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ALBANY - State GOP Chairman Stephen Minarik, who just knocked William Weld out of the race for governor, will now try to do the same with Republican Senate hopeful Katherine "KT" McFarland, The Post has learned. Minarik, backed by other GOP leaders, will publicly urge McFarland, a Reagan-era Pentagon official, to drop out of the Senate race today "in the interest of party unity," a source familiar with Minarik's thinking said. Minarik will urge GOP voters to rally around former Yonkers Mayor John Spencer, who defeated McFarland, 63 percent to 36 percent, at last week's party nominating convention, as the...

McFarland campaign fueled by major Clinton backers YONKERS – A review of Kathleen McFarland's campaign reports filed with the Federal Election Commission reveal a very troubling fact for Republicans seeking to defeat Senator Clinton. A clear pattern has emerged whereby donors to Ms. McFarland are also big supporters of Senator Clinton, the DNC and other related leftwing entities. For example, the following McFarland donors also gave money to Sen. Clinton and the DNC: Lionel Pincus donated $4,200 to Ms. McFarland while giving Sen. Clinton $6,000 since 1999. Between 1997-2000, Pincus donated $300,000 to the DNC! Constance Spahn donated $500 to...

YONKERS -- In November, New York Republicans need a maximum turnout to defeat Senator Clinton and win down ballot races. That's why a loose cannon like K. T. McFarland at the top of the ticket spells wipe out. K. T. McFarland is running on her resume. But her resume has a Jason Blair quality. It's phony. Her legalistic hair splitting makes Bill Clinton sound like a straight shooter. Read how Human Events found K. T. McFarland inflated her resume to claim she was the highest ranking woman in the Pentagon: "Her campaign evidently has been bragging about her being the...

YONKERS -- The New York Post calls K.T. McFarland ‘kooky.’ How kooky? Well, maybe instead of running for Senator, she’s really auditioning for a Get Smart remake. In March, K.T. accused Senator Clinton of spying on her. The New York Post reported “Republican Senate candidate Kathleen “KT” McFarland (left) is bizarrely claiming that Sen. Hillary Clinton (right) has been spying in her bedroom window and flying helicopters over her house in the Hamptons.” (3/25/06) Then the facts came out; K.T. had hired private detectives – from the same firm the Clinton’s hired to spy on conservatives and Republicans -- to...

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,...

The former Mayor of Yonkers, John Spencer, raised eyebrows in Republican circles earlier this month when he hinted at a conspiracy. There was something fishy, he said, aboutthe sudden emergence of Kathleen Troia (K.T.) McFarland, like him a Republican seeking to challenge Senator Hillary Clinton.   “The Clintons are pretty slick. They’ll never have any fingerprints on it,” he said.   Mr. Spencer now says he was joking—“I was doing, like, a Charles Grodin routine,” he insisted—but his suggestion that Mrs. Clinton’s hidden hand has influenced the Republican primary process wasn’t far off. It’s just that far from conspiring against...

<p>ALBANY - Problem-plagued Senate hopeful Kathleen "KT" McFarland has a surprise 35-22 percent lead over former Yonkers Mayor John Spencer in the fight for the Republican nomination, a poll yesterday showed. The Quinnipiac University survey of GOP voters found 37 percent were undecided on a standard-bearer to challenge Democratic Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton in November.</p>

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...

NEW YORK -- The top adviser to Kathleen Troia "KT" McFarland said Friday that her rival for the Republican Senate nomination, former Yonkers Mayor John Spencer, lacked the credentials, knowledge and financial backing to mount a credible challenge to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton. "It would be a very big mistake to think John Spencer _ no offense to John, who I guess was a decent enough mayor _ to move him to a level of where anyone is going to take him seriously as a U.S. Senate candidate," McFarland adviser Ed Rollins told The Associated Press. "Unfortunately, John Spencer wouldn't...

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...

EXCLUSIVE ALBANY - The newly announced Republican challenger to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton wrote a confidential memo describing herself as a pro-abortion, pro-gay rights, pro-stem-cell research, "social liberal" who is not a member of an "evangelical" church. The politically explosive campaign-strategy memo, a copy of which was obtained by The Post, was written by Kathleen Troia McFarland, a wealthy Park Avenue resident and former Reagan-era Pentagon aide. "I believe in a woman's right to choose, stem-cell research and full civil rights for gays. Our family worships in the Episcopal Church, but we are not evangelical," wrote McFarland, who announced yesterday...

GLENS FALLS, N.Y., March 13—The Republican Party's carousel-ride search for a challenger to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton made its latest stop here Monday night, as a new candidate, Kathleen Troia McFarland, appeared for the first time at an event with the other G.O.P. candidate, John Spencer, the former mayor of Yonkers. With eight months to go before the election and Mrs. Clinton sitting on a comfortable lead in the polls, the two candidates focused on simply introducing themselves to roughly 150 voters in the crowd in brief speeches and question-and-answer sessions. "I will run on the same principles I watched...

I CAN BEAT HILLARY Mon Mar 06 2006 12:08:26 ET [Excerpted from planned letter to supporters] “Nine months ago, my daughter Fiona, a student at the United States Naval Academy, reminded me that service to one’s country is both an honor and an obligation. She challenged me to return to public service, to re-apply the skills and expertise I acquired while serving three U.S. Presidents on behalf of our state and nation. “Today, I accept my daughter’s challenge by announcing that I am running to be my party’s nominee for the United States Senate from the State of New York....

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...

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.

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...

Kathleen Troia McFarland (R), who is seeking the Republican nomination to run against incumbent Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y), in a recent interview said she supports abortion rights but also supports laws that require parental notification and a ban on so-called "partial-birth" abortion, the White Plains Journal-News reports. McFarland, who was a Department of Defense spokesperson during the Reagan administration, said she favors exceptions allowing abortion in cases that protect the health of the pregnant woman. "I think I am where the majority of the electorate is and the majority of the Republican Party as well," McFarland said (Blain, White...