As State Parties Gather, Stage Is Set for Deal-Making and a Little Drama

By PATRICK HEALY

The New York races for governor, attorney general and United States Senate will start in earnest this week as the two major parties hold political conventions that promise bursts of genuine drama, some 11th-hour deal-making, and, for the Republicans, a sharp clash of ideologies.

The most defining moments are expected among the Republicans, who gather in Hempstead on Wednesday deeply split between conservatives and moderates. After 12 years under Gov. George E. Pataki, the party is torn over the profile of its next standard-bearers: Should they be conservative insiders who want to cut taxes and who oppose abortion rights? Or should they be newcomers to state politics, who also want to cut taxes, but whose moderate positions on social issues might draw swing voters.

The Democrats, who have tended to be the more fractious party, are largely united in their determination to crush the Republican power structure in a landslide this fall. Yet there will be some intriguing elements at their convention, which unofficially begins tonight in Buffalo: the five-person contest to oppose the Republican candidate, Jeanine F. Pirro, for attorney general; the appearance of two big party stars, Attorney General Eliot Spitzer and Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton; and the tone set by Mr. Spitzer, whom polls have shown to be the leading candidate for governor.

"It's a switcheroo — the Democrats are usually at war among themselves, but the Republicans are going to be the ones at each others' throats," said Maurice Carroll, the director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute.

On the Republican side, the greatest uncertainty is the fate of William F. Weld, the former Massachusetts governor who is seeking the same office in New York. He once appeared to be a strongly positioned Republican candidate, but he has lost steam among delegates, some of whom are suspicious of his moderate stands and patrician air, and who are drawn to the upright conservatism of Mr. Weld's rival, John Faso.

Unlike the national political conventions, the plotlines of New York conventions are largely unwritten. Delegates will probably anoint leading candidates this week — and deny support to others — only after heated back-room bargaining and last-minute shifts in political allegiances.

One Democratic candidate for attorney general, Mark Green, is trying to peel off delegates from his main rival, Andrew M. Cuomo, to win 25 percent of the delegate vote and qualify for the Sept. 12 primary ballot, his advisers say. The Cuomo camp, meanwhile, is trying to run up as huge a number of votes as possible, and to embarrass Mr. Green in the process.

"The phones of delegates have been buzzing like crazy, but you have to wait to see the mood of the convention hall — and where the vote counts stand for candidates — to see if any real deal-making will happen," said Len Lenihan, the Democratic Party leader in Buffalo, who plans to work behind the scenes on behalf of his preferred candidate for attorney general, Denise O'Donnell, a former United States attorney for the region.

Heading into the weekend, Ms. O'Donnell was believed to be short of 25 percent of the delegate vote needed for an automatic spot on the September primary ballot. But Mr. Lenihan said he held out hope that back-room talks could yield a surprise.

"I see the undecided vote as 20 to 25 percent, and Denise is the only candidate who has been a prosecutor, the only woman, the only upstater, she's Irish Catholic," Mr. Lenihan said. "I've received several calls from other upstate chairmen — well, north of Westchester — who say they're waiting and seeing."

While New York voters will select party nominees in the Sept. 12 primary, candidates can draw benefits — some real, some nominal — by performing well when the convention delegates vote names onto the ballot.

Candidates who win more than 50 percent of the delegate vote can promote themselves as the party favorites on the campaign trail. Winning 75 percent would effectively deny rivals an automatic place on the ballot, forcing them to go the costly route of gathering petitions to earn a spot. Republican candidates who win by such a large margin sometimes receive resources and fund-raising help from the state party, too.

The political stakes are greatest for the Republicans this year, political analysts say. Mr. Faso, a former Assembly leader who won the Conservative Party nomination last week, is vying to top 50 percent in order to fairly claim an upset victory over Mr. Weld, who has drawn support from state party leaders and some moderate Republicans.

"I guess I'm expecting the unconventional," Mr. Faso said. "My views best represent the views of grass-roots Republicans and outer-borough Koch-Giuliani Democrats, and I'm much more in tune with what average families need: jobs, lower taxes and less spending, safety and security."

Mr. Faso has been aggressively wooing delegates, to some degree at the expense of fund-raising, his allies say. And Mr. Weld is preparing to sacrifice a strong convention showing, his advisers say, because he has concentrated on strengthening his campaign operation — by researching Mr. Faso's voting records, for example, and preparing commercials.

Both camps are trying to lower convention expectations, their allies acknowledge: Mr. Faso does not want to predict too big a victory, and Mr. Weld does not want to be embarrassed if he loses by too much.

"The convention is going to be pretty close — it could even be exciting," Mr. Weld said, dead-panning a bit. "But I'm simultaneously thinking about the general election: raising money, focusing on the broader audience. Eliot Spitzer has strongly implied he will raise income taxes and increase the state work force. We need to be talking about that."

Two potential challengers to Senator Clinton also cleave along ideological lines. Both are expected to make the ballot, yet the moderate, Kathleen Troia McFarland, also known as K. T., is aiming to win more votes than expected against the conservatives' choice, John Spencer.

"The Senate contest is really a battle for the party's soul, between a Rockefeller Republican — K. T. — and the Al D'Amato type, John Spencer," Mr. Carroll said. "But again, it's about the soul, not about winning. Every poll shows that Hillary Clinton is unbeatable."

Senator Clinton and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, will probably draw a huge spotlight at the convention, but it is the attorney general's race and Mr. Spitzer's rise to the role of a party leader that carry real consequences.

Mr. Cuomo, Mr. Green and Ms. O'Donnell, along with Charlie King and Sean Patrick Maloney, may yet fight it out up to September. So, too, may Mr. Spitzer and another Democratic candidate for governor, Thomas R. Suozzi, the Nassau County executive, who plans to boycott the convention because he has so little institutional support.

Mr. Spitzer is far ahead of everyone in the polls and fund-raising, however, so the convention, while not a coronation or inauguration, will showcase Mr. Spitzer's strengths and drawbacks as he seeks to grow from prosecutor to political leader.

It will also show a ballotwide buoyancy among Democrats that they have not felt since the era of Gov. Mario M. Cuomo in the 1980's and early 90's, political analysts said.

"Politics runs to a rhythm, and the pendulum is swinging back after 12 years of good power for Republicans," said William T. Cunningham, a former state Democratic Party official who also was a top aide to Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, a Republican.

"The landscape favors the Democrats, and Eliot Spitzer has had a tremendous run of press about taking on big business and protecting average people," Mr. Cunningham added. "Voters like that image. Whether the Republicans can stop fighting long enough to find a candidate who can counter that image — that will be a huge challenge."