Look, when talking politics in this country, the most important thing is knocking off Hillary Clinton, so that she does not have a legitimate platform to launch a Presidential Campaign from. Under the right circumstances, she could very easily be elected President. Never forget that. Rudy Guliani stands the best chance of beating her. Therefore, he needs to be held back in reserve as our big gun in 2006. As unpaletable as electing a pro abortion Reupublican senator is, I'm willing to accept him if it means the end of Hillary Clinton.
Pataki, meanwhile would hand the reigns off to Lt. Gov. Mary Donohue who would have two years to seep into the public conciousness. As usual there are no "perfect" Republican candidates in NY (Donohue is a strong gun-control advocate), she is very conservative on a lot of family issues (I am unable to find any referrence to her feelings on abortion).