Free Republic

It was the spring of 1994, and one of the greatest moments of John Faso’s political career was about to fall to pieces. For months, Mr. Faso, an upstate Republican assemblyman, had been campaigning county by county to woo party leaders in his race for state comptroller, New York’s top accounting job, an ideal fit for a self-described numbers nerd. By the time of the party convention that May, Mr. Faso had all but locked up the Republican nomination. Then the deal-making started. In back-room maneuvering, allies of George E. Pataki, the Republican candidate for governor, decided to deny Mr....

If there was a moment when Eliot Spitzer’s ride to fame as New York attorney general was nearly derailed, it came on April 8, 2002. That was the day Mr. Spitzer stunned Wall Street by using a little-known state law to win a court order requiring Merrill Lynch to disclose potential business conflicts involving its stock analysts. The maneuver brought a secret, long-running investigation into the open, and forced Merrill Lynch — and, later, other big firms — to make concessions they had resisted and helped turn Mr. Spitzer into a political star. But what few people noticed in those...

John Faso aggressively attacked Eliot Spitzer as self-aggrandizing and politically timid last night in their final debate in the race for governor, while Mr. Spitzer — who has rarely been so on the defensive — denounced Mr. Faso’s “angry, extreme rhetoric.” Struggling to close a 50-point deficit in opinion polls, Mr. Faso unleashed a stream of harsh words throughout the hourlong televised debate, saying Mr. Spitzer, the state attorney general, had used “bluster and intimidation” in his prosecutions and twice calling him “asleep at the switch” as Medicaid fraud ran rampant. Yet the clearest calculation of Mr. Faso, the Republican...

Borrowing a page from Karl Rove's playbook, John Faso plans to spend the next five months convincing voters that his likely opponent in the governor's race, Eliot Spitzer, comes with a defining liability: Mr. Spitzer would raise your taxes. Mr. Faso, who became the presumptive Republican nominee on Tuesday when William F. Weld withdrew his candidacy, has already used the sort of tactics that characterized John Kerry as a flip-flopper in 2004. In doing so, Mr. Faso is also playing to one of his strengths: Both his friends and his opponents say he is a tenacious debater, who would be...

Prominent New York Republicans took steps yesterday to derail John Faso's bid for the party nomination for governor by assailing him as an extremist conservative who would drag down the entire Republican slate in the November elections. The onslaught against Mr. Faso, a former assemblyman, could help prepare the way for a major development, several New York Republicans said: Gov. George E. Pataki's endorsement of another candidate, William F. Weld. These Republicans, who are close to Mr. Pataki, said he would like to endorse Mr. Weld but could do so only if Mr. Faso was seen by Republican voters as...