It's really too bad that NY has been saddled with such dreadful or mediocre Governors for years. Lew Lehrman was probably too good for NY, and had Jack Kemp not had such a political tin-ear, might very well have been able to win the Governorship from Cuomo in '86. Sad to say, it looked like the damage was pretty much permanent by the time Pataki (whom most don't know is a Hungarian-American) took office. The sad irony is that Giuliani managed to make NYC liveable for the first time since the days Bob Wagner, and helped to recoup all of the people that fled under Lindsay, but the city remains as anti-Republican as ever and pushes the rest of the state to the left. :-(
Yep, and the few Republican areas (Bay Ridge, Dyker Heights, Maspeth/Middle Village, Throgs Neck, Country Club/City Island) get more Democratic each year. Staten Island is more of a blue collar swing area than anything else.