not telling you anything you don't already know... ;-)
The Pataki liberal choices are ruining the party in NYS. Pro-abort, liberal Howard Mills was the last Pataki choice, and had a humiliating defeat.
Schumer - 71%
Howard Mills - 24%
Marilyn O'Grady - 3%
On December 12, 2005 the "big wigs" from around the state are going to meet, and probably pick a gubernatorial candidate, and a U.S. senator.
Maybe if enough of us contact the NYS GOP, we can get them to give us a primary, and get some conservatives on the Republican ticket in NYS for a change.
Here is contact info for the NYS Republican Party, if anyone wants to send them an e-mail, personal note to Chairman Stephen Minarek or call.
New York Republican State Committee 315 State Street Albany, NY 12210
(518) 462-2601
info@nygop.org
Pro-life, conservative Ed Cox would also make a great U.S. Senator - or governor.
I just wish I could go back to the early 90's and try this whole thing over again. The only thing we Republicans have left in Massachusetts now adays is 3 or 4 Real Republicans in the Legislature and Mitt Romney, somebody that might not even run for Governor in 2006, let alone get relected to it. Plus hes kind of gotten wishy washy lately on his position stances, though I think not as bad as some FReepers characterize him.
I know how you feel. That's what is so incredible to realize, that those handful of Republicans left in the legislature (you'd ordinarily think, "Oh, those must be the last sane Conservatives left."), many of them are not only NOT Conservative, but EXTREMELY leftist. You may recall the special election after Joe Moakley died, the contest ending up being between a semi-social-Conservative 'Rat (Lynch) and a nutjob social leftist lady Senator RINO (and you'd think THAT proved that even in an ostensibly "liberal" district that trying to outliberal a 'Rat will STILL not net you a win). A lot of the social Conservatives STILL remain in the 'Rat party there. I remember there was one particular Democrat State Senator who switched to the GOP, only to have to switch right back again as the numbers in the party plummeted towards the 6 it is today (his argument, "I can't get anything done as a Republican."). It is, of course, scarcely better in the House. I know very little about the legislative leaders now, and certainly don't envy them in the least.
As I've had pointed out to me elsewhere, the numbers in the legislature don't reflect actual Republican strength (or at least what it is at the Presidential level, which has also suffered dramatically because of the side-effects of RINO mismanagement - after all, Reagan CARRIED the state twice only 8 years after the state turned hard to the left to support Kook McGovern). If the parties ever shook themselves out to resemble the situation in other states elsewhere, the GOP should have at or around 35-40% of the legislature (and not the 12% or so it has now) and 3 or 4 federal Congressmembers. It's just astonishing for a state that held strongly AGAINST FDR and the 'Rats in the '30s with strong GOP majorities or even in the '80s with being strongly Reagan, that within the course of barely 20 years, the state is voting like South Carolina in the 1920s. It didn't and shouldn't have had to happen, but yet it did...
As for Romney, I believed him very sincere and wanting to bolster those numbers in the legislature (meeting with only the most modest of success when he won, only to have it slip back to the final days of the Swift regime in the midterm), but his having to swim against the current created by his incompetent predecessors, his lack of power (I believe it was during his term that the legislature stripped him of the authority to appoint a successor whenever Teddy or Frenchie make an exit from the Senate), and other indignities that have made it very difficult for him to even continue to have the smallest desire to remain in office where he is literally legally barred from being able to effect change and can only make comments from the sidelines while the legislature "governs" and "rules" for him.
I have to admit, though, his wanting to be President is laughable. Being a Governor-in-exile (which he effectively is) is no experience for ascending to the highest office in the land. At least in Dukakis's defense, he HAD the power to govern, because he had the party behind him. And lastly, Romney should've really ended up in the Senate. That's why I made the comment about Romney wanting to rip the ball$ off of Weld. Weld deliberately sabotaged Romney in '94 (when with a strong endorsement, Weld's coattails could've carried Romney to victory, and he would've become the biggest celebrity in the Senate and hero to the Conservative movement in... well, perhaps ever). Weld didn't want to have to share the spotlight with anyone, except perhaps his puppet Cellucci -- but then the latter wasn't allowed out of the box until Herr Willie left Beacon Hill for the last time. Like you said, if only we could back to 1990 and redo all of this, the state GOP and its fortunes would've been vastly different than the situation it finds itself in today.
Pirro will easily win the AG race. The Democrats have no one even near her qualifications for that post. Let's hope she read my essay explaining why she doesn't have a chance in the senate race, and this is it. Then we can get behind John Spencer and go beast hunting.
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