Free Republic

Candidates for Congress and the Legislature made a final push for votes on Sunday before Tuesday’s primary elections throughout the city and the state. In New York City, the most prominent of the hotly contested primaries are for Congress in a district in central Brooklyn and in another that includes all of Staten Island and part of Brooklyn. There are also competitive primaries throughout the state, notably in the Buffalo area. In the Staten Island Congressional district, the 13th, there are spirited races in both the Republican and Democratic primaries. The winners will compete in November for the Congressional seat...

The two candidates were once friends, with one crediting the other for bringing him into Republican Party leadership. But the competition for the Republican nomination for a Congressional seat on Staten Island has produced a level of rancor that has left the two candidates bitterly sparring and the party in disarray. In the last week, Dr. Jamshad I. Wyne, the finance chairman of the Republican Party on Staten Island and a candidate for Congress, accused his rival in the primary, former Assemblyman Robert A. Straniere, of trying to persuade him to make illegal contributions to Mr. Straniere’s failed 2001 campaign...