In a public statement, Mangano said, "Rick will be a stronger partner for reducing taxes and fostering a business climate that puts people back to work in Nassau County. Rick has the right experience and the right message to succeed in November."

It's a coup for Lazio since his rival, Steve Levy, is Mangano's neighboring county executive. (See my story from this week's paper.) And Levy has said he wants to be Scott Brown II.

Republican State Party Chairman Ed Cox, in an interview with me earlier this week, noted that Mangano's upset victory in Nassau was before Brown's victory in Massachusetts, which energized the Republican Party nationally.

"Wait a minute. We had Ed Mangano before they had Scott Brown," Cox told me.

"There come these times in government where you're in office at the wrong time," said Governor David Paterson. "I kind of can relate to that. I was sworn in the day the Fed saved Bear Stearns. If I had known, I would have asked them to save me."

Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver said he would be calling on Mr. Suozzi, with whom he's certainly had his disagreements, "whether he's in the public sector or the private sector."

Mr. Suozzi called himself "the poster child of the 'Public's in a Bad Mood Movement.'" Earlier this year he lost his re-election bid by 386 votes.

In between eulogies to Mr. Suozzi, the parade of elected officials celebrated the reform bill as part of a long-term solution to the state's precarious financial situation. The legislation creates a new "tier" of less-generous pension benefits for newly hired state workers, and comes after an acrimonious debate in which the governor threatened to lay off state workers.

"The issue really is that, for years, we were able to offer very generous packages to public employees, but as time has gone on, we simply do not have the reveneue to support it," said Mr. Paterson, who stressed that the bill won't help this year's budget crisis, but could save the state $35 to $40 billion over the next quarter century. "The problem is that an unsustainable pension system isn't going to help any of us. It's just going to drive us deeper and deeper into debt."

Asked about reports that his former running-mate Eliot Spitzer might run for office in 2010, Mr. Paterson deadpanned: "Did he mention that he was running for governor?" ( Mr. Spitzer has been floated as a candidate for nearly every possible post, but Mr. Paterson seems to prefer him as a comptroller candidate.)

The governor also reflected on a visit to North Hempstead in 2003, when he bad been invited to attend a ceremony on New Year's Day. "I forgot that New Year's Day was after New Year's Eve," the governor said. "I wouldn't say that I had a hangover, I would say that I was still under the influence." But, as the then-minority leader recalled, everyone was happy to see him, at least for a time. "I had five minutes of fame and then Chuck Schumer walked in and everybody wanted to talk him. And that was my moment."

Jacobs will have a private lunch with several lobbyists and interest groups and then meet this afternoon with the chairs of local county party organizations.

"This is all over the state, I'm trying my best to get acquainted with people who I haven't yet," Jacobs told me Tuesday night. This includes "folks from some lobbying, some unions and a couple of other folks that are going to meet with me."

"It's important that I meet with them and strategize about the upcoming elections," Jacobs said. "I think the message of those last elections--and I can personally attest to it--is that voters are angry."

(Jacobs was referring to the probable electoral loss of Nassau County Executive Tom Suozzi; Jacobs is the Nassau County Democratic chair.)

Fred Dicker quoted Jacobs on Monday saying Andrew Cuomo is "well prepared" to run for governor, should he choose to do so. I asked Jacobs if he would meet with the David Paterson, who is in Albany today. He said meeting with elected officials wasn't the focus of his trip; several legislators I talked to, even Albany-area ones, were unaware of the visit. He is not planning to meet with any other statewide elected officials.

"I do speak to the governor with some frequency, and the state party offices and his campaign offices are in the same building, so it would not be unusual for us to meet by just bumping into each other there," Jacobs said. "So I would not have thought to call him and tell him I've been in town."

The Siena Poll found that 75 percent of registered Democrats surveyed would prefer Cuomo to Paterson, who garnered the support of just 16 percent. Among African-Americans, Paterson now trails Cuomo by a 2:1 margin. Paterson is losing hypothetical match-ups against Rudy Giuliani and, for the first time, Rick Lazio.

"No other measure of his electability increased noticeably," Steve Greenberg, a poll spokesman, said. "While it's true that the Governor's new commercials had only been airing for less than a week while Siena was polling, it seems clear that he's going to have to spend a lot of campaign funds very early to even have a chance of improving the measurements by which voters judge David Paterson."

Andrew Cuomo and Chuck Schumer continue to be incredibly popular, with favorability ratings of 70 and 60 percent, respectively. But Democrats further down the ticket are less popular and known: Kirsten Gillibrand's favorability rating is 34 percent, with 43 percent of those asked not knowing enough to express an opinion. Comptroller Tom DiNapoli's favorability rating is 20 percent, with 69 percent of voters surveyed not knowing enough to express an opinion.

(By contrast two Republicans who are not in elected office, Rudy Giuliani and George Pataki, are viewed favorably by 62 and 55 percent of voters surveyed.)

David Paterson's favorability rating is 33 percent; his job approval rating stands at 21 percent, an increase of two points. Siena polled 800 registered voters; the poll has a margin of error of 3.5 percent.

The poll also asked voters who they would support for attorney general if not Cuomo. A list of the Democrats who have expressed at least tacit interest in the position indicates a wide-open race: Tom Suozzi has the support of 11 percent, the highest, trailed by Kathleen Rice with 10 percent. Fifty-eight percent don't know who they would support.

SNY1109 Crosstabs Final

One sign of how true that may be: 32 days before the election, Suozzi’s campaign was sitting on a giant war chest of $2,345,361.04. As election day grew closer – and the pressures of a rigorous campaign would, you’d think, become more costly and drain some of that money away – Suozzi’s war chest actually got bigger.

In his 11 day pre-election filing, Suozzi’s campaign reported having $2,410,353.49 in the bank.

The ability for a campaign to actually gain money in the closing days of a campaign defies the campaign physics that plays out in most races. It may speak to the fact that they were looking past the current election, with an eye to the 2010 cycle, where the leftover money could easily be rolled into a statewide campaign for some higher office.

I left a message at Suozzi’s campaign office and will update when I get a response from them.

Incumbent Tom Suozzi, a Democrat, trails Republican Ed Mangano by 497 after a re-canvass of mechanical voting machines finished yesterday. On Election Night, Suozzi was leading by a few hundred votes.

Officials today are counting sip-and-puff voting machines used by disabled voters, but this will be less than 200 total votes. There are around 8,000 paper ballots which will be counted starting Monday; there are about 700 more registered Republicans than Democrats in the mix.

"I'm cautiously optimistic, especially considering how the banks have broken thus far," said John Ciampoli, one of the attorneys representing Mangano in the recount.

Steven Schlesinger, one of the lead attorneys for the Suozzi campaign, told me by phone there is mathematical hope if you examine the down-ballot races for supervisor and mayor in the county: more voters picked Republicans for the number two slot but picked Suozzi up top.

"If we're down the numbers we're seeing, it's like going into the fourth quarter down by two touchdowns," he said. "Is a comeback impossible? No. But it's unlikely we're going to cover the spread."

He's right: Suozzi was favored to win re-election handily. At best, it will be by less than 100 votes, Schlesinger said.

If he lost, it would be a stunning defeat for Suozzi, a two-term county executive who ran unsuccessfully for governor in 2006 but still harbors aspirations for higher office. Suozzi's current predicament highlights a problem not just with his campaign, but with Nassau Democrats, according to Larry Levy, the former Newsday columnist who now teaches at Hofstra University.

“Tom Suozzi is fighting for his political life now because he did not campaign as if he was fighting for it BEFORE Election Day,” Levy wrote in an email.

He also had this to say about the Democratic Party:

The Nassau Democrats, who had built what looked like a pretty strong organization, ran a sloppy, lazy and unfocused campaign that did not get Democrats to the polls and only served to rev up Republicans. (Democratic turnout barely broke 20 per cent and Republican exceeded 30 percent. Get that a bit closer and we aren’t in a recount.) How a candidate and a local party can leave $2 million in the bank in this volatile climate – and with three legislative seats also believed to have been up for grabs – is mind-boggling. All politics may be local, but sometimes it’s just mechanical. And this was a mechanical, as well as a strategic, breakdown for the Nassau Democrats. What an embarrassment for the new state Democratic leader Jay Jacobs who was in the drivers seat.

"If we can win Westchester, that is almost as big a win as the wins which I expected to happen, and which did happen, in New Jersey and Virginia," Cox told me during a phone interview Wednesday afternoon, noting the suburban county has a two-to-one Democratic enrollment advantage.

"That win by Rob Astorino was a huge message to potential Republican candidates here in New York State--whether you're running for an assembly office or a senate office, or a statewide office or a very local office--the Republican Party is going to be doing very good not just now but in the future."

In addition to Astorino--for whom Cox noted he campaigned--Republicans made gains in Erie, Dutchess and Nassau counties as well as holding ground in Rockland County. The only blip in the victory narrative--and it was a massive one--was Doug Hoffman's special election loss to Bill Owens in the race to replace John McHugh, a Republican, in Congress.

Cox said did an interesting dance on this in our conversation: he told me that he felt his party's legal nominee, Assemblywoman Dede Scozzafava, "would have won that district overwhelmingly if it had been a race between her and Mr. Owens." Her candidacy collapsed under pressure from conservatives.

But it was a three-way race, with Doug Hoffman on the Conservative Party line, she didn't stand a chance, and Cox barely lifted a finger to help her. When Scozzafava dropped out, Cox endorsed Hoffman. He said Hoffman lost because it's "not your traditional Republican rural kind of county," and that more of a cross-base appeal, like Scozzafava could have provided, was needed.

"He was a fiscal conservative, but Bill Owens also defined himself as a fiscal conservative. In that close race, Bill Owens, he not only secured his base, the Democratic base, but he also reached over into the Republican issues and identified himself as a fiscal conservative," Cox explained. "The lesson from the 23^rd district is going to be: fiscal conservatism wins."

"And he [Hoffman] fought back by saying he was a fiscal conservative, and he convinced enough. This is a swing county, this is not a Republican county. There is a very strong labor component up there, there is a strong environmental component, there's a strong higher education component," Cox continued. I asked him then if, given this read and a belief that Scozzafava could have won, if he was not putting egg on his face for not supporting her more aggressively.

"No, you asked me if she could have won it," he replied. "And she could, given the fact that she in many ways was a fiscal conservative, she was for continuing the Bush tax cuts, she voted against the last Democratic budget, she signed the tax pledge, and she was a floor leader for the conservative Republican caucus in the Assembly."

"She reached across into the independent and Democratic side," Cox said. "She knew the issues up there very well, by the way, like the St. Lawrence Seaway and the road going across the northern part of the district."

And then, he reiterated, she betrayed the party by endorsing Owens, a move that coupled with labor support is believed by most analysts to have won him the election.

I asked Cox what this race would mean for his relationship with the Conservative Party. On Election Night, Chairman Mike Long told Liz and me that "the Republican Party lost the seat by picking and allowing and funding a candidate that wasn't really even in any way, shape, or form respectful of Republican policies and principles."

"I submit to you that we're not spoilers. Hoffman had the right message," Long said. "Look at the numbers. Add together what the Republican line got and what the Conservative line got and guess what? We would have definitely held this seat in the Republican column."

Here's Cox's take:

"Look, I know that Mike Long does not want to be a spoiler," Cox said. "He proved that with the Westchester race, where he stepped in and repudiated his local conservative leader and repudiated the corrupt deal that that leader had made with Andy Spano. Mike Long said in Westchester: I want all people that vote conservative to vote for Rob Astorino. Don't vote on the Conservative line for Andy Spano. He didn't want the Conservative candidate to, in fact, to get the vote of Conservatives."

"I think what happened in Westchester is more the paradigm of what's going to happen going forward between the Republican Party and the Conservative Party. I know Mike Long does not want to be a spoiler. I know he wants to do what's right for the people of the state of New York, and enact the fiscal policies we need," he said.

Of course, others disagree with Cox's fiscal supremacy theory; Bruce Gyory, a political consultant said it was a "anti-incumbent rip tide" that took down Spano and caused a squeaker for Tom Suozzi. Cox, predictably, is going to bask in his victories while he can.

"This election is really the start, and this is one of the reasons that I wanted to be the chairman of my party in New York State," Cox said. "This is the start of a large movement, and it shows what's really happening and what can be done."

"Given his lackluster race for governor last time and his very tight race for re-election, I suspect people aren't going to see him as a major league contender for statewide office," Joseph Mercurio, a political consultant and adjunct professor, told me. This was a "major setback," he said.

A Democratic operative watching the race was more blunt: "This completely changes the race for the AG's race next year. Even if he hangs on, he's a dead man walking."

Suozzi has eyed a statewide run, and the expectation was he would run for Andrew Cuomo's office when Cuomo runs for governor. The expectation was he would win a handy re-election; his weakened mandate will embolden people like State Senators Eric Schneiderman and Jeff Klein, Assemblymembers Michael Gianaris and Richard Brodsky and Eric Dinallo, all of whom are pondering at a run for the office.

Additionally, this result as well as the loss of Andy Spano in Westchester County doesn't bode well for David Paterson. Suozzi in particular has worked with Paterson on the issue of property tax relief, and their fathers are law partners.

"People were saying this was a referendum on Barack Obama, but in the New York City suburbs, this is a referendum on David Paterson and his policies over the last year and the confidence he inspires," the Democratic operative said.