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ALBANY - GOP Senate candidate John Spencer has hopped out to his biggest lead yet over rival Kathleen (KT) McFarland, but a new poll finds many Republicans aren't embracing either one of them. Spencer, former mayor of Yonkers, drew the backing of 36% of Republicans, leaving McFarland in the dust at 15%, according to the poll released yesterday by Marist College and WNBC. But 49% of Republican voters remain undecided with less than two months to go to the primary election that will determine which of the two will face Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) in November. In May, a Marist...

Associated Press Says Senate hopeful's claim of abuse by father was made up, punishment was "acceptable' NEW YORK - The ongoing family drama involving Republican Senate hopeful Kathleen Troia "KT" McFarland took a new turn Thursday when a brother publicly denounced McFarland as "evil" for accusing their father of child abuse. "It's a complete fabrication," McFarland's brother, Tom Troia, told the New York Post in an interview published Thursday. "If I had one word to describe my sister, it would be "evil.' " The story came the same day McFarland prepared to host the first major fundraiser of her campaign,...

Advisers to Republican Senate hopeful Kathleen Troia "KT" McFarland said Thursday they will launch a petition drive to place her name on an independent line on the November general election ballot _ a move that could keep her candidacy alive if she loses the Sept. 12 GOP primary. But an aide to McFarland's GOP primary rival, former Yonkers mayor John Spencer, dismissed the move as "desperate" and said it would only help Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton win re-election.

ALBANY, May 10 — There are the children he fathered with a subordinate while he was still married to someone else. Add to that some charges of nepotism. And for good measure, throw in a top aide who pleaded guilty to sodomizing a 15-year-old boy. It is not a soap opera. It is opposition research, the dark political art known to practitioners simply as "oppo." Its subject is John Spencer, the former mayor of Yonkers, who is seeking the Republican nomination to challenge Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton. The research is being rolled out by the campaign of a fellow Republican,...

NEW YORK -- It didn't take long before the wheels started coming off Kathleen Troia "KT" McFarland's campaign to unseat Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton. Things got off to a promising start in early March, with favorable publicity and several national TV interviews for the wealthy, 54-year-old McFarland, a Reagan-era Pentagon official who spent the last 20 years raising a family and has never held elective office. But then McFarland was hit with embarrassing disclosures about her voting history, including her registering in two places and missing several elections. Records suggest she did not even vote in 1984, when Reagan, her...

March 23, 2006 G.O.P. Challenger to Clinton Inflated Résumé, Records and Interviews Suggest By RAYMOND HERNANDEZ When Kathleen Troia McFarland stepped forward as a Republican challenger to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, she was a relatively obscure figure with two intriguing claims to fame: She had worked on President Ronald Reagan's "Star Wars" speech and had been the highest-ranking woman at the Reagan Pentagon. But interviews with former Reagan administration officials and a review of documents show her claims were not entirely accurate. Though she helped write the "Star Wars" speech, its most famous passage — the one that announced the...

March 13, 2006 -- REPUBLICAN Senate hopeful Katherine Troia McFarland's declaration that she's not an evangelical Christian has prompted a major backlash from the state's leading evangelical organization. "This will definitely come up during her campaign because I, for one, will bring it up," the Rev. Duane Motley, leader of New Yorkers for Constitutional Freedoms, told The Post. "This will hurt her because probably the largest block of voters in the country are evangelical, and a significant number of them are in New York," said Motley, who described his group as the state's largest association of evangelical Christians, with 2,000...

Invoking Reagan, K.T. McFarland enters the New York senatorial race, stating, "I can beat Hillary." This cartoon/graphic is free for noncommercial usein emails, blogs, and forums.

A former Pentagon spokeswoman under President Reagan launched a Web site Friday to solicit donations for a possible run against Democratic Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton. Republican Kathleen Troia "KT" McFarland is still gauging support and has not actually decided whether to run, said adviser William O'Reilly.