Posted on 03/06/2006 3:51:47 PM PST by nickcarraway
ALBANY, N.Y. - A former Pentagon official under President Reagan said Monday she will seek the Republican nomination to challenge Democratic Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's re-election bid this year.
"I am running to be my party's nominee for the United States Senate from the state of New York," Kathleen Troia "KT" McFarland wrote in a letter to supporters. "Toward that end, I have formed an exploratory committee, which I expect to upgrade to a full Senate campaign committee in the coming days."
The move by the political neophyte could put her into a September primary against former Yonkers Mayor John Spencer, already endorsed by top state Conservative Party leaders. No Republican has won statewide office in New York without Conservative Party support since 1974.
Clinton, asked Friday about a possible challenge from McFarland, said: "I am going to remain focused on my job and my race. I will leave it to the other side to sort out their own candidacies."
Polls have shown Clinton far ahead of her potential Senate challengers and leading among possible candidates for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination.
McFarland, a former National Security Council staffer, has never run for public office and has been out of the public sector since she left her job as a deputy assistant secretary of defense for public affairs in 1985, a post she had held for three years, to raise a family.
Spencer's supporters have in the past dismissed McFarland, a supporter of abortion rights, as an "elitist liberal."
"I don't know what this woman is thinking, I really don't," Spencer said Monday, arguing that McFarland's candidacy would be "divisive (and) I guess helpful to Clinton."
"I'm the only one who can unite the Republican and Conservative parties, which I am doing," he added.
McFarland, in a telephone interview with The Associated Press, refused to address Spencer's criticisms, but said she would "go after every party."
"This is about so much more than that," she said. "This is about offering a candidate who will run an issues-oriented, substantive campaign."
McFarland said she plans to stress her expertise in defense and security issues.
"We are confronted with a dangerous and determined enemy abroad and political divisions at home that are eroding our national spirit," she wrote. "At a time when Americans should be working most closely together, we are being pulled apart by partisan rancor and counterproductive 'gotcha' politics."
She declined to discuss differences with Clinton and said she didn't know how she would have voted on legislation to authorize President Bush to go to war in Iraq. "The important thing now is to move forward and to get it right," she said.
State Republican leaders originally settled on Jeanine Pirro as their Clinton challenger, but Pirro, then Westchester County district attorney, pulled out of the race in December, unable to raise much money or interest in her candidacy.
Does anyone know anything about Kathleen Troia "KT" McFarland? Does she stand a chance?
"I'm the only one who can unite the Republican and Conservative parties, which I am doing," he added
"This is about so much more than that," she said. "This is about offering a candidate who will run an issues-oriented, substantive campaign." . . .
She declined to discuss differences with Clinton and said she didn't know how she would have voted on legislation to authorize President Bush to go to war in Iraq.
She sounds pretty liberal to me, but...it is New York. I guess that is the best republicans can hope for.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1591219/posts
for the whole story.
Her FEC donor records are a little squirrely. I've never seen so much returned money.
Is McFarland a friend of Billy? or Hillry?
I saw her on Hardball lastnight and she seemed a little squirrely.
i don't mind her being liberal--she just didn't sound too bright. (but the other repub sounded plain arrogant).
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